The United Nations hosted its first Transforming Education Summit in September 2022 in New York City. As they describe, it was the first event of its kind, with more than 2,000 participants over the course of three days. The Summit was the culmination of months of collaboration, consultation and partnership and brought together Member States, along with development partners, civil society, the private sector, youth and all other partners in education and beyond.
Finally, I would say, the world had agreed to what we, members of the Peoples Action for Learning (PAL) network have been saying in the last 17 years: children are going to school but are not learning. However, apart from recognizing the global learning crises, that is affecting the global south countries the most, this summit agrees on concrete actions to be taken by all stakeholders to ensure that all children learn and thrive. The Call to Action to transform education points out that the point of departure is to focus on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy. It means that all stakeholders should focus on ensuring that all children get the basic literacy, numeracy, and transferable skills such as socio-emotional skills.
UNICEF is running a campaign named “Tackling the learning crisis”. It recognizes that basic reading and maths skills are the foundation for children learning at school and in life. Admits that even before the pandemic, more than half of all 10-year-olds in middle and low-income countries couldn’t read or understand a simple story. UNICEF says that it is not enough simply to reopen schools. We need a global effort to tackle the learning crisis head on. In collaboration with BMGF, FCDO, UNICEF, USAID, and UNESCO, the World Bank developed a RAPID Framework to Address COVID-19 Learning Losses and Build Forward Better. The RAPID framework can be summarized as follows[1]:
- Reach every child and keep them in school: To recover learning, all children need to be back in school. Action is needed to ensure all children return and stay in school.
- Assess learning levels regularly: Understanding children’s current learning levels in the classroom and estimating learning losses at a systemic level allows teachers and policymakers alike to make informed decisions about the instructional approaches and other policy decisions needed to promote learning recovery.
- Prioritize teaching the fundamentals: If teachers move through the curriculum without first mastering the key foundational concepts students need, their ability to progress on to more complex topics with adequate understanding will be jeopardized. Countries should adjust teaching plans to prioritize teaching the fundamentals in the time they have available.
- Increase efficiency of instruction, including though catch-up learning: To recover from learning losses, school systems will need to support initiatives that increase the amount of learning within classrooms, through more effective teaching practices and learner-focused recovery strategies that can help all students make gains on their learning.
- Develop psychosocial health and wellbeing: Invest in understanding and addressing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and related disruptions on children’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing
This call for action adopted by the UN transforming Education Summit resonates with the asks and demands made by PAL Network members in the last years. The RAPID framework provide concrete actionable measures to implement programs to respond to the crises. Again, the main question that needs to be addressed is how it will be translated into actions to improve reading and basic math for ALL children. Here, again, all means all.
Having been part of this movement in the last years and based on our experience on how the education community have dealt with the issue of ensuring the basics of reading and maths for our children in the last years, I would like to share three reflection points from the RAPID framework as we move beyond New York.
Assess learning levels regularly: But what data do we need?
We need data to inform teachers what to teach their pupils the next day and to inform the world if the teaching is resulting in learning. To make this call for action effective, assessments must be conducted regularly both at school level to inform what teachers need to instruct their learners and at the household level, and all spaces where children are (refugees, detention/rehabilitation centers), with local estimates, using comparable tools, and adapted to ALL children.
At school level, teachers can adapt existing CLA tools to assess their children and teach them according to their level. This is already happening in some schools where we are working in partnership with respective governments. The existing assessment tools on literacy and numeracy can be adapted to other subjects and inform immediate actions to improve learning.
Beside the existing learning crisis, there is also a global data crisis. Except from few cases like ASER India and Pakistan, the most regular assessments in the global south like UWEZO, Jangandoo, PASEC, lost traction. They have not been generating regular data in the last 5 years. We need to have up to date and representative data on where we are in fulfilling our promise to quality education to all children by 2030. From our experience, only 5 out of 15 countries conducted CLA in the last 5 years mainly due to lack of funding. There is an increased abandonment of estimates at lowest level where community engagement can be built. UWEZO assessment in Kenya conducted by USAWA Agenda in 2021 maintained the national estimates but lost its district representation and comparability. Partly, due to lack of funding, we are moving to the smallest sampling sizes to keep the conversation at the national and global level. If citizens are to count in this process, we will need assessments that produce estimates at the most local level, to increase awareness of the problem and inspire local actions to improve learning. We still believe that quality of learning will not improve in a sustainable way unless parents and guardians understand the problem and are involved in the solution.
