About The FLN Hub

To address the global learning crisis at its roots and guided by the vision in its Strategic Plan (2018-2021), Goal 2 “Every child learns”, and Education Strategy (2019-2030), UNICEF’s flagship Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) Initiative aims to increase number of children mastering foundational literacy and numeracy skill by 54 million by 2030.
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For every child to learn, UNICEF maintains a focus on equity and inclusion, focusing on the most marginalized children in- and out-of-school (including children with disabilities, the poorest, ethnic and linguistic minorities and children affected by emergencies).

With this global commitment, UNICEF seeks to drive action and sharpen global, regional and country efforts to improve FLN outcomes. To galvanize this shift, UNICEF works alongside a coalition of partners, drawing on global, regional and country-level expertise, key resources and tools to help guide and expedite implementation of FLN programmes.

In collaboration with The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (MIT-JPAL), Pratham and Delivery Associates, among others, UNICEF brings its unparalleled networks at global and country levels, across public and private sectors which can be leveraged for FLN results; innovative strategies and approaches to achieve results fast and at scale while improving systems for the long term; wide-ranging education and intersectoral expertise and capacity to inform education transformation; and world class advocacy with and for children and young people to force multiply impact.

Delivery Associates is a leading public sector advisory group focused on helping governments and social impact organizations achieve ambitious goals for their residents all over the world.

We do this through DeliverologyⓇ, a public-sector delivery model pioneered by Sir Michael Barber in the UK under Prime Minister Tony Blair’s second government (2001-2005) as a means of helping the state deliver on its promises in health, education, transportation, and security. Since then, we have proven and refined the model by applying and iterating Deliverology in low, middle, and high-income countries across six continents.

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Our leaders have written four seminal books on Deliverology®, which is a system designed specifically to harness the power of implementation to create tangible value in the lives of citizens. Our work centres on core proprietary tools and approaches that we adapt to each partner’s context and needs. For 20 years, across six continents, we have had the privilege of helping governments, international, multilateral and philanthropic organisations around the world plan, implement, and drive progress to improve outcomes for the people they serve. We have experience across the globe in delivering long lasting and meaningful impact in education outcomes, most notably in Pakistan, Brunei, Ethiopia, South Africa, and New South Wales. Throughout our experiences, the core tools and tenets of our model have held true, even as we adapt to the needs of each partnership. This is as much a function of the model itself as it is the iterative, mission-driven, and flexible way in which we work.  

Over time, we’ve expanded and integrated our internal skill sets to make sure we have what it takes to deliver. In addition to our core consultancy team, we have teams dedicated to Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL), data and digital, coaching and capacity building, and strategic and creative communication.

Anchored by a network of more than 250 affiliated professors at universities around the world, J-PAL draws on results from randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
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J-PAL builds partnerships with governments, NGOs, donors, and others to share this knowledge, scale up effective programs, and advance evidence-informed decision-making. J-PAL was launched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 and has regional centers in Africa, Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

The J-PAL Education Sector, led by Karthik Muralidharan (UC San Diego) and Philip Oreopoulos (University of Toronto), supports the generation and use of rigorous, timely, and policy relevant research to answer pressing questions about access to and quality of education around the world. Through this partnership, J-PAL leveraged its extensive database of education research to provide education actors with resources to understand the existing evidence on improving FLN and operationalize and apply the evidence across contexts.

The word “Pratham” means first or primary in several Indian languages. Established in 1995 to provide education to children in the slums of Mumbai, the organization has grown in both scope and scale across the country.
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Pratham has facilitated India’s well-known nation-wide Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in every rural district in India since 2005.  The survey covers a sample of over half a million children across the country, and has spread to many contexts beyond India over the years. For the past two decades and more, Pratham has developed high-impact, low-cost interventions that help children acquire foundational skills like reading and arithmetic.

Pratham's Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach has demonstrated proven impact on children's learning outcomes and is now being adapted to contexts outside India as well.

Through this partnership, Pratham is bringing experiences from India and across the globe, to support the development of resources and partnerships focused on improving Foundational Literacy & Numeracy skills of children world over.