Earlier this year, an independent team of experts detailed the “global learning crisis” in the 11th Education for All Global Monitoring Report.One of the most sobering statistics was that 250 million children do not know the fundamentals — how to read, write, or do basic math problems — including 130 million children who attend school.
This staggering statistic debunks a long-held assumption in global education development that “schooling leads to learning,” as Rukmini Banerji writes in her recent blog for the Brookings Institution. Governments and international organizations have annually counted the number of children going to school and tracked the growing trend for decades. It is easy to measure how many children are sitting in desks, but it is much harder to determine what they are learning while sitting there. The time has come, Banerji says, “to make learning equally visible.”
One essential element in making learning visible is to engage parents and other members of the community. It is important to elevate the conversation beyond the benefits of schooling to discuss “what learning looks like,” as Banerji says. Many parents did not attend school themselves, and it is hard for them to know what their children are learning, especially in their first few years of school.
It is also difficult for policy makers to measure students’ progress. Banerji outlines her organization’s work to develop learning assessment tools to measure basic reading and math skills that account for realities on the ground. These tests are conducted by visiting homes, not distributing pencil and paper in classrooms. Banerji writes, “In recent years, there has been a growing recognition by global education actors of the importance of measuring learning in a way that is responsive to national contexts and local needs.”
In our holistic Whole Child Model as well as our consulting work, School-to-School International employs the programs promoted by Banerji. We believe participation from parents and community members is essential for our interventions to succeed, and we work with teachers to develop materials from local resources that will engage their students. Through our consulting work, we have developed and implemented the types of basic learning assessments in math and reading that provide more comprehensive understanding of what children are actually learning in school. By utilizing these strategies, we are ensuring that students can thrive in the classroom.
School-to-School International Blog