Strengthening the Quality of Education in Developing Contexts: Rigorous evidence from randomized evaluations

• In Event: Evidence to policy in education: leveraging rigorous research for improved education quality

Proposal

Many developing countries have greatly expanded access to education, spurred by initiatives such as the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which call for achieving universal primary education by 2015. Yet educating more children has strained education systems, and in many developing nations primary school education is failing to equip a large portion of students with basic reading, writing, and math skills. Now global efforts are underway, including through the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, to improve education quality: to ensure children are not only in school, but learning and developing to their full potential. Although many theories exist on the best approaches to improve education quality, policymakers and implementers need evidence to understand which programs are effective at helping children learn in school.

An international research and policy nonprofit will share lessons from a brief that synthesizes results and provides key lessons from randomized evaluations of various programs working to improve the quality of education in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Benin, and Colombia. During this presentation, participants will discuss the following key lessons for policymakers and other stakeholders involved in quality of education improvement to consider:

1. Teacher professional development with continued support appears to be a core strategy for improved student outcomes.
2. Teacher incentives can be effective when linked to outcomes that measure student learning.
3. Information Communications Technology (ICT) can positively improve learning outcomes when integrated into existing curricula and coupled with effective teacher training.
4. Providing merit-based incentives to students can increase school enrollment and have a positive effect on learning outcomes.
5. Targeting instruction to students’ initial achievement level can dramatically improve learning for low-performing pupils.

The presentation will cover a wide range of rigorous research that has contributed to these takeaways, as well as the approach taken to understanding these evaluations within the broader evidence base, in order to synthesize the lessons across studies appropriately.

While all the interventions discussed in this brief have been rigorously tested, sometimes, solutions that work in one situation may not work as well in another. Presenters will discuss the challenges of adapting these programs to new contexts and will provide examples from their experiences.

Author

• Heidi McAnnally-Linz, Innovations for Poverty Action