PAL Network is known for data on children’s learning. Coming from a pandemic- we do not have data across the network. We need a consolidated data collection effort across the global south. Regular assessments, conducted every two years, can support this effort of continuously inform and action to achieve SDG 4.1.1.
Prioritize teaching the fundamentals and Increase efficiency of instruction, including through catch-up learning – But, where and how?
Not all children are enrolled in school and drop out will continue. In many countries, school infrastructure and systems cannot absorb all children. Due to continued disruption like conflicts, poverty and natural disaster, many children will remain on the move and are not sufficiently addressed by existing government policies and programs.
The current school system has failed our children in the last decades. It’s not only about teacher’s capacity. It’s about the system and the way teachers are assessed. A teacher told me in Taita-Taveta in 2019 that “these methods are all good but my supervisor will assess me on the basis of completion of the syllables”. I have seen a teacher struggling to explain how to teach a child the subtraction of 16-8 in Larde District.
Recently in Paris, Jaime Saavendra said that “this is not just a crisis – we are moving towards a catastrophe”. So how are we trying to respond to an eminent catastrophe using the same quantity and quality of teachers, school infrastructure and budget?
Learning from strategies in the health system, vaccination campaigns are done for all children, not only in health centers but under the trees in the community, going where the children are, crossing rivers in small boats, involving some APE[2]s, and engaging community leaders. The dimension of the upcoming catastrophe is bigger enough and it’s clear that the current school system will not be able to respond to it alone.
It needs citizens agency to build a movement for learning from village to village. It’s time to call all citizens to fix this problem. Our experience in the learning camps in all PAL Network countries has shown that it is possible to have children reading and doing basic maths in 50 days.
The neglected missing point – The role of parents and community.
Should we wait for other 15 years to be included? I think the answer is no. We believe that where citizens, (mothers, fathers, and caregivers) are adequately involved, the quality of education services increase. Nevertheless, the current consensus says nothing about the role of citizens. If we are to take this commitment seriously, it will need accountability at all levels. And accountability needs information, participation, and change.
We need to put in place accountability mechanisms about the effectiveness of public expenditure to respond to the crisis. Will resource allocation to learning increase? Will the allocated resources effectively be used to impact teaching and learning? Will measures be taken to punish or reward bad and good behaviors? Will citizens be given explanations and justifications about how public resources are used to improve learning? All these financial and non-financial inputs to educations need to be publicized and citizens encouraged to oversee then. In Many PAL countries, the existing school management committees and other social structures can play a role on this. It’s essential for this call for action to succeed that the demand for quality education come from the users – the citizens.
Even more important is accountability about learning outcomes. As president Jakaya Kikwete and chair of GPE said in November 2021, “its not enough to have children in school. They mustcri take benefit out of that”. And the benefit is learning. As we have said above, CLA done at the household, in the presence of the parents, is a perfect tool to create awareness and to support citizens to hold teachers and local governments accountable. It’s also a tool used in many countries to promote the development and implementation of local actions for learning.
But these accountability mechanisms will not be complete unless they support the inclusion of ALL children so that none if left behind. It is essential that citizens demand specific measures for children with disability, with special education needs and for those who for various reasons are out of school. It is our collective responsibility to take inclusion as our collective agenda to contribute that all children can benefit from the transformative power of education.
[1] World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, FCDO, UNESCO, UNICEF, and USAID. 2022. Guide for Learning Recovery and Acceleration: Using the RAPID Framework to Address COVID-19 Learning Losses and Build Forward Better. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/publication/the-rapid-framework-and-a-guide-for-learning-recovery-and-acceleration
[2] Agentes Polivalentes de Saude.
