Produced in partnership with the Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), the report is being launched today, 7 May, at the 2024 Conference of the African Federation of Teaching Regulatory Authorities. Along with the continental report, the country report for Zambia will be launched at the same event, along with H.E Douglas Munsaka Syakalima, Minister of Education, Zambia. It is the first Spotlight session on foundational learning as part of the African Union Year of Education.

One in five children achieve minimum proficiency levels  

Learning Counts compiles the latest out-of-school and completion rate statistics to show the challenge that countries face every day. For every 100 children in Africa, 18 children are out of school– twice the rate of the rest of the world. However, there is sign of improvement, with completion rates growing at a steady pace of almost one percentage point per year throughout the past 20 years. Still one in five children do not complete primary school today. 

Albeit data gaps remain large, what evidence exists suggests that learning rates at the end of primary school have improved faster in Africa than the rest of the world since 2011. However, the challenge remains notable, with at most one in five children attaining minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics at the end of primary school today.

There is often a lack of connection between countries’ aspirations and their plans

For instance, having up to date and relevant textbooks is critical. Yet the report found that textbooks are often out-of-date and not available in the languages of instruction. Textbooks were not in the language of instruction for 80% of students in Zambia and in less than half of classrooms visited in Uganda. Given many students have limited reading skills, graphic explanations of mathematics concepts could help, but are often lacking.  

Textbooks and teacher guides may not be fully aligned with the curriculum and their design needs to be reviewed to prevent confusion and improve implementation. In Mauritania, algebra is missing from the lower primary curriculum, while it is covered in textbooks and teacher guides. In Niger, textbooks and teacher guides include statistics and probability but the curriculum does not. Assessments often cover a different set of competencies from those outlined in the curriculum, particularly at the end of primary, where an examination culture prevails, and the level of cognitive difficulty increases. 

Remedial education is highlighted as a critical approach for ensuring that all students are learning with understanding. Yet, of the five countries analysed only South Africa and Zambia contain guidance for teaching students who are falling behind. In Chad, a programme introduced in 2017/8 trained teachers to provide remedial support and they all implemented new strategies, such as rearranging classroom layouts and using more supportive approaches for struggling children, which ultimately saw children’s repetition rates fall.

Many countries need to contend with a teacher workforce whose qualifications and knowledge levels are well below what is required 

Ongoing professional training is also important to improve teachers’ subject knowledge and refresh their qualifications, which the report shows technology is helping with in the case of Burkina Faso, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia among others. In Africa, 17% of countries require a bachelor’s degree to teach in comparison to 62% of countries globally, while teachers’ qualifications are also often lower than requirements.  

The importance of training is highlighted in the report. Among surveyed primary school teachers in the 14 countries in the 2019 PASEC learning achievement survey, only 35% mastered basic procedures in mathematics. Differences in teacher subject knowledge accounts for more than one third of the cross-country variation in student achievement. But training approaches need to be sustainable and engaging teachers. Technology can help professional communities emerge, as a case study from Burkina Faso shows.

More funds are needed to bolster foundational learning  

As explained in more detail in the special edition of the 2023 Education Finance Watch for Africa, education is dropping down the list of governments’ priorities despite there being an annual financing gap of USD 28 billion to achieve countries’ own targets to achieve 85% primary completion rate by 2030. External financing is meanwhile declining as a source of revenue for governments, and less likely to support foundational learning as to support secondary education.  This makes it ever more important that it focuses on institutional building and not on short-term projects. 

The report recommends the following: 

At the individual level

1. Give all children a textbook – and all teachers a guide.

Ensure that all children and teachers have teaching and learning materials that are research-based, aligned with the curriculum, and locally developed. 2. Teach all children in their home language – and train teachers accordingly.

Give all children the opportunity to first learn to read in a language they understand and all teachers the confidence to support them.

3. Provide all children with a school meal.

Give all children the minimum conditions to learn at school. 

At the system level

4. Make a clear plan to improve learning.

a. Develop a common continental framework to monitoring learning outcomes.

b. Establish clear learning standards and align assessments to evaluate how well students meet them.

c. Ensure learning is not abstract; children need full understanding before moving to advanced concepts.

5. Develop teacher capacity.

Ensure all teachers use classroom time effectively through cost-effective training.

6. Prepare instructional leaders.

Restructure support mechanisms offered to teachers and schools. 

At the continental level

7. Learn from peers.

Reinvigorate mechanisms allowing countries to share experiences on foundational literacy and numeracy. 

At the international level

8. Focus aid on institution building.

Shift from projects to provision of public goods that support foundational learning. 

Download the report: https://bit.ly/2024-spotlight 

Download social media cards and materials: https://trello.com/b/1CYw5ork/spotlight-report  

The post Second Spotlight Report on Africa shows the importance of coherent textbooks and teacher guides for foundational learning appeared first on World Education Blog.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) releases data in September and in March. The latter data release finalizes the processing of data collected by UIS surveys in the last reference year. Each release is a complex technical process, involving multiple data sources (administrative, survey/census, learning assessment, and expenditure data) and multiple data producers.

