Views from the Center

Twelve months ago, the world was watching as schools closed across China and millions of students began learning online from their homes. Most of us didn’t think for a moment that just a few weeks later, almost every country in the world would close their schools and the education of more than a billion children would be disrupted. Since then, millions of students have not had any school-based, face-to-face education.

The Learning at Scale research team is seeking current programs that have demonstrated significant impact on learning outcomes and are operating at scale. For this phase of the study, we are looking for two types of programs: 1) programs with demonstrated effectiveness on numeracy outcomes at scale; or 2) programs that are fully implemented by government bodies (not implementing partner led or directed programs) with demonstrated effectiveness in either literacy or numeracy at scale.

Going beyond the effects of COVID, we take a look at five education stories in 2020, from lead poisoning to selective schools, that may turn out to shape policy in the years to come.

The economic consequences of COVID-19 are likely to squeeze household budgets even further and reduce families’ capacity to fund their children’s education, or, in some instances, force them to make other difficult sacrifices (including cutting back on food or other necessities) to afford education.