Anticipatory Action (AA) allows the humanitarian system to address humanitarian crises proactively by acting ahead of a predicted shock to prevent or reduce humanitarian impacts. The third iteration of the Grand Bargain (June 2023) sets the scale-up of AA as one of its strategic sub-objectives. In its 2023-26 strategic plan, OCHA commits to ‘facilitate a systemic shift to coherent and embedded anticipatory approaches, including anticipatory action.’ Despite such global calls and political commitments, less than 1% of funding is allocated to precrisis response, and the humanitarian system has yet to systematically integrate anticipatory approaches.

In protracted crisis contexts, where most clusters operate, AA offers opportunities to reduce theimpact of crisis-within-the-crisis. To date, AA has mainly been piloted through certain sectors (e.g. food security), but the learnings and opportunities of improving humanitarian responses through AA must be scaled up and mainstreamed across all sectors including education. Acting ahead of a crisis to ensure continuity of education through AA means lifesaving support can be provided and that schools and educational services can serve as entry points for child protection and other essential services.

To understand how coordinated approaches to AA for education can contribute to more effective and efficient humanitarian responses and improved humanitarian outcomes for children, the Global Education Cluster (GEC) established a Preparedness and Anticipatory Action Task Team in 2023. The Task Team aims to initiate an inter-agency understanding of AA in education for the sector and the role for education clusters to improve their humanitarian responses with coordinated approaches to AA.

This session intends to explore through an interactive format with key humanitarian partners and stakeholders, the opportunities to advance coordinated approaches to AA in the education sector (including inter-sector and nexus coordination), highlight promising practices in AA from selected country education clusters, build on learnings from other clusters and sector partners, and engage collaboratively with key partners to identify opportunities to strengthen coordination for AA.