A lot of new data points have been added, especially on educational attainment.

About 112,000 data points were added to the UIS database, of which 76% are for SDG indicators and 24% for other policy relevant indicators. The increase has been mainly related to the following indicators:

• education attainment rate (SDG indicator 4.4.3), which accounts for the bulk of new data points (76%, including points for its parity index);
• out-of-school rate (4.1.4; 9%);
• tertiary education gross enrolment ratio (4.3.2; 6%); and
• minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics (4.1.1), over-age attendance rate (4.1.5), early childhood education participation rate (4.2.2), youth/adult literacy rate (4.6.2), and students taught in their home language (4.5.2), each of which contributed about 2% of new data points.

In the case of indicator 4.4.3, the new data points were added by tapping on the International Labour Organisation’s repository of labour force surveys, which record educational attainment by level, sex and urban/rural location. Importantly, 21 new countries and territories have been added to the UIS database (bringing the total from 174 to 195), of which 9 are in Oceania and 5 in sub-Saharan Africa. Data from the 2020 Census have been used to update estimates for China.

Globally, 84% of adults have completed at least primary education. The SDG regions that fall below the global average are Latin America and the Caribbean (77%), Central and Southern Asia (67%) and sub-Saharan Africa, where just over half of the adult population has completed primary education. Differences become more acute at higher levels of education. For instance, there are 35 countries and territories where fewer than 1 in 5 adults have completed at least upper secondary education and just 28 countries and territories where more than 4 in 5 adults have done so.

Percentage of population 25+ years that completed at least upper secondary education.

Source: UIS database

But some data gaps remain a concern.

The Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), which is the inter-governmental body responsible for the development of the SDG monitoring framework, has set specific criteria for the 2025 comprehensive review of indicators: ‘available data or a link to where the data can be located; data must be available for at least 40 per cent of countries and of the population across the different regions where the indicator is relevant; and a plan for how data coverage will be expanded must be included if current data coverage is below 50 per cent’. There are clear process guidelines and an invitation from IAEG-SDGs to custodian agencies for indicators that are below 40% to present a data plan to reach 50%.

There are two global indicators with low coverage in population terms:

• Children developmentally on track (4.2.1) at 35%, none of which is a high-income country.
• Functional literacy and numeracy proficiency (4.6.1) at 7%, all of them upper-middle- and high-income countries. Given very low coverage, the youth/adult literacy rate (indicator 4.6.2) may be proposed as a replacement global indicator, as its coverage is high (81%), except in high-income countries (27%) where literacy rates are close to universal and therefore the indicator is less relevant.

Three global indicators have relatively higher coverage that still falls below 50%:

• Minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics (4.1.1);
• ICT skills (4.4.1); and
• Extent to which global citizenship education and education for sustainable development are mainstreamed in policy, curricula, teacher education, and assessment (4.7.1).

Population and country overage of global SDG 4 indicators

Source: UIS based on UIS database March 2024 release and IAEG-SDG Report to the UNSC (2024).

Coverage of indicator 4.1.1 is sufficiently high at the end of primary/lower-secondary education (4.1.1b and c), at 46% of the population and 60% of countries. But it is low at grades 2/3 (4.1.1a), at 16% of the population and 20% of countries. Coverage is related to the level of income. The percentage of population in countries covered with at least one data point between 2018 and 2022 is 33% in low-, 35% in lower-middle-, 50% in upper-middle- and 92% in high-income countries.

In early December 2023, the UIS convened a meeting of the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning to define minimum acceptable criteria for reporting indicator 4.1.1a that ensure comparability at the minimum proficiency level for different types of assessments. These criteria include a refined definition of decoding and a scoring model for assessments of individual children. The UIS set a Technical Advisory Group that met on 4–6 March to decide upon further operational aspects such as:

• locating precursor reading skills on a learning progression continuum to facilitate comparability for assessments that are not aligned to the minimum proficiency level; and
• identifying benchmarks for each of the precursor skills by language.

What solutions are there to close data gaps?

Ahead of the 2025 SDG indicator review, various steps are needed to make progress with some of the persistent data gaps, depending on the indicator.

First, some indicators will need to be replaced with related ones that have higher coverage, such as in the case of the youth and adult literacy rate.

Second, following the decisions of the Conference on Education Data and Statistics, consensus is needed on re-defining the qualified and trained teacher indicators. Lack of shared understanding among countries is the main reason for remaining gaps – and for limited comparability.

Third, coverage on indicator 4.1.1a is expected to increase, as countries that have participated in the Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) and the Assessment for Minimum Proficiency Level (AMPLa) (in sub-Saharan Africa) release their results at the national level. But more coordinated international support will be needed to fill the gaps in data on learning outcomes in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

Fourth, some indicators can be informed by multiple data sources, but this potential has not yet been tapped, except in the cases of out-of-school and completion rates. We have proposed, and the Conference on Education Data and Statistics has decided, to explore this potential further.

The post What is new in the latest UIS data release – and what gaps remain to be addressed? appeared first on World Education Blog.

