Annual Report

2025

Advancing evidence where it matters most.

Download Annual Report 2025

Page sections:

    Download full report →

    Klaus J. Jacobs

    I always felt driven to ensure that children have a good future ahead of them.

    The Jacobs Foundation was established in 1989 by Klaus J. Jacobs and his family, driven by a singular vision: to improve the education and development of children and youth around the world. From its beginning, the Foundation has been committed to advancing evidence-based solutions that give every child the opportunity to thrive.

    In 2025, the Jacobs Foundation surpassed 1 billion Swiss francs in cumulative giving — 1 billion invested in the learning and development of children.

    But this is not a retrospective milestone, it is a forward-facing commitment.

    It signals our determination to take what we have learned over more than three decades and apply it with greater scale and with deeper ambition.

    In the same year, we assumed full control over our assets and have started to implement our own investment strategy. This step strengthens our ability to act decisively and to invest patiently — in discovery research, and in systemic reform — even amid global funding volatility.

    The global education landscape is shifting. Major financing flows have contracted. Priorities are being reassessed. Yet, within this disruption lies opportunity. Progress in education has never depended on funding alone, rather it depends on whether resources are directed where they create the greatest impact.

    The challenge before philanthropy is not simply to mobilize more resources, it is to mobilize better resources. To ensure that every franc, every dollar, works harder by being guided by evidence.

    Girls playing on a slide
    Highlights

    2025 in review: transforming education around the world

    Featured Image
    News
    25 March 2025

    One year of CEPE: Strengthening Education Through Evidence in Colombia

    March 2025 marks one year since the inception of Colombia Evidencia Potencial en Educación (CEPE) , one of our innovative country programs dedicated to embedding evidence into Colombia’s education system Designed to foster collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and educators, CEPE is focused on improving learning outcomes through three key components: Over the past year, CEPE has […]
    Featured Image
    News
    08 May 2025

    LEVANTE welcomes first cohort of participating sites to global research network

    The Jacobs Foundation is pleased to announce the first cohort of participating sites selected to join the Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE)—its flagship global initiative focused on advancing our understanding of children’s learning variability. Following a highly competitive call for proposals in August 2024, which attracted 182 applications from around the world, six sites have now been selected […]
    Featured Image
    News
    28 May 2025

    The Jacobs Foundation announces SCALE: a landmark initiative to transform education in Ghana

    The Jacobs Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of the System Change Architecture for Learning Excellence (SCALE)—a groundbreaking multi-stakeholder initiative designed to strengthen education systems and improve learning outcomes in Ghana. In partnership with the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, SCALE aims to significantly enhance the successful Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP). Building […]
    Featured Image
    News
    16 June 2025

    Reimagining evidence use in Community-led Learning Ecosystems

    A new learning brief and in-depth report from the Jacobs Foundation, developed in collaboration with On Think Tanks, explore how Community-led Learning Ecosystems (CLLEs) are using evidence to improve education outcomes in context-specific and sustainable ways. Drawing from interviews with practitioners and case studies across a range of geographies, the research offers insights into how […]
    Children are looking at flags and maps.
    News
    22 September 2025

    Education funders and partners unite to strengthen global evidence use to accelerate learning  

    In a landmark step for education, 24 leading organizations have come together to back a central resource that will make evidence on what works for children and learning more accessible, actionable, and globally relevant. This kind of collective action is rare: while billions are spent each year on education, too little of it is guided […]
    Featured Image
    News
    17 November 2025

    Professor Hirokazu Yoshikawa awarded the 2025 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize

    On Friday, 14 November 2025 in Zürich, the Jacobs Foundation awarded Professor Hirokazu Yoshikawa with the 2025 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for his outstanding contributions to early childhood development. Yoshikawa, Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at New York University (NYU) Steinhardt and co-founder of Global TIES for Children, has devoted his career to […]

    Voices of Evidence in Motion

    In 2025, our role in building evidence-based systems expanded – from opening up access to research and strengthening the global evidence architecture, to embedding evidence in schools and governments, and translating it for teachers.

