Understanding the learning crisis and ways to address it

Title: Why are learning levels so low in poor countries Authors: Amanda Beatty, Lant Pritchett and Justin Sandefur Learning levels in the much of the developing world are extremely low and lag far behind the rich world,... [ view full abstract ]

Title: Why are learning levels so low in poor countries
Authors: Amanda Beatty, Lant Pritchett and Justin Sandefur
Learning levels in the much of the developing world are extremely low and lag far behind the rich world, constituting a “learning crisis.” This paper reviews evidence on the learning crisis by summarizing what has been learned by the recent expansion of pupil assessment data in developing countries, such as community assessments in India, Pakistan, East Africa and Francophone Africa. We construct ‘learning profiles” to show that the slope of learning is very shallow, and the pace of learning in developing-country schools is extremely slow. We also attempt to explain poor countries' poor performance. We focus on three categories of explanation: households or student background characteristics, teachers, and a range of other inputs and incentives that might be implemented while taking the basic structure of the system for granted. We show that the learning crisis is not just a symptom of a broader lack of economic development, but of enormous differences in the quality of school systems. However, even within low-performing systems, a significant share of teachers consistently produce rapid learning gains, providing clues as to how to raise student learning across the board.

Title: Teacher effects in three developing countries Author: Lee Crawfurd There is a learning crisis in developing countries – even children completing primary school are not learning basic skills. This paper contributes to... [ view full abstract ]

Title: Teacher effects in three developing countries
Author: Lee Crawfurd
There is a learning crisis in developing countries – even children completing primary school are not learning basic skills. This paper contributes to the small but growing literature estimating the proportion of differences in learning that is attributable to differences in teacher quality, measured with value-added models of student learning. These value-added models of teacher quality dominate the education reform debate in the US, but the required datasets linking longitudinal student test score data to their individual teacher is rare in developing countries – we count just x datasets for which this is possible. This paper makes use of two datasets that have not been looked at for this purpose – the South Africa National School Effectiveness Survey, and the Young Lives school surveys from Ethiopia and Vietnam.

Title: School resources, school and community level policies, and learning outcomes Author: Paul Glewwe This paper reviews high quality studies in the education and economics literature on school and teacher... [ view full abstract ]

Title: School resources, school and community level policies, and learning outcomes
Author: Paul Glewwe
This paper reviews high quality studies in the education and economics literature on school and teacher characteristics—i.e. teacher content knowledge, learning materials, and school facilities—time in school, and learning outcomes to discuss which of these characteristics seem to have significant positive effects and which seem to have no effect on learning. It also examines evidence from the past 5-10 years on what school or community level policies seem to be effective at increasing student learning, at both the school and community level.

While there is mounting evidence about the state of learning around the world and the depth of the learning crisis, there is less research about the causes of such a crisis. How can it simply be explained by poverty if we know... [ view full abstract ]

While there is mounting evidence about the state of learning around the world and the depth of the learning crisis, there is less research about the causes of such a crisis. How can it simply be explained by poverty if we know that there are pockets of success throughout the developing world? This session stresses the need for high-quality research regarding the reasons for the learning crisis if one is to go about addressing it. The session also highlights the latest research on what measures to date have worked to address low learning levels in various contexts.
Proposed subtheme: In the promotion of sustainable futures, what types of evidence are needed to inform learning?