Gender Equality and Inclusive Education: How GPE 2025 Is Informing the Vision for GPE 2030

Over the past five years, gender equality has been a central priority for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Guided by the GPE 2025 strategic plan, the partnership worked to ensure that gender considerations were embedded across every stage of education system development—from planning and policy discussions to financing and implementation.

Rather than treating gender as a separate issue, GPE 2025 emphasized integrating gender equality into the broader effort to strengthen national education systems. The goal was to ensure that programs supported by GPE funding improved equality in access to education, experiences within schools, and long-term outcomes for learners.

To support this approach, partner countries were encouraged to rely on sex-disaggregated data when analyzing education challenges and to incorporate gender priorities into partnership compacts and funding proposals. This helped ensure that gender issues were addressed directly when designing education reforms and programs.

Shifting the Conversation Toward Gender-Responsive Education Systems

An independent rapid review highlighted clear progress in how partner countries approached gender within education policy discussions.

In many cases, governments began using gender analysis more systematically to identify structural barriers in their education systems. Conversations increasingly moved beyond simple enrollment gaps and started addressing deeper challenges such as:

• School-related gender-based violence

• Harmful gender norms affecting participation and learning

• Unequal distribution of teachers and leadership roles

• Limited availability of gender-responsive education data

Targeted financing also played an important role. Through the Girls’ Education Accelerator, countries were encouraged to develop more concrete strategies for reaching girls who face the greatest barriers to schooling. This includes girls affected by poverty, disability, displacement, or living in fragile and conflict-affected areas.

Ethiopia’s Efforts to Expand Inclusive Education

Ethiopia provides a clear example of how GPE support has helped strengthen equity-focused education initiatives.

Under the GPE 2025 framework, Ethiopia has been working alongside GPE and other development partners to improve learning outcomes by prioritizing inclusion. One major step has been the expansion of Inclusive Education Resource Centers, which now support around 1,400 cluster schools. With additional financing from GPE grants, the country plans to establish 600 more centers.

Special attention is being given to girls with disabilities, who often face higher risks of exclusion and gender-based violence in school environments. To address this, the program includes prevention measures, improved response systems, and community outreach initiatives designed to identify and enroll children who are out of school or at risk of dropping out.

Teachers and school leaders are also receiving support to adopt inclusive teaching methods. In rural areas, female teachers are being encouraged to take on leadership roles through specialized training programs that strengthen both pedagogical and management skills.

GPE 2030: Expanding the Focus with an Intersectional Approach

Building on the lessons learned from GPE 2025, the new GPE 2030 strategic plan introduces a stronger emphasis on intersectionality.

This means recognizing that gender inequality often overlaps with other forms of disadvantage, such as disability, refugee status, geographic isolation, poverty, and climate vulnerability. These combined factors can significantly influence which learners are excluded from education and why.

Under GPE 2030, countries will be supported in conducting context-specific analyses to better understand these overlapping challenges. The aim is to design education reforms that respond to the real conditions students face rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions.

Another key shift is a stronger focus on measurable results. Monitoring frameworks will place greater emphasis on outcomes experienced directly by learners and teachers—such as improvements in learning, greater gender equality, and increased inclusion—alongside broader system reforms.

Strengthening Inclusion for Learners with Disabilities

Experience from GPE 2025 demonstrated that integrating gender equality into education system reform can improve planning, strengthen policy dialogue, and lead to better program design. However, it also highlighted areas where further progress is needed, particularly in strengthening capacity, improving data systems, and ensuring accountability at local levels.

GPE 2030 aims to address these gaps by focusing more closely on how gender equality and inclusion are implemented in practice. This includes renewed efforts to ensure that both girls and boys with disabilities are fully included within national education systems.

By prioritizing intersectionality and results-based approaches, the new strategy seeks to help partner countries build equitable, inclusive, and resilient education systems that respond to the needs of the learners most at risk of being left behind.

Looking Ahead

As part of GPE’s fifth financing campaign, gender equality and inclusion remain central to achieving meaningful, system-wide improvements in education. By building on the progress made under GPE 2025 and expanding the focus through GPE 2030, the partnership aims to ensure that education investments lead to lasting and equitable outcomes for all learners.