Islamabad, APR 23 /DNA/ – The Citizens Foundation (TCF) and the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) signed an MoU to collaborate to expand research in education delivery and service in Pakistan.

Under the agreement, IDEAS will offer its expertise for multi-disciplinary empirical research and evidence-based programme design; and an international network of research fellows, to help TCF achieve goals of improving the quality of and access to education in over 1600 schools across Pakistan, with a particular focus on early childhood development, teacher pedagogy and mother-tongue based multilingual education.

While speaking at the occasion, TCF’s President and CEO, Syed Asaad Ayub Ahmad commented, “At TCF, we constantly strive to improve the quality of education imparted at TCF Schools across the country. We invest in education research that informs policies and affects how our principals lead, our teachers teach, and students learn. We are excited to collaborate with IDEAS to expand our efforts for research-informed programme design within the TCF system.”

IDEAS’ CEO and Fellow, Dr. Rabea Malik said, “The goal of this collaboration is to generate rigorous and objective evidence on what works to improve access and quality of services for low-income communities; evidence that has relevance for TCF’s organizational development as well as the broader discourse on policy and development. It is grounded in a mutual recognition of the need for an empirical approach to understanding and improving processes of service delivery and outcomes of the larger human development project. We at IDEAS look forward to working with TCF to strengthen a culture of evidence-driven implementation.”

TCF intends to develop an ethos and culture of a learning organisation with an empirical approach to programme development at all levels, course correction through engagement with data at the programmatic and organisational level, and generation of evidence that contributes to a global knowledge base of best practices in addition to supporting internal organisational learning. The goals of this collaboration are also in line with the core mission for IDEAS of knowledge generation on key questions of service delivery, institutional reform, and economic and human development.