Using data & evidence in scaling girls’ education outcomes in rural India

Speaker: Alison Bukhari, International Director, Educate Girls

Educate Girls has been operating in India for over 15 years, ensuring that primary-aged girls in the most vulnerable communities are able to access their right to go to school and learn. The organisation has grown from a 50-school pilot to now working across 35,000 villages. This seminar will discuss the use of data and evidence that has been critical to its success and its inclusive approach:

• Three RCTs have demonstrated the efficacy of the approach and robust evidence has meant Educate Girls has been able to garner the support of both governments and the donor community.
• The organisation’s experimentation with a new funding contract called a Development Impact Bond, necessitated rigorous performance management systems that analysed in real-time large amounts of data and put dashboards and the ability to use data for decision-making in the hands of local field staff, rather than just head office.
• The organisation’s focus on data led to it being able to work with data scientists to design a predictive machine learning algorithm that helps the organisation target ‘hotspots’ for vulnerable girls and identify invisible girls excluded from school and enrol them back into the government school system faster.