British High Commissioner Josephine Gauld Hosts Closing Event for Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge

Celebrating the results of Africa's largest outcomes-based education programme.

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Freetown, Sierra Leone | 15 January 2026

The British High Commission in Freetown, led by High Commissioner Josephine Gauld, will host the closing event for the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge (SLEIC) on Thursday, 15 January 2026, marking the conclusion of one of Africa’s largest outcomes-based education programmes.

Over three years, the $18 million initiative reached more than 100,000 children across 325 primary schools, using data-driven interventions to improve learning outcomes in some of the country’s most challenging contexts.

SLEIC tested whether paying providers for results rather than activities could deliver measurable improvements in education. According to the independent evaluation, SLEIC schools achieved learning gains stronger than 70% of comparable global programmes. Maths progress was especially striking, improving by 0.280 standard deviations, far above typical effects for large-scale interventions. The programme also helped transform how implementing organisations operate, making them moreadaptive, data-driven, and accountable for results.

The closing event will bring together government officials, development partners, implementing organisations, and donors to celebrate the programme’s achievements, share lessons learned, and discuss how Sierra Leone can sustain and scale these gains.  

Emily Gogra, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, said, “SLEIC has made a remarkable impact across Sierra Leone through its five grantees, driving meaningful change at the school, community, and leadership levels. School leaders are now embracing responsibility and ownership, teachers’ practices have evolved through targeted training, and communities are taking pride in their local schools. Classroom methods are more engaging and interactive, making learning fun, and we are already seeing clear learning gains, with SLEIC-supported schools outperforming others. Overall, the transformation has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Josephine Gauld, British High Commissioner for Sierra Leone, said, “We are delighted with the results from the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge – it has shifted the dial on learning outcomes in Sierra Leone, demonstrated a strong model for innovative partnerships between funders and the government, and supported over 100,000 school children – particularly girls – through quality primary education. We look forward to continuing to work with partners to use the learnings from this programme to shape policy and benefit more children in the future.”

Dr. Amel Karboul, CEO of the Education Outcomes Fund, said: “SLEIC has done exactly what we hoped: it has proved that outcomes-based education can deliver real learning gains at national scale, even in one of the toughest contexts. These results are not just numbers; they show that when you pay for what works, and rigorously test different models, children learn more, faster. Sierra Leone is now one of the clearest examples in the world of how to turn bold ideas into better outcomes for children.”