From the Executive Director
Despite the many challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, J-PAL Europe has expanded significantly over the past year. Not only have we deepened our commitment to many long-term collaborations and partners, including with the Ministry of National Education in France and our broadened European Social Inclusion Initiative, we have also embarked on novel streams of work that have pushed us to extend our work geographically and thematically.
Researchers in the J-PAL network have now conducted studies in over 21 European countries, with new efforts in climate action, gender, and finance complementing our traditional focus on education and labor markets. We have also seen increasing interest from governments across Europe—especially in southern and eastern Europe—to collaborate on launching new research, applying existing policy insights, and scaling evidence-backed programs.
This growth in our portfolio is reflected in the expansion of our team: Through doubling our core team in 2021, we have welcomed a diverse set of new expertise spanning areas such as humanitarian effectiveness, climate action, administrative data, and program scale-up.
We are inspired by the energy of our growing network of partners and friends, knowing that Europe is a region with ample potential for collaboration and positive change. We look forward to continuing this momentum in 2022 and beyond.
J-PAL Europe Leadership
The Year in Review
Expanded our team
J-PAL Europe doubled our staff in 2021, welcoming native speakers of German, Italian, and Spanish to our Policy and Training teams who provide a wide variety of sectoral and regional expertise.
Catalyzed new research on social inclusion
As part of our growing social inclusion work under the European Social Inclusion Initiative, we funded new research projects in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy that explore the effectiveness of a diverse range of programs to support the integration of migrant and refugee populations, varying from the introduction of digital tools and algorithms to counseling firms on hiring refugees. To support children and youth to reach their full potential, we partnered with BIC to generate valuable lessons on tutoring and parental engagement programs.
Launched the Innovation, Data, and Experiments for Education (IDEE) Initiative in partnership with the French Ministry of Education
IDEE is an eight-year, €7 million project funded by the French National Research Agency that aims to make France a leader in driving at-scale experimental innovations in education. IDEE will also support rigorous research beyond France, developing tools for the research community at large. The project features three key priorities:
- Improving access to administrative data on education to make research simpler, less costly, and more secure.
- Developing and sharing state-of-the-art measurement instruments that are easy to replicate at low cost.
- Anchoring a network of schools, educators, researchers, and the central administration to promote and facilitate the launch of high-quality experimental research.
Kicked off work on humanitarian effectiveness
We launched the first phase of a research and policy initiative on humanitarian action, which is committed to building awareness of the potential for randomized evaluations in humanitarian settings, providing training to potential implementing partners, and developing a research agenda for future years. As part of this, we organized a training on rigorous impact evaluation for humanitarian practitioners to respond to the growing demand for rigorous evidence in the field.
Conducted policy outreach for new research on climate action
To generate new scalable lessons on the topic of climate action under J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative, we partnered with policymakers, private companies, and NGOs across Europe to launch new rigorous evaluations testing approaches to mitigation and pollution reduction. We look forward to engaging this network of national and regional stakeholders to launch new research efforts across Europe in 2022.
Hosted Innovations for Development training with the French Development Agency
As part of a new partnership with the French Development Agency, we hosted a seven-day “summer school” training for policymakers following the recent launch of France’s Fund for Innovation in Development (FID). Delivered in French, the course attracted around fifty representatives of international organizations, governments, research institutions, and NGOs drawn largely from francophone Africa to strengthen local capacity in the design and implementation of rigorous impact evaluations.
The Year Ahead
Expand the European Social Inclusion Initiative
We will continue our efforts to expand the European Social Inclusion Initiative to support research on education, social protection, and social inclusion in Europe.
Strengthen the infrastructure for rigorous education research in France
The Innovation, Data and Experiments in Education Initiative will deliver the first building blocks of infrastructure to support randomized evaluations in the French education system, including a data portal to facilitate use of administrative data in research. We also look forward to incubating and launching several research projects to strengthen the evidence base in education.
Encourage government engagement with randomized evaluations
We will focus on supporting government partners to pilot and test new approaches and to scale these where effective. In doing so, we will continue to refine the models of support we offer to our partners in European governments and beyond.
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