Project Overview
As learning partner, Mathematica helped the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education (PSIPSE), a collaborative of funders, to advance its goal of expanding the knowledge base around secondary education globally.
The PSIPSE aimed to catalyze systemic change in secondary education in Africa and Asia, and tasked Mathematica with gathering and disseminating evidence to increase understanding of what works and support evidence-based program development.
- Dubai Cares
- Echidna Giving
- Human Dignity Foundation
- Intel Foundation
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- Mastercard Foundation
- Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education
The universal education movement dramatically increased the number of children attending primary school across the globe, but progress is sorely needed at the secondary level.

To help address these challenges, a group of donors formed the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education (PSIPSE). The collaborative invested in innovation, scale-up, and research around secondary education in eight countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda).
As learning partner to the PSIPSE, Mathematica provided vital strategy support services, including the development of a cross-cutting theory of change for the grant portfolio; creation of a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) framework to capture the measurement needs of all donors and grantees; annual grantee monitoring to track progress on goals; and facilitation of learning exercises to identify the strategy implications of our findings. To advance learning around secondary education, we also engaged in a range of evidence generation and dissemination activities. We conducted a systematic review of the literature around secondary education globally, developed products synthesizing implementation learnings from PSIPSE teacher training and life skills development grants, and wrote a paper summarizing lessons learned from the PSIPSE around donor collaboration. We ensured our findings were shared with varied audiences, developing briefs for policymakers and practitioners and presenting our work in diverse forums.
Finally, we sought to support the PSIPSE’s strong commitment to building learning organizations across Africa and Asia. We provided intensive monitoring & evaluation (M&E) technical assistance to PSIPSE grantees, providing input on program and organizational theories of change, M&E plans and resources needed to execute them, and the technical design of evaluations.
Evidence & Insights From This Project

New Insights to Improve Life Skills Programs for Youth in Africa and Asia
Stakeholders in the field of education are increasingly recognizing that young people need more than academic knowledge and technical skills to succeed in the workplace and lead productive lives.
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