The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is a multilateral pooled fund focused on increasing the number of children being educated in the developing world. The organization is largely funded by sovereign states including the United States, and GPE allocates that funding to different grant agents, who in turn fund and administer education programs in developing countries.

Founding and History

The Global Partnership for Education was founded in 2002 as Education for All Fast Track Initiative. In 2010 the then-Education for All midterm evaluation determined that the organization had many problems and was viewed as not achieving its goals. It was renamed Global Partnership for Education and was reorganized and operated in a “start-up mode” to increase funding and accountability as well as seeking to fill previously ignored gaps in capacity, data collection and evaluation, rather than just focusing on gaps in funding. A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution argued that the organization had improved and could receive increased donor support effectively. ¹

Finances

The Global Partnership for Education is funded by 29 donors, the majority of which are sovereign states. Most of the donors are European states, with the exceptions of the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. GPE also receives funding from several private foundations, including: Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), the Open Society Foundations, Dubai Cares, Porticus, and the Rockefeller Foundation. ²

GPE began in 2019 with $651 million in cash on hand and received an inflow of $595.7 million, of which $565.8 million was derived from donor contributions, and $29.9 million was derived from investment returns. GPE had $326.5 million in outflows and ended the year with $920.6 million cash on hand, of which $109.3 million was committed for future disbursement, and $811.3 was uncommitted. ³

The United States has contributed a total of $451 million to GPE since its inception. ⁴

Priority Issues

The Global Partnership for Education states in its charter that it considers education to be a public good and a human right. ⁵

GPE is focused on improving several different measurable aspects of education in the developing world. This includes a focus on gender equality and making progress in female attendance in school in target countries. ⁶ GPE is also focused on countries with a fragile social order or outright conflict and claims that 18.5 million school children have been supported by the organization in fragile countries since 2015. ⁷

Grant Agents and Recipients

The Global Partnership for Education does not itself administer programs but rather provides funding to grant agents who administer the funding in the target countries. Since the organization’s inception the vast majority of funding has been allocated to the World Bank as the grant agent. ⁸ This has led some to question whether or not it would be more efficient to just simply contribute the funding to the World Bank; supporters of GPE argue that it allocates its funding differently than the World Bank does and gives donor countries less control over the funding. ⁹

Nearly 75 percent of funding is allocated to sub-Saharan African states, with South Asia receiving nearly 11 percent of the funding disbursements. ¹⁰

Leadership

Alice Albright, daughter of Clinton administration U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, is the current CEO of the Global Partnership for Education. She has held this position since 2013. From 2009 to 2013 Albright worked as the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Export-Import Bank of the United States in the Obama administration. She has also worked previously as the chief financial and investment officer for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations and has held positions in the banking industry. ¹¹

1. Steer, Liesbet, and Rebecca Winthrop. “Is the Global Partnership for Education Ready for Takeoff?” Brookings (blog), June 23, 2014. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/is-the-global-partnership-for-education-ready-for-takeoff/.
2. GlobalPartnership.org. “Financial Reporting | Global Partnership for Education.” Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/funding/financial-reporting.
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5. GlobalPartnership.org. “GPE Charter,” June 2019. Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/document/file/2021-02-GPE-charter.pdf.
6. GlobalPartnership.org. “Girls’ Education and Gender Equality Issues in Education | GPE.” Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/what-we-do/gender-equality.
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8. “GPE 2019 Consolidated Financial Report.” Global partnership for Education. Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/document/file/2020-07-GPE-consolidated-financial-report-2019.pdf.
9. Akmal, Maryam, Susannah Hares, Aisha Ali, and Justin Sandefur. “Is the Global Partnership for Education Redundant?” ReliefWeb. Accessed July 5, 2021. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-partnership-education-redundant.
10. GlobalPartnership.org. “Financial Reporting | Global Partnership for Education.” Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/funding/financial-reporting.
11. GlobalPartnership.org. “Alice Albright | Global Partnership for Education.” Accessed July 5, 2021. https://www.globalpartnership.org/who-we-are/ceo.