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This article provides insights into a decade long process of evidence production and use in support of the Government of Ghana's adoption of the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) program for out-of-school children. A review of existing evidence on the program and our semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders revealed the centrality of the government's culture of evidence-informed policy making. Our findings also highlight the importance of both formal and informal relationships between key stakeholders and the often-neglected significance of civil society in evidence production and uptake, leading to a modification of Hinton et al.'s policy impact framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is commonly regarded as a state responsibility. Non-state provision is, however, increasingly prevalent in many developing countries in response to the inaccessibility and poor quality of state provision. Its unplanned growth has led to proposals for developing ‘public–private partnerships’. However, as a number of the papers in this collection indicate, such partnerships are insufficiently developed in national planning, with potentially adverse consequences for equity. More often, non-state providers are attempting to develop relationships with the state, both to strengthen their own service delivery as well as to put pressure on government to improve the quality of its own provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration between governments and non-state providers of basic services is increasingly a focus of attention by international agencies and national policy makers. The intention of such collaboration is to support common goals for achieving universal provision. Drawing on research in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, the contribution shows that collaboration can be successful where NGOs do not depend on limited sources for their funding, and invest time in building an informal relationship with government officials. In such cases, not only can collaboration strengthen NGO service provision directly, but it also provides opportunities for NGOs to engage in broader policy advocacy through insider influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]