About Partnerships for Tech in Education (P4T-Ed)

The Partnerships for Tech in Education (P4T-Ed) initiative by Innovations for Poverty Action and the Jacobs Foundation, aims to unlock the potential of technology to enhance learning outcomes globally, by fostering a long-term, evidence-based approach in EdTech.

In order to achieve these goals and building on the lessons from IPA’s review of the EdTech evidence landscape, P4T-Ed will pursue the following activities:

1. Strengthening Research and Testing (R&T): Enhancing the capability of approximately 20 EdTech implementing organizations to conduct and utilize R&T for program refinement. Our third call for expressions of interest (EOIs) for R&T partnerships is now closed. We plan to open another round by the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026. Please reach out to p4t@poverty-action.org with any questions.
2. Conducting Impact Evaluations: Undertaking three impact evaluations on promising, policy-relevant interventions in Ghana, Colombia and/or Côte d'Ivoire to provide policymakers and funders with credible evidence and insights on how to enable better evidence generation and use. For more information on the impact evaluations, their selection process, and their timeline, please reach out to us at p4t@poverty-action.org.
3. Synthesizing sector-wide Learnings: Aggregating and disseminating findings to promote a broader understanding and application of effective EdTech practices.

The combination of advisory partnerships and impact evaluations will provide a rich set of learnings that cut across every stage of EdTech providers’ evidence journeys.

If you are a funder interested in leveraging on P4T-Ed or have questions about the initiative, please reach out to us at p4t@poverty-action.org.

Previous Partnerships Under P4T-Ed

Ei Mindspark: Behavioral Interventions for Data-Driven Adaptation in Schools in Southeast Asia 

Ei's personalized adaptive learning platform, Mindspark, is widely used across 10+ states in India as well as in countries like UAE, South Africa, and Mozambique. Mindspark not only offers personalized learning opportunities for students but also generates data that teachers can use to enhance their classroom teaching practices toward adapting teaching. Ei aimed to increase teachers' usage of students' data to make classes more effective. P4T-Ed is supporting them in designing and testing a behavioral intervention to shift teacher behavior toward accessing, understanding, and applying this data to implement adapting learning. 

"Our partnership with IPA has helped us strengthen our research and testing, allowing us to apply behavioural insights to real-world challenges in teacher adoption of Mindspark. Their expertise helped us refine our approach to identify scalable solutions that tap into teacher motivations and motivate teachers to drive long-term teacher engagement. This has been a key step toward building a sustainable, teacher-led model for Mindspark in public schools."

Save the Children: A Data-Driven System to Scale Digital Reading Comprehension 

Save the Children Vietnam, in partnership with Optimal e-Learning Solutions, developed an app aimed at improving reading comprehension among school-aged children in Vietnamese and local ethnic languages. After a promising pilot, Save the Children wanted to figure out how to approach refining, scaling, and commercializing the app. IPA supported them in designing an in-app data system to support key decisions. To design this in-app data system, IPA led a user-centered design process, including persona mapping and identifying the user journey for students, parents, and teachers. Along each user’s journey, key questions were identified that could inform scaling and commercialization decisions, and then metrics were proposed to answer priority questions and inform key decisions. These metrics form the basis of the in-app data to be collected through a system being developed by OES. 

Mentu: Building an A/B Testing System for Rapid Cycles of Learning 

Mentu, a Colombian Innovation Lab, leverages technology to develop AI-enabled solutions that aim to improve public education quality and learning outcomes across Latin America. To strengthen its ability to test and refine Shaia, a web-based AI-powered teacher assistant that provides support to teachers on their daily practices, Mentu collaborated with IPA to build an in-house learning and experimentation system that incorporated rapid A/B testing cycles to drive continuous improvement. 

Through P4T-Ed, IPA supported Mentu in developing a Learning Roadmap sequencing the development of infrastructure and experimentation efforts. This process included designing Shaia's Theory of Change, defining key monitoring indicators, and identifying A/B testing opportunities to enhance cost-effectiveness. Regarding system development, IPA supported Mentu in selecting an A/B testing platform to implement within its technology stack and guided them through their first testing cycle. As part of this effort, IPA supported user research to inform the design of the experiments, helping align the A/B tests with best research practices and the users' contexts and needs. This engagement strengthened Mentu’s capacity to experiment and generate insights, laying foundations that enable them to iteratively refine Shaia and maximize its impact through a learning engineering process. 

Scaling Localized Multiplatform Education Content in Sub-Saharan Africa 

This organization creates localized multiplatform education content that has been proven to improve children’s learning outcomes. As they work to scale their content to over 40 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, they are faced with a need to reconsider their learning approaches as they serve more children across more varied contexts. P4T-Ed is supporting them in developing an organization-level learning agenda to incorporate at-scale learning considerations. Additionally, P4T-Ed and this organization are co-creating a set of principles for a user research and testing strategy that is credible and feasible at large levels of scale while preserving their unique co-creation approach with children. 

Coschool: A Cohesive Impact Narrative for a Latin American EdTech 

Coschool, a leading socioemotional learning EdTech in Colombia, faced a challenge common to many EdTech organizations: defining and measuring early outcomes—key indicators critical for program improvement and scalability. Through a series of participatory workshops, IPA, under its Partnerships for Tech in Education (P4T-Ed) initiative, facilitated the refinement of Coschool’s Theory of Change (ToC), identifying actionable early outcomes to track milestones like knowledge, well-being, and self-efficacy. IPA also guided the development of a tailored Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Plan and a Data Use Plan, enabling Coschool to generate actionable insights and iteratively refine its programs. 

Crack the Code

“Over the past two years, IPA has established itself as a key partner in the impact sector, driving an internal transformation to accurately measure our results. Through our work with IPA, we have laid the foundation for a robust measurement model, refining our theory of change, indicators, and evaluation tools. This process has not only allowed us to test and improve our strategies but also to move toward scalable measurement with a clear hypothesis about the impact we aim to achieve.”

- Aida Sarabia, Co-Founder & COO