This market assessment of blended financing for the non-state education sector in El Salvador seeks to examine the opportunities and challenges for its expansion through a possible education finance activity. Through discovering key trends that define both the financial and non-state education sectors, an analysis is made of essential gaps and hurdles that impact them. Specifically, this assessment aims to inform the decision to pursue an education finance activity, identify specific areas on which to focus and key stakeholders for co-design partnering in El Salvador.
This assessment was carried out within Catalyze guidelines for mapping the sector through institutional and individual stakeholders and document and data review. In all, 6 non-state providers and 13 individuals from the education and finance sectors were interviewed and other information gained through systematic website review, secondary data analysis and, in some cases, informal conversations by telephone. As stated in the work plan, El Salvador has been on COVID restrictions since March and the economy is slowly opening up, so interviews were successfully conducted through virtual means through Meet and recorded, following a virtual interview protocol. Informal conversations were used for more sensitive topics primarily around finance issues, were not recorded and informants’ names were not registered. In general, participants were pleased to participate, motivated by the topic and excited about possibilities for more attention placed on the non-state education sector.
