Improving learning equity outcomes and policies: Concepts, methods and empirical findings from India, Nigeria and Malawi.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In 2015, the UN set an ambitious goal to ensure that inclusive and equitable quality education is achieved by 2030 . At more than the halfway mark, there remain over 617 million children, who despite improvement in access to education, lack basic proficiency in reading and mathematics (Azevedo et al., 2021). Recent data show that almost 53% of all 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries are experiencing learning poverty (World Bank, 2019).

The “learning poor” are disproportionately represented among disadvantaged children – whether by living in poverty, living in rural areas, from an ethnic or linguistic minorities, and/or having disabilities (Presenter, 2022). While these children have the highest need for support from the education system, they are often overlooked, continuing to stay in the bottom quartile for learning outcomes and struggling to access resources due to systemic inequalities (Presenter, 2021); Gustafsson & Barakat, 2023). This learning crisis threatens low-income countries’ efforts to meet the SDGs and build human capital, thereby impacting national prosperity and earning potential (World Bank, 2019).

There exist many measures of learning outcomes that have been used in low- and middle-income countries, but there are serious interpretation and implementation problems when trying to measure learning among the most marginalized children at the bottom of the pyramid. Most of the better-known measures, designed for measuring SDG4 targets, have been normed and standardized principally around global comparability. By contrast, recent research is beginning to find ways to help national policy makers and local stakeholders prioritize learning equity that pays particular attention to marginalized children, especially in order to reduce the gap between those who learn well and those who do not – in other words, by improving learning equity.

This panel will bring together recent findings on contrasting approaches to metrics for learning equity that will help inform the final years of progress on UN SDG4. Various recent research efforts – including the Learning Equity Initiative (LEI; learning-equity.org) – seek to address this critical and enduring challenge by focusing on the poorest children, and how their learning can be improved. Several key questions arise from this perspective: How can improved learning equity be improved between and within societies? Are there practical and context-specific metrics or analyses to achieve learning equity? What kinds of results are needed to convince policymakers to take further action to achieve learning equity?

The present papers provide varying and distinctive approaches to the notion of learning equity. The first paper – entitled “Learning equity outcomes and policies in India: Simulation Ginis and learning outcomes results” – considers the concept of learning equity within marginalized populations in global and local contexts; then it describes two simulation studies of how a Gini Learning Index (GLI) can be utilized; and finally, an empirical study in rural India that tests the two simulation models. The second paper – “Equity implications of the effects of teacher pedagogical practices on student learning outcomes in El Salvador” – studies teacher-centered methods to viewing students as active participants has been shown to improve learning outcomes. It deploys the “Teacher Moves for Supporting Student Reasoning” framework to analyze teacher-student interactions, examining how specific teacher behaviors influence student engagement and learning outcomes. A third paper – entitled “Unpacking Learning Equity in Primary Education in Kenya” – uses data from the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment to assess the learning outcomes of Grade 6 students (N > 100,000). The analysis focuses on geographical differences between counties to quantify the source of inequality, as well as inequalities due to socioeconomic status. The fourth paper – entitled “Tracking learning to deliver impact, including recent findings from Nigeria” – begins with a presentation on data on learning outcomes and learning trajectories across a variety of countries and datasets, and then going more deeply into results from a systems diagnostic recently conducted in Nigeria, with data collected at regular intervals over several years.

Overall, these papers provide a varied perspective on how to achieve learning equity across and within countries, with a greater focus on how to improve learning in marginalized populations. The panel will have implications as well on the overall conference focus on digital societies, by linking these papers to how the “learning poor” can or cannot cope with rapidly changing information spaces across the world.

The four invited research papers and two discussants – drawn from academia, the United Nations, non-profits, and thinktanks – bring diverse ideas and high-level expertise in the measurement and policies directed to improving learning in low-income countries.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Daniel A Wagner, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Daniel A Wagner, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Presentations

• Learning equity outcomes and policies in India: Simulation Ginis and learning outcomes results - Daniel A Wagner, University of Pennsylvania; Amrit Thapa, University of Pennsylvania

• Unpacking Learning Equity in Primary Education in Kenya - Suguru Mizunoya, UNESCO IIEP

• Tracking learning to deliver impact, including recent findings from Nigeria - Martin De Simone, The World Bank Group; Michelle Kaffenberger, What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford; Marla Spivack, The World Bank Group

Discussants

• Luis A Crouch, RTI

• Dhir Jhingran, Language and Learning Foundation

• Noam Angrist, Youth Impact; What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford