**Terms of Reference (ToR)**

**Distilling Lesson Study: Understanding Violation of Right to Education & Inclusion and Strategies adopted by national education coalitions**

**Asia-Pacific Regional Management Unit, Education Out Loud**

1. **Background**

**1.1 About Education Out Loud**

[Education Out Loud](http://www.educationoutloud.org) (EOL) is largest global advocacy and social accountability fund of the [Global Partnership for Education](https://www.globalpartnership.org/)’s (GPE) which was launched in 2020. This fund is Managed by Oxfam Denmark globally to ensure organizations are supported to work toward the goal of EOL. EOL is committed to support civil society organizations to become active and influential in shaping education policy, strengthen transparency and accountability in national education policy processes, and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.The EOL program has three specific objectives:

**Objective 1:** Strengthen national civil society engagement in inclusive and gender responsive education policy development, implementation, and monitoring.

**Objective 2:** Strengthen civil society roles in promoting the transparency and accountability of national education sector policy and implementation.

**Objective 3:** Create an enabling transnational environment for civil society policy advocacy and transparency efforts in education.

In practice, EOL operates through three operational components: - Operational Component 1 (OC1): Supporting national education coalitions to engage in policy dialogue and promote transparency and accountability; Operational Component 2 (OC2): Strengthening civil society organisations’ ability to undertake strategic, evidence-based policy advocacy; Operational Component 3 (OC3): Supporting transnational civil society alliances to carry out cross-country advocacy and policy influencing. Under these operational components, over 80 organizations are supported in over 60 countries in Asia & Pacific, Africa and Latin Ameria; these organizations include National Education Coalitions, National Civil Society Organizations, Transnational Alliances. The EOL is managed through 4 regional management units (Asia& Pacific, Eastern Africa, Western Africa and Latin America) by Oxfam Denmark.

**1.2 What is a national education coalition in Asia and Pacific?**

National Education Coalitions (NECs) are membership-based coalition of civil society organisations that leads and work in policy influencing transparency and accountability in education in respective countries. The nature and types of membership vary from country to country, but often include national CSOs working in education sector at local or national level, Teachers’ Unions, Student organisations, organizations working on the issue of inclusive education, disabled children, youth, etc. Each NEC run through a small secretariat that work through its board and members to engage with government, policy makers, and other stakeholders for engaging in policy dialogue and processes, collecting evidence, monitoring education plan implementation, identifying gaps and learning to inform and support national and provincial governments. All NECs are members of the [Global Campaign for Education](https://campaignforeducation.org/en/) and [Asia South Pacific Association for Basic Education (ASPBAE)](https://www.aspbae.org/).

In Asia and Pacific Region, EOL has supported NECs in 18 countries with the focus of supporting national education coalitions to engage in policy dialogue, promote transparency and accountability. In last 6 years, national education coalitions in Asia region have engaged, influenced, advocated with national & federal government on variety of education policy issues, mainly access to education for marginalized children (girls and disabled), increased budget and expenditure for education, gender responsive education policies and plan, Education for disabled children, teacher education, climate education, mother tongue based education, etc. The key approaches used by NECs are evidence generation through community, public events and program, campaigns and dialogues, meetings with govt and building awareness amongst community and local organizations through training and events.

One of the key mandates of national education coalition and other national organizations (operational under component 2) have been to identify, track and monitor right to education violations in the country to ensure rights are ensured. As per reports, NECs have been active and adopted various approaches to identify these cases and working to ensure the rights of children are fulfilled by the government and duty bearers.

**2. Scope of Work**

The earlier documentations undertaken by Global learning partners of EOL have acknowledged role of NECs in identifying cases of violation in the region and provide a broad and generic understanding of the issue as well as lessons that can support other organizations. Therefore, it is of strategic importance to understand regional specification and lessons supported by specific examples and strategies to provide more holistic and deep learning on the issue. This becomes important because NECs and organizations have deployed diverse strategies to identify, collect, monitor and voicing to ensure fulfillment of right to education which should be further understood better to support their work and future strategies. In this context, EOL (Asia and Pacific region management unit) would like to commission a qualitative distilling lesson study (desk review + primary sources) with an aim to draw in-depth analysis of case of violation for drawing evidence, gathering knowledge and drafting lessons/principles guided by human rights framework. Furthermore, this study expects to understand and identify utilization of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) framework by NECs in their organization along with their policy work.

The distilling learning process and framing of study will be inspired by following key **learning questions:**

- *What is the nature of violation of right to education in the region and which rights are addressed by NECs and how effectively NECs have responded to violations of the right to education?*
- *Which coalition-led strategies have been proven effective in addressing and sustaining education rights under restrictive or resource-constrained contexts?*
- *What strategies and approaches demonstrate potential for upscaling or considered as best practices, and under what enabling conditions?*
- *How are NECs institutionalising GESI approach in both organizational systems (governance, membership, practices) and external policy advocacy processes?*

**3. Proposed Design and Approach**

The potential research- learning partner/ organizations is expected to develop a robust qualitative analytical design for distilling lessons considering above questions and below mentioned stated focus of the proposed study.

**Focus Area 1: Protecting the Right to Education**

Civil society organisations across Asia-Pacific operate in diverse contexts that are shaped by conflict, political instability, systemic discrimination, climate shocks, and shrinking civic space where children right to education are denied frequently. These conditions have resulted in violations of the right to education in the form of school closures, forced dropouts, child marriage, poor school conditions, quality of education, child abuse, out of schools, etc. . These violations exist because of weak system commitment along with deep rooted socio-culture milieu. Despite these challenges, NECs have been working with local and national governments along with local community to identify, report, monitor and address these issues using various approaches and actions and have been successful in ensuring right to education for children. Some of the example basis analysis of NECs monitoring report indicates following:

- Afghanistan: Advocacy against child marriage and for continued schooling for girls.
- Pakistan: Documentation of exclusion of minority communities and advocacy for out-of-school girls.
- Bangladesh: Advocacy for ethnic minorities and displaced/refugee children, including Rohingya.
- Nepal: Work on Dalit and disability learners denied equal access.
- Cambodia and Mongolia: Highlighting neglect of indigenous learners and juveniles in detention and mother tongue based education.
- Philippines: Efforts to defend civic space and ensure civil society participation in education planning and budgeting and education for minority children.

By analysing these practical tools and approach used by NECs, the study will highlight how NECs have identified, prioritized, developed and operationalized strategies for advacning the right to education across policy, implementation, and accountability levels in their context and this will eventually offer testedl lessons for peer coalitions in the region.

**Focus Area 2: Learning to Include – Institutionalising Inclusion in Organization and Policies**

While inclusion is central to EOL’s mandate, global studies have focused mainly on sensitive identity-based advocacy or broad indices. Less is known about how NECs in Asia-Pacific are institutionalizing GESI both internally (organizational systems) and externally (policy engagement and reform processes) in their advocacy approach and for education sector reforms. Hence, the study is required to explore and collect lessons around:

- *Organisational inclusion*: representation, governance, membership, decision-making power, internal systems and HR practices that foster or hinder inclusion.
- *Sectoral inclusion*:, school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), disability inclusion, re-entry policies for out-of-school children (especially girls), and equity-focused reforms, youth engagement, and issues affecting minority and indigenous communities.

Examples include:

- Philippines (CYAN): Youth-led monitoring linked with advocacy on inclusive curricula and accountability.
- Nepal: Advocacy for disability-inclusive policies and re-entry campaigns for girls.
- Cambodia: Coalition initiatives to ensure marginalised community voices are represented in reforms.

By documenting these practices, the study will provide NECs with practical models for embedding inclusion in both organisational and thematic advocacy, complementing but not duplicating global studies.

**Key Data Source:** The study will be largely based on review and analysis of \*\*EOL-\*\*Bi-annual narrative reports submitted by NECs between the period of January 2024-June 2026. Other sources to support this distilling exercise will be relevant publications developed by NECs. The insights and analysis generated through desk review need to be supported by FGD/ Key informant interviews (virtually) with identified NECs to deepen and validate analysis.

**Relevance and dissemination:** The objectives of proposed study are closely aligned with the EOL Learning Framework, ensuring that regional learning contributes uniquely to global knowledge while being directly relevant to NECs. The study findings will support NECs in reflecting on best practices and gaps in their approach to right to education; and ensuring that those are further strengthened. The lesson learnt will support other NECs to reflect on their work through concrete, context-specific examples from other contexts. The findings of the lesson learnt will be shared with all NECs in the region for its further uptake and reflection.

**4. Key Processes and Actions**

It is expected that identified learning partner/consultant will be required to undertake rigorous and scientific processes through synthesis and lesson extraction to distill lesson on context specific cases and approaches. Some of proposed key processes will be as follows:

1. Ensure distilling lesson study follows a strong and scientific framing and methodology
2. Design relevant tools and framing for analysis and interviews with NECs
3. Review and analysis 4 sets of EOL monitoring reports submitted by 18 NECs and 5 national organizations and, global partner studies (1),
4. Analysis relevant global research to ensure complementarity and highlighting AP-specific contributions.
5. Conduct discussion +interview/FGDs with select NECs (minimum 7-8) to support analysis and lesson generated. These responses could be from diverse contexts (fragile, climate-vulnerable, politically restricted, etc.) included.
6. Develop a succent narrative report rooted in framing which provides concrete lessons /examples along with executive summary.
7. Develop two practice-oriented products (e.g., actionable guidance, framework, or model) tailored for NECs application that support them in taking actions in their context.

**5. Expected Deliverables**

1. Final design of Study/research (framing, refined research questions, methodology, tools, etc)
2. A detailed workplan with timeline
3. First Draft of the report – structured as per focus areas
4. Final report – integrating feedback from AP RMU, Global Management Unit (GMU), and NEC peer review.
5. Two short briefs / product (one per objective) tailored for NEC usages
6. A presentation deck
7. Presentation of final report to NECs and EOL-RMU/others (virtual format)

**6. Timeline**

June 2026- December 2026

**7. Payment schedule**

The payment plan for the assignment will be structured as follows:

1. 25% of signing the contract.
2. 50% after delivery of draft report of the study
3. 25% on completion of the assignment (all deliverables)

**8. Management and supervision of the assignment**

The Regional Management Unit (RMU) in Asia Pacific will manage and provide necessary guidance to the assignment with regular guidance from the Regional Education and MEL Advisor. Periodic meetings will be held with the learning partner to understand emerging trends, progress and provide feedback.

**9. Qualification and Experience of Applicant**

The assignment may be undertaken by an individual or a team or an organization. The ideal research/learning partner will have:

- Proven expertise in conducting educational research, documentation, analytical work focussing on education policy, gender and inclusion, policy advocacy, civil society
- Having background and knowledge about inclusion, rights-based approaches, global education debates (Human rights for Education, Education in Emergencies, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, accountability).
- Having experience of working or engaging with civil society actors working with education system; experience in Asia-Pacific region is desirable
- Demonstrated capacity to facilitate consultations, discussion with civil society actors in diverse contexts.
- Excellent research, documentation, analysis and writing skills, with ability to draft practice-oriented outputs.

*Read more about EOL here:* [*https://www.educationoutloud.org/who-we-are/purpose-and-how-we-work*](https://www.educationoutloud.org/who-we-are/purpose-and-how-we-work)