A cohort of 15 evidence intermediaries from across the globe has been selected to help test and shape an evidence repository, supported by a collective of organizations including the Jacobs Foundation, aimed at improving education decision-making.
For years, one of the stubborn paradoxes in education has remained unchanged: the evidence base on what improves children’s learning keeps growing, but it remains difficult to access, combine, and use in decision-making.
Across contexts, there is a wealth of research, data, and evaluation. One of the challenges, however, lies in consolidating that fragmented body of knowledge in a way that is timely, useful, and structured well enough that it can effectively inform the decisions people are trying to make.
The Synthesis-Ready Evidence Repository is a direct response to this challenge. Rather than adding to the number of platforms where evidence is stored, it coalesces and structures existing evidence so that it can be more easily compared and reused in syntheses. By ensuring that evidence is consistently organized and “synthesis-ready”, policy-relevant insights could then be generated more quickly, efficiently, and responsively.
The Repository is part of a collective effort involving more than 20 organizations with a shared investment in the infrastructure of evidence use. The first working iteration is now being launched: a minimum viable repository that brings together structured data from multiple studies using a common taxonomy, alongside early prototype tools.
It is being tested by the inaugural cohort of evidence intermediaries: 15 EdLabs, research centers, and policy-facing organizations selected through a competitive call for proposals at the end of 2025, led by the What Works Hub for Global Education and supported by the Gates Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Jacobs Foundation, and Porticus. These teams work directly with governments and implementing partners, translating evidence into actionable insights.
Selected evidence intermediaries
The cohort spans Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe, and includes:
- Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Uganda
- Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA)
- Legon Centre for Education Research and Policy (LCERP) at the University of Ghana
- eBASE Africa in Cameroon
- IPA Rwanda
- International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Kenya
- JET Education Services in South Africa
- IPA’s EdLab in Côte d’Ivoire
- IPA Philippines
- Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports in Cambodia
- Central Square Foundation in India
- CEPE’s supported EdLab in Colombia
- Fundación SUMMA in Grenada
- Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) working across Brazil, Colombia, and Peru
- Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zürich
The What Works Hub for Global Education will be leading the learning and evaluation of this process.
Over the coming year, these teams will use the Repository to produce different forms of syntheses: rapid reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, all in response to concrete policy and practice needs.
The testing will explore whether a synthesis-ready structure can reduce the time and cost of producing high-quality evidence syntheses, make evidence more usable in practice, and be capable of bringing together global research, local data, and contextual insights. Whether this infrastructure can support “living syntheses”, updated as new evidence emerges and reflective of evolving evidence and policy needs, is also of interest.
At the Jacobs Foundation, we believe that strengthening evidence goes beyond generating knowledge; it requires investing in the systems that allow knowledge to be mobilized effectively for those working at the interface of research, policy, and practice.