The Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, SUMMA, was created in 2016 by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to support the Ministries of Education in the region. Currently, SUMMA works collaboratively with the Ministries of Education of 21 countries across the continent.
To achieve its mission, SUMMA has organized itself in a work model that generates:
It is an online platform that SUMMA makes available to school communities, academics, government authorities and the general public, which aims to identify, describe and disseminate successful experiences of educational innovation, promoted and developed in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in other parts of the world.
It is an online tool that synthesizes high quality international and Latin American academic evidence on the effectiveness of educational interventions at school level. It was developed in partnership with the EEF, one of the most important centres in the world in evidence synthesis, in order to be a relevant support for decision makers in public policy, teachers, principals and the educational community as a whole.
It is a platform of educational, social, and economic indicators developed by the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean (KIX LAC). This online tool aims to highlight the educational gaps in the countries that make up KIX LAC, their progress and provide policy alternatives that respond to the identified challenges.
It arises from the urgent need to address the educational gaps exacerbated by the pandemic, which have impacted the loss of learning of thousands of Panamanian students. MEDUCA and SUMMA collaborate with professional and technical resources to advance in the policy of learning recovery for the year 2022.
The project Adapting and Scaling Approaches to Teacher Professional Development on a scale in Honduras 2020-2022 is part of the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange- GPE-KIX initiative promoted by the Global Partnership for Education and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
SUMMA’s evaluation area seeks to rigorously and systematically study the effects and results of educational policies and programmes aimed at improving the quality and equity of the region’s educational systems. From an educational justice perspective, the evaluation area deploys diverse methodological strategies, which are both quantitative and qualitative.
Its objective is to identify innovative solutions to address the main educational gaps in the region. At the same time, it seeks to strengthen and model educational innovation processes in the region, aimed at guaranteeing the right to education and reducing educational inequalities.
The Global Fund for the Development of Pilot and Impact Evaluations was born in 2019 from SUMMA’s collaboration with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) under the initiative “Building a global ecosystem of evidence for teaching improvement”
It is a programme that promotes the improvement of educational quality and equity through deep learning. It seeks to promote collaborative learning within the educational communities, among the schools in the network and with its ecosystem.
Coalition for the Global South: seeks to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4, aimed at ensuring inclusive and quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for everybody.
The project “Strengthening educational leadership skills to improve the resilience of kindergarten and nursery schools, SLEP Gabriela Mistral” is a SUMMA initiative in collaboration with the Local Public Education Service (SLEP) Gabriela Mistral.
Radical collaboration is one of the fundamental principles guiding SUMMA’s work. We believe that by working collaboratively we can greatly amplify our impact. We work closely with Ministries of Education across Latin America and the Caribbean, and with dozens of leading public, private, academic and civil society institutions, locally, regionally and globally.
