Education systems around the world are facing an unprecedented crisis, driven by escalating learning needs and chronic under-resourcing. According to UNESCO, meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4 which calls for quality education for all will require the recruitment of 44 million teachers by 2030.

At the same time, global learning outcomes are stagnating with average annual progress in reading at the end of primary school measured at just 0.4%. In response, education technology (EdTech) has emerged as a promising solution, offering innovative, adaptable and scalable tools to meet the diverse needs of learners.

As the sector expands rapidly, the global EdTech market is projected to reach $10 trillion by 2030.

Despite this explosive growth, only a proportion of EdTech innovations are evaluated for their effectiveness. Evaluation data is rarely made public and few EdTech companies conduct randomized controlled trials that are typical in most other industrial sectors to assess impact.

According to the Global Education Monitoring Report, most available research on how EdTech improves learning comes from wealthier countries and even there, evidence remains limited.

In the United Kingdom for example, only 7% of EdTech companies have carried out a randomized controlled trial of their products and only 12% have sought independent certification. This has resulted in a marketplace with many solutions that may fall short of meeting the learning needs of children, especially the most marginalized.

At the Jacobs Foundation, we are committed to ensuring that every child is given the evidence-based learning opportunities they need to thrive.

And it is this commitment to evidence that has informed our approach to technology for education (Tech4Ed): we use innovative and sustainable funding models to invest in enterprises that are committed to advancing their evidence journeys, helping them to scale up and measure their impact on children’s learning.

Driving impact through financial innovation

The Impact-Linked Fund for Education (ILFE), supported by the Jacobs Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, uses a results-based financing model that links disbursements to independently verified social outcomes, such as learners accessing basic education and improvements in learning.

In its first phase, the Fund is supporting 11 EdTech organizations in South Africa, West Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.

Through these tools, the Fund encourages education enterprises to expand access and enhance their impact measurement and management systems.

This is complemented by the Fund’s technical assistance to support organizations in strengthening these systems through a range of activities, from developing theories of change to conducting quasi-experimental studies, establishing baselines for student performance and validating learning measurement tools.

Impact-linked investment in action: Kenya

eKitabu is a Kenya-based enterprise that develops digital learning solutions for students who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. With support from the Impact-Linked Fund for Education for Education, eKitabu is providing a program of educational video content for deaf learners called “Digital Story Time” and hiring teachers who are deaf and fluent in sign language.

The disbursement of eKitabu's impact-linked payment is allocated across two pre-agreed outcomes: increase the number of learners who are deaf who are enrolled in the program; and improve learning outcomes by increasing the average level of sign language literacy of participating students.

By the end of Year 2 of the program, a total of 520 additional students were enrolled across 10 schools, achieving 61% of the three-year enrollment goal.

Moreover, the program delivered an average learning gain of 0.27 in sign language literacy, surpassing the baseline threshold of 0.1 and against the target of 0.32 for Year 3. These outcomes were independently verified by Sattva Consulting that audited 100% of enrollment and literacy data.

A model for sector-wide change

An external evaluation found that the Fund incentivized the adoption and improvement of results-based management practices in EdTech organizations who received funding.

Because of the Fund’s focus on measurable impact and capacity building through technical assistance, participating organizations began aligning their processes more closely with strategic goals, significantly improving their ability to plan, execute and monitor effectively—a process that helped organizations meet outcome targets and in turn led to broader management and operational improvements.

The evaluation also noted the challenges reported by organizations on the difficulty of defining measurement metrics for certain outcomes such as socio-emotional learning which isn’t a learning outcome currently targeted by the Fund. In general, the Fund’s model may also be subject to other challenges with which results-based financing mechanisms must contend.

For example, the reliable verification of outcomes is essential for disbursement in impact-linked finance, but independent, third-party validation can be costly and logistically challenging especially in low-resource settings. More rigorous quasi-experimental or impact evaluations, like randomized controlled trials, that link to financing mechanisms or capacity development for organizational learning may not align with decision timelines, starting too late or take too long.

As global education faces mounting challenges, investing in solutions with limited evidence is no longer viable. Impact-linked financing presents a pragmatic, scalable path to greater equity and effectiveness in Tech4Ed solutions for learning.

By placing measurable outcomes at the heart of funding decisions, we can ensure that every child benefits from its transformative promise.

Jacobs Foundation would like to acknowledge the support of Lucas Tschan, Head of Advisory at iGravity, and Saatva, the independent verifier. The team from Jacobs did not provide any specific language here.