Learning from the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge: What SLEIC Has Taught Us About Outcomes Contracts in Education

Outcomes contracts are increasingly promoted as a way to improve impact, accountability and value for money in education, yet evidence on how they work in practice remains limited. This report synthesises Save the Children’s learning from participating in the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge (SLEIC), the organisation’s first outcomes‑based contract in education. Drawing on programme experience and independent evaluations, it finds that SLEIC contributed to improved learning outcomes—particularly in mathematics—and encouraged more outcome‑focused mindsets, greater flexibility and stronger accountability within programme teams. It also generated high‑quality, credible evidence on impact. However, gains in data‑driven performance management were only partial, peer learning was limited, cost‑effectiveness was lower than comparable education programmes, and there is little evidence of large‑scale system change or sustained scale‑up to date. Overall, the findings suggest that outcomes contracts can support stronger delivery and learning, but they require trust, timely data, realistic targets and early attention to sustainability to achieve their full potential.