Q&A: LEGO Foundation's Halima Begum on 'thinking big' for education

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — LEGO is a children’s toy that’s globally known and loved by many. Less well known is that the corporation that makes and sells LEGOs is 25 percent owned by a foundation — the LEGO Foundation. Perhaps unsurprisingly given its ownership of a business that touts the educational benefits of its toys, the LEGO Foundation focuses on education. This alignment means the foundation, which has grown to be a major player in the global education space, occasionally faces misperceptions that it’s simply trying to sell more LEGO bricks. The foundation does have its own LEGO-oriented take on education — touting the importance of “learning through play.” And it’s recently done something unusual in the foundation world: picking up another foundation’s idea and doubling down on it. Whereas most foundations make their own grants according to their own criteria, and some co-design initiatives together with other foundations, LEGO Foundation’s decision to give an after-the-fact matching grant to the winner of the MacArthur Foundation’s 100& Change challenge was noteworthy for being so uncommon. On the sidelines of the Global Skills & Education Forum, Devex’s President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar spoke with Halima Begum, a vice president of the LEGO Foundation who leads policy and global programs. “We're moving away from single grantmaking investments because we want to invest in partnership with others because we want to change this space.” --— Halima Begum, vice president, policy and global programs, LEGO Foundation The interview, which touches on this matching grant and Begum’s take on official donors and other trends in global education, has been edited for clarity and length. Why did you decide to double the MacArthur Foundation’s $100 million grant to the International Rescue Committee and Sesame Workshop? That’s generated a lot of attention because it’s such an unusual move in philanthropy. We're very excited about this grant. It's about wanting to support others that want to succeed in this space, and thinking big. There's an urgency around [refugee education] now — I think we all feel it, and I think our leadership felt that there was a need to act in this space. But how do we act in this space without duplicating the efforts that are already there and how could we enable others to succeed? I think the McArthur Foundation and International Rescue Committee, they were quite committed to that space by serving Rohingya refugees, so for us it was a no brainer to really double up our investments in a way that was going to make a big difference. More importantly, we wanted to get into this space by highlighting the importance of early childhood education. Which is a big part of the IRC and Sesame Workshop program. Because we feel as though there is not enough attention on early childhood education in the humanitarian space. So there is a big advocacy agenda behind this. We really, really, really hope that others will follow suit. We're very excited about that. Most foundations prefer to create their own thing, so this feels like you’ve got an agenda around collaboration that's a little bit unique. What is the importance of a collaboration agenda as a foundation like yours that’s focused on education? Our goal in the foundation is to systematically reach children with learning through play. The key to that is being systematic. Now, if you want to make a systemic change on a national system or on a global level, you're not going to do that alone, so collaborative philanthropy is quite a big part of making that change and that change has to be big enough to make a difference in children's lives. As you know the discourse at the moment in international education is that we're not doing enough, that we need to do more — children are really missing out. But to really get that change, I think foundations need to lift up and work collaboratively with others. Otherwise all of our efforts will end up with islands of excellence but really not making that difference that we want to see. You spent a lot of your career at the U.K. Department for International Development and the World Bank. What do the major official donors need to do differently? The official donors tend to work on large scale systems. They got that piece right about 15 years ago. Official large donors can move at a pace that national governments allow them, so I think they're also looking at new and innovative ways to move the national system. Because of the innovation that we have, which comes from our company’s DNA, we're able to move in an agile way that perhaps large donors can't as much. So they're very keen on working with the private sector. Not necessarily to privatize the market so to speak, but to get innovation in the public sector because we know that innovation isn't happening fast enough. And those big donors are key if you want to get away from islands of excellence, to influence the national education systems? They have a certain legitimacy to go in and work in these national education spaces as does the U.N. and the multilateral agencies. But they are restricted in a way, because working in a large system the innovation doesn't follow, so they're quite keen on bringing the innovation from the private sector to improve the public system. It feels quite interesting being in a philanthropy now because we are more agile, we are able to take the risk. That’s why we went behind the MacArthur Foundation and their $100 million investment. It might be that we can introduce innovation in a system with others so that the large donors can also double their efforts because they actually have access to larger streams of funding. You're big for a foundation in the education space. What is your annual budget? Well, we tend to invest about $70-$80 million. But with the MacArthur grant that has gone up to $170 million. It's about the crowding-in international education financing and expertise. I think the international donor space is responsive, is moving, it's just that all of us understand that there is an urgency to move faster and