Building capabilities to improve education in the Asia-Pacific

Quality education is critical for supporting individuals to realise their potential and for enabling countries to grow economically and achieve development outcomes. Yet, many countries in the Asia-Pacific region continue to face major challenges in achieving equity and quality in education.

Understanding its strategic importance, quality education underpins all priorities in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) international development policy. These priorities include building effective, accountable states that can sustain their own development, enhancing resilience to external pressures and shocks, connecting partners with Australia and regional architecture, and generating collective action on global challenges that impact the region.

Through well-established regional and bilateral partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, DFAT invests in long-term education initiatives that promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, particularly girls and children with disabilities. Under the international development policy, a new reporting system has been established to ensure these initiatives are creating the greatest impact on children’s learning.

ACER has been contracted by DFAT to manage the Education Analytics, Research and Capability Building (EdARC) program until December 2026. EdARC will provide expert support to DFAT’s diverse education program, comprising over 130 individual projects across the Asia-Pacific.

The EdARC program is designed to improve the quality of evidence and expertise used to inform education policies and programs by DFAT, implementing partners and partner governments in the Asia-Pacific region. A rapid response, research-based Helpdesk and a broad strategic stream of work through EdARC will bolster Australia’s efforts to support partners to improve education access and learning outcomes in the Asia-Pacific region.

Connecting partners with Australian and regional architecture is a key function of DFAT’s education investments. EdARC will enable 2-way learning between Australia and its regional partners, focusing on domestic education policies, systems, and programs.

Capability building opportunities for DFAT staff and partners will occur through on-demand training facilitated by ACER. Based on education themes, these training sessions will be tailored to meet specific or emerging needs, and to support improvement in quality of education investments.

To help generate collective action on issues affecting the region, ACER will continue to work closely with our existing trusted partners in Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, we will draw upon our extensive experience in the education research sector to scan for new evidence, facilitate new opportunities to share knowledge across DFAT’s community of practice and extend our reach to new and non-traditional partnerships.

EdARC builds on the work of the Education Analytics Service (EAS), a 9-year initiative established by DFAT and managed by ACER. The EAS aimed to improve the extent and quality of evidence and expertise used to inform DFAT’s education policy and programs.