Accelerated Education Working Group (AEWG)

The Accelerated Education Working Group (AEWG), which became part of INEE in 2022, is an inter agency working group made up of a number of education partners supporting and/or funding Accelerated Education (AE) Programs (AEPs). The overarching aim of the AEWG is to support ministries of education, implementing partners, and donors in designing, implementing, monitoring, and funding accelerated education programmes (AEPs) that meet the needs and demands of over-age out-of-school children and youth around the globe. 

Since inception, the AEWG has worked to  engage and advocate  for AE within national policy, donor strategies, and programmatic responses to address the issue of out of school, over-age learners in both emergency, crisis and protracted contexts.

Members of AEWG include UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, USAID, Norwegian Refugee Council, Plan, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, Education Development Center, ECHO and War Child Holland.

Activities

2022/23, the AEWG has five areas of focus:

1. AE Programs Included by More Governments in National Education Plans & Policies
2. AE Evidence Base Strengthened
3. Quality of AE Improved through the Development, Dissemination, and Utilization of Tools & Guidance
4. AE Programs Better Resourced by all Key Stakeholders for Scale & Quality
5. Resilience Strengthened for Learners, Schools, and Systems to Respond to Crisis

Further details on these areas of focus are available in the AEWG 2022-23 Brief. An overview of the AEWG’s work in 2021 is available here.

Learn more about the AEWG and AE in the video below:

Watch the new video highlighting the Accelerated Education work going on in Nigeria - an excellent example of embedding Accelerated Education into national systems:

Resources

AEWG has produced a number of resources, which are listed below. Additional AE resources are available in the Accelerated Education Resource Collection.

• Accelerated Education Definitions
• Accelerated Education 10 Principles for Effective Practice
• 10 Principles for Effective Practice Poster
• Accelerated Education Decision Tree
• Condensing a Curriculum for Accelerated Education: An A to Z Guide
• Accelerated Education Programme Checklist
• Accelerated Education: Guide to the Principles
• Accelerated Education Programme Monitoring & Evaluation Toolkit
• Accelerated Education Workshop: Policy and Practice in Accelerated Education
• Accelerated Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda
• Accelerated Education Working Group Learning Agenda
• The Case for Accelerated Education
• Accelerated Education Evidence Review
• Accelerated Education Principles Case Studies
• Accelerating Change for Children’s and Youths’ Education through Systems Strengthening: A reflection on key findings from Phase 1

COVID-19 meant the world needed to rapidly scale up flexible education options to reach all learners. This global need mandated the AEWG to leverage their expertise in accelerating learning to provide guidance for donors, implementers, and education systems to help all learners catch up when schools began to reopen. Please see below specific resources on the response to COVID-19.

• Impact of COVID-19 on Accelerated and Alternative Education Programs
• COVID-19: Pathways for the Return to Learning
• Catch-up Programmes: 10 Principles for Helping Learners Catch Up and Return to Learning
• COVID-19 Pathways for the Return to Learning: Guidance on Condensing a Curriculum

AEWG Webinars

• Accelerated Education: Lessons Learned from Sub-Saharan Africa (2022)
• Introduction to the Monitoring & Evaluation Toolkit for Accelerated Education Programmes (2021)
• AEWG Accelerated Education Workshop - Improving the Quality of AE Programming (2021)
• Accelerated Education Catch-Up Principles (2021)
• Catching Up on Lost Learning Part 1: Applying Accelerated Approaches in Response to COVID-19 (2020)
• Catching Up on Lost Learning, Part 2: Condensing a Curriculum in Response to COVID-19 (2020)
• Latest Evidence for Accelerated Education (2020)
• Accelerated Education Programming: Experiences from Uganda (2019)