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Session Submission Summary

How does an EdTech innovation fund support innovators to promote reading for children? What lies ahead?

Sun, February 19, 2:45 to 4:15pm EST (2:45 to 4:15pm EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Constitution Level (3B), Washington Boardroom

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In the past 20 years despite efforts to improve literacy levels, UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 remains elusive especially in low resource countries. According to the World Bank, in 2020 more than 90% of schools were closed for several months. This crisis exposed an access to education gap between the few learners that were able to continue remotely and those that were left behind making inclusive and equitable quality education to promote lifelong learning opportunities elusive. Before the pandemic, worldwide more than 387 million children and youth couldn’t read or do basic math, even though more than two-thirds of them have attended four or more years of school. Now, the figure has nearly doubled. According to The State of Global Learning Poverty 2022 jointly published by the World Bank, USAID, Unesco and others, nearly 6 out of 10 ten-year old learners in low and middle income countries are suffering from learning poverty - especially in reading skills since they are unable to read or understand a simple story.

In other words, reading - or lack thereof - is the most important element to bring about effective learning and improve educational outcomes to mitigate the global learning loss especially in the past two years, where access to digital content and learning solutions has become a priority for most education systems. This is further echoed in UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report concept note that states “the achievement of the SDG4 goals is dependent on the opportunities and challenges posed by technology”. EdTech is just the goal - but the means to the overarching objective to narrow the gaps to improve educational outcomes - especially reading through better access,increased equity and inclusion of the most marginalized children.

For this reason, since 2011, the All Children Reading (ACR) Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) has been investing in reading, with a specific mandate to support greater access to quality reading materials, promote inclusion leveraging technology so that all children read - especially those with disabilities where more than 90% of these children do not attend school regularly. ACR has invested over $25M through a partnership of the Australian Government, USAID, and World Vision US. The grand challenge promotes new ideas through competitions, prizes and research to support EdTech for reading using high-quality and accessible content. Currently, All Children Reading is in its third round of investments focused on three core areas: provide digital books in underserved languages including local sign language, support solutions for children with disabilities at scale, and test new methodologies to promote foundational literacy with preschool children, including those who are deaf.

ACR believes that EdTech has become a game changer to help close the gap in learning loss for those most affected by the pandemic. ACR believes that EdTech can provide faster and cheaper access to learning materials for children who previously did not have access to text. EdTech lowers the cost of providing access at scale compared to the status quo, and boosts learning outcomes when applied appropriately.

The panel will bring together contrasting perspectives on how a leading EdTech innovation fund - like All Children Reading - brings together government funders, social entrepreneurs, application developers, and reading experts to the table to foster new solutions or scale those that prove to be most useful to support literacy in for the most marginalized in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Two presentations will include fresh testimonies from key innovators supported through the life of the challenge to increase and expand their solutions. They will explain how this innovation fund provided them with the momentum to improve their platform and scale their solutions. The next presentation will elaborate on the lessons learned from the funding agency’s experience with this grand challenge to spur new solutions. The final presentation will reflect on learning agenda, impact, and lessons learned from the second and third rounds of funding through ACR. The panel will reflect on the past 10 years of legacy promoting EdTech in low-resource environments to bring digital content to more children. The presenters will identify challenges but more importantly opportunities to expand Edtech leveraging the synergies between funders, solvers, and implementers to scale applications, games and reading resources.

In summary, the goal of the panel is to present a case for EdTech, provide fresh perspectives on how access to digital for learning solutions is essential to the SDG4 goals, and where do we need to investing in Edtech innovation funds - like ACD - to engage the ecosystem of education, technology and innovation to spur literacy for the learner of the 21st century world. The panel will conclude with a reflection and discussion points from USAID, one of the three founding partners of All Children Reading Grand Challenge with open discussion and questions from the audience.

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