On April 17, the Ministry of Education of Peru, J-PAL LAC and IPA Peru hosted a workshop aimed at presenting to the Ministry’s implementing units how they can collaborate with EduLAB, the innovation lab on education policy established within the Secretariat of Strategic Planning of the Ministry of Education.  

EduLAB identifies areas for improvements in education policy and works with academics to develop low-cost, evidence-based interventions to address them. Interventions designed in the framework of the lab are subsequently rigorously evaluated using administrative data, which significantly lowers the cost of conducting experimental evaluations. J-PAL LAC and IPA Peru have worked with the Ministry of Education of Peru during the past year to establish the lab as an internal unit under the Secretariat of Strategic Planning.

The workshop´s aim is to present EduLAB internally within the Ministry, its objectives, organizational structure and processes, as well as, to communicate to the Ministry’s implementing units how they can collaborate with the lab to design and rigorously evaluate cost effective innovations in their areas of work.The workshop  was opened by Jorge Mesinas, the Secretary of Strategic Planning of the Ministry of Education.  Following this, Juan Manuel Hernández-Agramonte, J-PAL LAC Policy Manager, talked about the importance of innovation and the use and generation of evidence in order to improve the efficacy and efficiency of education policy.

Francisco Gallego, J-PAL LAC Scientific Director, Associate Professor at  Instituto de Economía UC, and a member of the lab’s Scientific Directorate, gave a complete review of existing evidence on effective education interventions, as well as a review of cutting edge research currently being developed.

Fabiola Cáceres, Evaluation Specialist at the Strategic Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, presented  EduLAB’s progress to date in implementing and evaluating cost-effective innovations in education policy. Finally, Daniel Anavitarte, Chief of the Strategic Monitoring and Evaluation Office,l led an open debate and the workshop’s closing.The event gathered together staff at the Ministry’s implementing units, researchers, EduLAB staff, as well as, J-PAL LAC and IPA staff in order to explore opportunities to design innovative interventions education policy. These interventions will be implemented and evaluated under the framework of the lab in the course of 2016.