Where education systems face particular challenges, what enables or inhibits the raising of learning outcomes?

• In Event: Poster Session: Participation of diverse stakeholders in education: Students, schools, families and communities

Abstract

Data on student learning, now collected more extensively, underlines that the lowest learning outcomes are found in urban slums and remote rural areas. Evidence shows that teacher retention in the remotest rural areas is difficult, and that student attendance at school in urban slums is low. We know that cities on national borders, which bridge two or more education systems, are those to which service delivery can be weakest, where populations are transient, and where the effects of conflict and humanitarian crises can be most protracted. In these places, education systems face particular challenges and student learning is most at risk. Yet we do not know enough about how education systems work, or do not work, in these contexts to improve student learning. From the evidence it is however clear that providing more input in a ‘business as usual’ manner will not be sufficient. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) are launching a research call designed to respond to this evidence gap. This poster will introduce this call, and the rationale behind it.



This research call is part of the wider DFID-ESRC partnership on Education and Development: Raising Learning Outcomes in Education Systems. This aims to fund a multi-disciplinary portfolio of research in critical policy areas that are currently constraining education systems in developing countries from translating resources into better learning and ultimately positive social and economic change. This programme is centred on how the raising of learning outcomes in developing country contexts is affected by the relationship between elements of the education system, the context in which they are embedded, and the dynamics operating within that system. Given the strong inequalities that exist within education (i.e. girls, disabled people, lower socio-economic groups), research funded in this programme will focus on how to raise learning outcomes for all by considering equity as well as quality dimensions of education.

Author

• Laura Savage, DFID