Remedial Education: Promising Platforms & Technologies

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In recent years, more promising progress has been made in improving foundational learning outcomes in lower and middle income countries, especially through structured pedagogy approaches. However, even where foundational learning outcomes have improved on average, learning equity remains a significant challenge. In many LMICs, equity issues around learning have grown, and gaps between struggling learners and those meeting the curriculum expectations have increased, leaving millions of children falling further behind. The diversity of skills levels within a given grade represents a systemic challenge for many education systems. Under-resourced schools and teachers struggle to employ the formative assessment and differentiated instruction which different learners require, and thus tend to teach the middle or higher level of the class. Children behind grade level thus often fall further behind undermining their self-esteem and increasing the risk of drop-out.

Remedial education is therefore a critical priority for learning equity and recovery and has been at the center of many learning equity conversations in recent years. Pioneered by the robust results shown by Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) and J-PAL, interest in remedial education has spiked.

While the impact of approaches such as TaRL is clear, a critical issue now facing the field of remedial education is which implementation modalities and platforms can be most scalable and effective in different contexts. There is a wide variety of options and trade-offs to consider. School-based approaches offer a promise of great scale and sustainability, yet school systems and teachers are often over-stretched and face challenges in moving beyond a grade-based approach to learning. Children spend most of their time outside of school, and non-formal community-based platforms can allow for more flexible, play-based approaches which can build children’s confidence and get their learning back on track, and yet can be an operational challenge to take to scale with fidelity. Innovative technology-based approaches such as the Youth Impact‘s Phone-tutoring program, or the targeted use of adaptive digital learning apps, such as Onecourse, promise relatively low-cost and high-fidelity implementation, and yet may potentially lose the benefits of more social and group based modalities.

Policy-makers and practitioners require clear, evidence-based insights and guidance to navigate these options and trade-offs and identify the best combination of remedial strategies for their given context. This panel contributes to this endeavor by presenting evidence and lessons from a variety of remedial education modalities and technologies. This includes new research from Save the Children in El Salvador, which evaluates the impact of using an adaptive digital learning app for remedial math support vs using facilitator led remedial math sessions, lessons and data from EDC’s remedial education in Honduras which compares results and lessons from implementing through classroom teachers vs community volunteers, and research from Youth Impact on effective strategies for targeting phone-based remediation at scale across five countries. The panel will be opened and closed by the discussant Asyia Kazmi from the Gates Foundation, who will give an introduction into the definition and need for remediation based on their Remediation How-to Guide.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Tim Murray, Save the Children

Chair

• Tim Murray, Save the Children

Individual Presentations

• The Tutor is Calling: Phone-based Instruction as a Cheap, Effective Tool for Targeted, Remedial Instruction - Thato Letsomo, Youth Impact; Colin Crossley, Youth Impact

• Remedial Education Results and modalities: Lessons learned from Honduras - Monica Sahonero, Education Development Center Edc

• Evaluating a Digital App Vs a Facilitator-led Approach in a Remedial Program in El Salvador - Tim Murray, Save the Children