Building Evidence in Education

What is BE²

Building Evidence in Education (BE²) is a global working group, launched in 2012, aimed at enhancing evidence generation and use to improve education outcomes. It has over 40 members including bilateral donors, multilateral agencies, philanthropic organizations, and global and regional networks with a focus on education evidence, research, and use.

BE² provides a platform for education evidence-related collaboration, guidance and tool development, and reciprocal knowledge exchange among researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

Mission

BE² fosters collaboration and coordination to advance the quality and relevance of evidence in education. It promotes the accessibility and use of research that supports decision-making to improve education outcomes.

BE² strengthens the generation, quality, and uptake of evidence by:

Advancing thought leadership on research and evidence generation approaches and use
Achieving member alignment through co-creation and dissemination of high-value, user friendly public goods, including guidance notes
Strengthening membership, engagement, knowledge sharing and collaboration on evidence generation and its use
Promoting evidence uptake and evidence-based policies and practices.

Governance

BE² is led by a Steering Committee that is composed of the UK government Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the World Bank, a United Nations (UN) representative agency (currently, UNESCO) and a foundation (currently represented by Porticus Foundation).

Key Activities:

Support for SIGs (with a description of SIGs)
Annual member meetings
Publication of high-quality guidance notes and working papers
Trainings, convenings and collaborations on research.

BE² Publications:

Guidance Note on Using Implementation Research in Education

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance and support to the implementers of education interventions, partner governments, and funders of education reform as they consider research priorities and learning agendas to achieve SDG 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Although many interventions aiming to improve quality, inclusion, and equity in education have been tested around the world, it is not always clear from the existing research base why they work, for whom they work, and what are the defining contextual circumstances under which they work. Further, even though there is an increasingly robust body of evidence on ‘what works’, taking interventions to scale through government systems often requires multiple iterations to achieve fidelity and a full understanding of the wider ecosystem.

Assessing the Strength of Evidence in the Education Sector

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on the generation and use of rigorous evidence to inform program design and policymaking. The objective of this document is to base decisions on ‘what we know’ rather than on conjecture and, in doing so, achieve the best value for each pound/dollar spent and enhance the success and impact of policies and programs. Increasingly, donor agencies and other organizations are commissioning quality research that rests on strong principles of research methodology using different types of data. Significant effort has also gone into identifying ‘quality’ research evidence – aiming to test assumptions, answer specific questions or test out hypotheses – which can then be relied upon to be rigorous and substantive whilst also being objective and easily available.

Guidance Note on Qualitative Research in Education

In recent years, the increased attention from both the international community and national actors to solve the global learning crisis has been matched by a greater demand for research. This demand has led to a wealth of studies that seek to understand “what works” in improving learning outcomes. Qualitative research has been particularly important to shed light on “why,” and under what circumstances, interventions or policies succeed or fail. But, with increased resources for research comes the responsibility to ensure the research is of the highest quality, a “gold standard.” To this end, this guidance note covers how to design and operationalize high-quality research using qualitative methods.

Guidance Note on Cost Measurement

While the field of international education has made great strides in recent years with raising the number and the quality of impact evaluations, their results are incomplete without cost data for these interventions. Policymakers and donors cannot make fully informed decisions about the best way to invest limited resources without information about the costs of achieving desired outputs and outcomes through different interventions or delivery strategies. Evidence on cost of interventions is also critical for making responsible decisions about scaling and sustaining programs within country systems. However, differences in donor and national reporting systems currently hamper collection and analysis of cost data. Thus, opportunities for policy decision making that include cost information are often missed by national governments and international funders. This guidance note addresses this gap by introducing a common framework for collecting, analyzing, and using cost information across the global donor-supported education portfolio.

Generating Evidence in Education: Impact Evaluations

Strong evidence is of central importance in informing policy and programming decisions across all agencies and organizations working with education systems in developing countries. Robust research and evaluation generate the evidence required to form judgments, deliberate options and make intelligent decisions about how to spend scarce financial resources. It is therefore vital that the evidence generated is based on the best available research derived from both observation and experimentation. Investments in what works in education are urgently needed. Programs taken to scale should be based on rigorous evidence. This guidance note provides an introduction to the importance of sound research to inform education policy, the ways in which to design impact evaluations and issues to consider when generating them.

Compendium of Education Systems Diagnostic Tools

This compendium of education systems diagnostic tools was compiled by BE² to allow governments, education funders and implementers to get an understanding of available tools and approaches funded and/or developed by BE² members.

Implications of COVID-19 for Educational Research

This thematic synthesis paper on Implications of COVID-19 for Educational Research: Strengthening research capacity and partnerships for mutual learning draws on discussions on this topic during the annual meeting of the Building Evidence in Education (BE²) working group, hosted online by UNESCO on 5-7 October 2020.

What does the evidence about “evidence uptake” in education tell us

The report highlights BE²’s leadership in advancing how evidence is generated, shared, and used in education. It emphasizes shifting from producing research to strengthening the demand side of evidence use, fostering locally grounded, collaborative, and system-wide approaches that link research, policy, and practice.

For more details on BE² publications, please visit the BE ² website.

BE² Specials Interest Groups (SIGs)

These groups meet and discuss key topic areas, they include:

Climate Smart Education Systems (CSES)
Early Childhood Development (ECD)
Education in Emergencies (EiE)
Higher Education (HE)
Knowledge Systems Strengthening (KSS)
Learning Variability (LV)
Teacher Professional Development (TPD)

BE² Member Organizations

* Until recently, USAID also was a member

Last Updated: Oct 20, 2025

Building Evidence in Education

What is BE2

Mission

Governance

Key Activities:

BE2 Publications:

BE2 Specials Interest Groups (SIGs)

BE2 Member Organizations

RELATED

What is BE²

BE² Publications:

BE² Specials Interest Groups (SIGs)

BE² Member Organizations