do things differently. The [Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation is really kind of looking into this space and thinking quite hard about how they can make an impact in global education in the way that perhaps they did on global health about 15 years ago. All of us in the international education space are wondering how can we learn from the health sector, while still recognizing that education is complex and that it is not a vaccination that we need to fix things. I appreciate that there is a lot of soul searching going on among the international education networks around how we support national systems to do better because the world doesn't stop, children need to learn. Gates may become a big player, they're looking at it closely. You’ve got, of course the Global Partnership for Education, you’ve got the International Finance Facility for Education, a kind of a multilateral development finance approach. When you look at the global architecture for education financing, are we set up right for this challenge that we have today? The global architecture is set up in a way to influence large scale systems. I think they've always recognized that they would need some agility to push for reform in a way that makes a difference. It's set up to focus around international financing, which is important and necessary, but what happens down at the systems level? If you look at pedagogues and innovations in the way teachers train and teach and assess, that piece seems to be missing at the moment. All those efforts are focused on international financing, and resourcing is important but it's not the only answer. We’ve got to get the systems piece right in terms of what works and how teachers and leaders can be supported in schools, as well as looking at the resource envelope. They've done a really great job in crowding in international financing, but perhaps it feels a bit crowded at the moment. How can we leverage the work of the education commission and the new international education facility with the Global Partnership for Education, with the World Bank? The focus of the LEGO Foundation is not just thinking about literacy and numeracy as the only outcome. I guess with the international education architecture so focused on finance, that could lead us to just paying attention to literacy and numeracy as the only outcome metrics. Why would that be a mistake? The international community and national governments are focused on literacy and numeracy, and we think that's brilliant. However, we do understand that the world is changing, and with technology disrupting every sphere of society, children will need holistic skills in order to prepare for the future. It strikes me as quite odd that we don't have an agenda to enable children to learn holistic skills in the ways that we teach holistic skills to children in rich world economies. Children in sub-Saharan Africa are also facing the same future. There is a demographic dividend ahead of us. The current SDG 4 doesn't really include holistic skills in its focus. We're really keen on seeing children learn their breadth of skills alongside literacy and numeracy, and in fact we do feel that if children were focusing on building their problem solving skills, their collaboration skills, their curiosity, their imagination, they would absolutely excel in literacy, numeracy, and science learning. If you look back on the education agenda there was a time where it was focused on getting kids in school. There was success there but many weren't learning. Now the focus is learning outcomes. You're saying we need a bigger definition of those outcomes — that we're going to be obsolete if we don't have a more future-oriented agenda, is that right? I don't think we should see it as a tradeoff, that we need to get bums in seats first and then the learning will come later. We've learned our lessons there. If we know that learning is as important as access, we should probably acknowledge that learning holistic skills is as important to learning as literacy and numeracy. Does it feel backward? I wouldn't necessarily say it's a backward agenda. It needs to be an inclusive agenda, one that's actually thinking about preparing children for the future. I mean, is it the case that children just need content based knowledge and don't need to apply that knowledge in the real world context? Most children living in local contexts, whatever those contexts might be, need to apply their knowledge. It's not just the case that every child has access to Google apps and would be able to look up what it is that they need. Every child needs to make sense of knowledge in their own context and you need to apply those skills in a way that's relevant to their societies, whichever societies they're coming from. It's fundamentally important that children, whether they're living in Silicon Alley or Silicon Valley, they actually have access to those skills in the ways that we would want our children in western economies to benefit. For people at other foundations or other development agencies or other NGOs, is there a model of partnership with LEGO Foundation if they want to work with you? What kinds of partners are you looking for? We're moving away from single grantmaking investments because we want to invest in partnership with others because we want to change this space. We have a strategic framework around our organization’s goal, which is to systematically reach children in areas where we feel we can make a difference and amplify that change in an education system. This is why the Varkey Foundation is really interesting for us, because they are investing heavily in systems change and want to see foundations coming together to make a difference. We are keen to work with partners who have that big vision and want to make that change at a level that you can't do alone by a single grant. Anyone who is willing to invest with us in a large way as an investor working with grants that are implementing on the ground would be a useful way forward. I'd encourage others to connect with us and this is part of my job here at the moment, trying to find out those visionary investors that are keen on making that systemic change.