    Calero Cecilia
    Cecilia Calero
    Brenda Wawire
    Brenda Wawire
    James Canton
    James Canton
    Yves Karlen
    Yves Karlen
    Clement Abas Apaak
    Clement Abas Apaak
    Alison Spence Montillet
    Alison Spence Montillet
    Calero Cecilia
    Cecilia Calero
    Principal Investigator at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella LEVANTE site
    From global research to system use
    Although our LEVANTE study is not an intervention, it will provide the empirical foundation needed to design one. By following thousands of students over time and combining standardized measures with contextual and family variables, we can better understand how children’s teaching behaviors interact with their developmental trajectories.
    Calero Cecilia
    Cecilia Calero
    Principal Investigator at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella LEVANTE site
    Brenda Wawire
    Brenda Wawire
    2025-27 Jacobs CIFAR Research Fellow
    Participating in the Jacobs CIFAR Research Fellowship has been a significant professional development opportunity, allowing me to conduct critical research that sheds light on the causes of reading difficulties and individual differences among multilingual learners at risk of reading failure in low-resource contexts. There is an urgent need to combat the persistent learning crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, making evidence- based policy directions and interventions crucial to addressing severe reading difficulties and learning disabilities while accounting for individual differences among children in these contexts.
    Brenda Wawire
    Brenda Wawire
    2025-27 Jacobs CIFAR Research Fellow
    James Canton
    James Canton
    Deputy Director for Innovation and Public Policy at the Economic and Social Research Council
    Strengthening the global evidence architecture
    A major missing ingredient has been the coordination of researchers, evidence intermediaries, funders, and evidence users. The Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC) has created a shared roadmap and collaboration architecture across funders, intermediaries, governments, multilateral organizations, and civil society, including through the Cape Town Consensus Charter. That makes it easier to align investments and funding, and avoid fragmentation.
    James Canton
    James Canton
    Deputy Director for Innovation and Public Policy at the Economic and Social Research Council
    Yves Karlen
    Dr. Yves Karlen
    Professor of Secondary Education, University of Zürich
    Embedding evidence within schools
    When evidence becomes part of everyday routines, it stops feeling like an add-on and starts shaping how teachers think, notice, and talk about learning. It is no longer something that is consulted occasionally or required externally, but something that informs everyday professional judgment. In my experience, this often happens through simple, shared practices, such as regularly reflecting on how students approached a task, not just how well they performed.
    Yves Karlen
    Dr. Yves Karlen
    Professor of Secondary Education, University of Zürich
    Clement Abas Apaak
    Dr. Clement Abas Apaak
    Deputy Minister of Education, Ghana
    Embedding evidence inside government systems
    Ghana’s experience with SCALE shows that sustainable education reform does not come from isolated initiatives, but from strengthening the systems that connect evidence, policy, and classroom practice. By embedding credible evidence into government decision-making, from planning and resource allocation to teacher support, we are building a system capable of translating knowledge into better learning outcomes for children.
    Clement Abas Apaak
    Dr. Clement Abas Apaak
    Deputy Minister of Education, Ghana
    Alison Spence Montillet
    Alison Spence Montillet
    English Language Educator & CLIL Practitioner
    Translating evidence for teachers
    As an English as a Second Language teacher working with students aged 6 to 13 in schools in Switzerland, I use the Digital Museum of Learning to support my language‑based teaching. Its stories and resources help me enhance course book material and extend vocabulary. My students love the interactive elements, the certificates, and learning about the lives of children in the past. I used the game “Can you crack the dress code?” in the Fabrics of Identity exhibition to build clothing vocabulary and expand it with adjectives.
    Alison Spence Montillet
    Alison Spence Montillet
    English Language Educator & CLIL Practitioner

    Learning Outreach

    Through our two free digital platforms, the Digital Museum of Learning and BOLD, we make research more approachable without losing sight of its rigor, helping people connect everyday decisions to what the evidence says about how children learn and thrive.

    Learning Outreach
    Illustration of children playing with dandelions
    Digital Museum of Learning artwork
    0
    new BOLD publications
    0
    new interviewees
    0
    new educators signed up
    0
    countries visited Digital Museum of Learning

    The Jacobs Foundation in Figures

    Projects Approved in 2025 by Portfolio

    109m
    Global Evidence Architecture
    17
    Global Research Programs
    31
    West Africa
    20
    Colombia
    34
    Switzerland
    3.8
    Learning Outreach
    3.0
    Charitable Activities
    0.5
    All numbers are rounded to the nearest million.

    Payments for Projects in 2025 by Portfolio

    28m
    Global Evidence Architecture
    1.4
    Global Research Programs
    12
    West Africa
    3.5
    Colombia
    0.1
    Switzerland
    5.5
    Learning Outreach
    4.7
    Charitable Activities
    0.6
    CHF
    0bn
    Cumulative Grants
    CHF
    0m
    Projects approved in 2025
    CHF
    0m
    Payments to projects in 2025

    Read the Interactive Annual Report

    Download the Annual Report

    Annual Report 2025

    Annual Report PDF 2025

    Download Annual Report 2025