Schooling is not Education

For the last ten years, the major focus of the global education community has been on getting children into school. And that effort has been a success: most of the world’s children live in countries on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary completion by 2015.

But behind that progress is a problem—one that grows with each additional child that walks through the classroom door. Some children in those classes are learning nothing. Many more are learning a small fraction of the syllabus. They complete primary school unable to read a paragraph, or do simple addition, or tell the time. They are hopelessly ill-equipped for secondary education or almost any formal employment. The crisis of learning is both deep and widespread. It is a crisis for children, too many of whom leave school believing they are failures. And it is a crisis for their communities and countries, because economic analysis suggests it is what workers know—not their time in school—that makes them more productive and their economies more prosperous.

School systems in many developing countries are chronically underfunded. Many are filled with undernourished children of illiterate parents and staffed by poorly trained teachers who lack mastery of the subjects they teach. But the crisis of learning is about far more than funding, training, or the socioeconomic status of students. It is about education ministries that have measured success on inputs such as budget, student numbers, teachers, and schools rather than outcomes such as students who can read. It is about parents and parliamentarians who demand schooling and simply assume learning will result.

Fixing the learning crisis will take systemic reform stretching beyond the education sector. It will take teachers, headmasters, and education officials with the mandate to focus on learning. And it will take those officials being held accountable for learning outcomes by informed stakeholders including parents, parliamentarians, and employers.

Assessment regimes are a central part of this reform effort. They can provide evidence on the scale of the learning crisis as a lever for reform. They can track progress on improvements and provide the evidence base for what works. They empower parents to demand better outcomes—or move their kids to where they can find them.

This report of the CGD Study Group on Measuring Learning Outcomes suggests that implementing assessment regimes that allow stakeholders to compare across schools, districts, and countries would cost a small fraction of current education budgets. It calls for international support for national assessment efforts including financial and technical assistance.

The Study Group includes funders, education experts, former education ministers, and pioneers of independent learning assessment in the developing world. The group’s work builds on CGD’s sustained engagement in education, including research on a Millennium Learning Goal, aid effectiveness in the sector, and a focus on educational inclusion for girls, in particular those from minority groups.

The report is being released as discussions about what should replace the Millennium Development Goals are highlighting education quality as an issue, and pressure is building from civil-society groups, employers, and parents worldwide to ensure schooling translates into learning. We hope the report adds urgency and direction to that pressure.

To read the full report, click here