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Blog Post
August 01, 2023
There’s a lot out there on how to improve educational outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. On the one hand, one may be tempted to lean into Finnish education scholar Pasi Sahlberg’s critique: “There are so many ‘facts’ now available about how to fix education, that anyone…can easily gravita...
Blog Post
July 30, 2023
In a new paper, we examine the connection between exposure to lead—a dangerous but prevalent neurotoxicant—and children’s learning outcomes. We find that lead poisoning alone could account for more than 20 percent of the learning gap between rich and poor countries. Given the comparative ease of, sa...
Blog Post
July 14, 2023
It’s rare to read an education report that doesn’t mention the learning crisis. As data on low learning levels have emerged in recent years, global education aid has swung its focus sharply toward improving test scores among primary school children. Of course, learning to read is a good thing in its...
Blog Post
July 11, 2023
There is no substitute for an effective teacher. Great teachers make an enormous difference in their students’ learning outcome s: in Ecuador, teachers who had higher quality interactions with their kindergartners improved their language and math skills. Just as importantly, great teachers help stud...
Blog Post
July 11, 2023
Even prior to the pandemic, the educational achievements of Bangladeshi children were below desired levels. The prolonged disengagement from learning during the pandemic raised concerns about learning gaps or even learning loss. But there are limited data on children’s learning status (foundational ...
Blog Post
July 03, 2023
The global debate around high-stakes exams is strongly influenced by research from high-income countries. That research emphasises who gets sorted into the “best” schools. An alternative perspective that hasn’t received enough attention takes exams as artificial bottlenecks that prevent many childre...
Blog Post
July 03, 2023
UNESCO tells us that only one in seven low- and middle-income countries knows how much learning has been lost due to COVID school closures. Where there has been no measurement, simulations of learning loss are beginning to take the place of empirical facts. Yet countries examine millions of kids eac...