The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic—and its impact on education budgets and consequences for education systems—underscores the importance of arming policymakers with relevant evidence needed to make informed decisions. That is why CGD’s education program is launching the Partnership for Research on Progress and Resilience in Education (PREPARE), a consortium of research institutions who will work together to produce rigorous evidence on the most important education challenges posed by COVID-19.

A core goal of CGD’s education program is to foster substantive collaborations with research organizations in low- and middle-income countries, and PREPARE is a part of that effort. Under this collaboration, our partners are identifying the most policy-relevant questions and working with local policymakers to ensure that the answers are heard. We can help to ensure that global education discussions benefit from the rigorous analysis and more nuanced, global perspectives that their research will bring.

To begin, PREPARE partners based (initially) in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan and Senegal are focusing on the education challenges created by COVID-19. As schools reopen, policymakers need to work out how to ensure children can re-enrol safely, determine what learning has been lost and how to reverse this, and understand the potentially large differential impacts of the pandemic on girls and vulnerable groups.