In September 2022, world leaders and education stakeholders gathered for the Transforming Education Summit (TES) to mobilize solutions to tackle the global learning crisis. Global and national commitments were made to take urgent action to transform education systems, including prioritizing foundational learning.

The Transforming Education Summit was a key milestone for education around the world – but its impact will be determined by the concrete actions we take to follow through on our commitments to transform education. Now, more than a year after this critical moment, what progress has been made? Here are three key findings based on UNICEF’s June–July 2023 pulse survey with 94 low- and middle-income countries.

1. Many governments are taking concrete action on TES commitment areas, with varying degrees of progress.

Over 3 in 4 countries reported concrete government action on digital learning and access to inclusive, quality and safe learning opportunities. Many governments are also taking steps to advance education for children in humanitarian settings as well as foundational learning. To further monitor countries’ progress on foundational learning, UNICEF and the Hempel Foundation launched the Foundational Learning Action Tracker in 2023. It found that countries are still initiating progress on foundational learning: fewer than half of countries have a specific focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in their national curriculum, and only five per cent of countries are assessing socioemotional skills at scale. 

2. Many of the countries where urgent action is needed most have reported taking concrete steps to meet their TES commitments.

For example, we find that among countries where more than half of children are in learning poverty – unable to read and understand a simple text at age 10 – about 3 in 4 countries reported concrete government action on foundational learning. In countries where over 10 per cent of primary school-aged children are out of school, about 4 in 5 countries are taking concrete government steps to advance access to inclusive, safe and quality learning opportunities.

3. Concrete actions are needed for greening education and education financing, especially among countries most affected by these challenges. 

Greening education and education financing are the areas in which the fewest number of countries reported taking government action on TES commitments. Moreover, for countries where these issues are particularly relevant, not enough concrete action is being taken to address them. Among countries with high or extremely high risk of children’s exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, only a third reported concrete government action to advance greening education. Among countries failing to meet the benchmark of allocating at least 15 per cent of total government expenditure to education, just under half of countries reported government action on education financing. 

These initial findings underscore how we cannot lose the momentum of the Transforming Education Summit. We need to keep education a national, regional and global priority.  

Looking ahead, the African Union (AU) has adopted education as the AU theme for the year 2024. In a region with very high learning poverty rates, it is promising that most African countries in our survey reported taking concrete steps to advance TES commitments, including foundational learning. However, some issues stand out as needing intensified efforts: fewer than 2 in 5 African countries reported that the government is taking concrete action on greening education, despite the high risk of children’s exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change in many African countries. 

The Transforming Education Summit was an important step forward, but a true transformation of education will depend on how we turn our commitments into real action for learners, particularly the most marginalized.  

Collectively, we need to ensure accountability to monitor progress and catalyze follow-up actions at national, regional and global levels. Only by doing so can we meet the goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all children – no matter who they are or where they live.

The post More than one year after the Transforming Education Summit: What progress have countries made? appeared first on World Education Blog.

The benefits of radio instruction

Effective radio instruction programmes tend to be highly learner-centred, interactive and local, relying on an enabling policy environment that supports sustainability, allows decentralized broadcasting and signals government commitment. While traditional radio broadcasts are limited to one-way delivery and require synchronous participation, increasingly interactive approaches expect learners to engage with and respond to radio lessons through questions and exercises. Interactive instruction tends to follow the national curriculum, combines audio recordings and print materials, focuses on the active participation of children, and makes use of an adult teacher to facilitate learning. In most cases, radio remains the most cost-effective option and reaches a large number of learners.

Radio has a proven track record for delivering education to underserved rural learners across the globe. There is consistent and extensive evidence that interactive radio-based instruction has helped reduce education gaps between rural and urban populations, girls and boys, nomadic and settled communities, and other disadvantaged children and their more privileged peers, both in terms of access to education and quality of learning, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Alternative education systems in sub-Saharan Africa often use radio

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa use interactive radio instruction as part of their alternative and distance education systems. Radio remains the most cost-effective means of reaching large numbers of out-of-school children.

Nomads constitute about 6% of the African population and are found in at least 20 different countries across the continent. They are categorised into three major groups based on their mobile lifestyle. In northern Nigeria, where millions of nomadic school-age children face barriers to access, the National Commission for Nomadic Education designed and developed a radio distance learning strategy in 1996 based on evidence that nomadic pastoralists tend to use radio sets, which they carried with them while herding. Despite implementation challenges such as limited funding and untrained teachers, the Commission continues to improve the programme by updating the curriculum and establishing an exclusive radio station for nomadic education, with broadcasts in four languages.

The radio strategy was designed to complement other methods, including mobile schools equipped with audiovisual materials, and increase enrolment and participation rates. The quality of the programme’s interactivity and delivery has increased over the years through the establishment of radio listening groups, the development of teaching and learning guides, and recordings of radio episodes. Evaluations have documented its effectiveness in reaching 77% of nomadic pastoralists in North West Nigeria and increasing literacy, numeracy and life skills.

In Zambia, the government first piloted an interactive radio instruction programme in community learning centres for out-of-school children and orphans who had lost their parents to AIDS. In 2004, Learning at Taonga Market was launched, an interactive audio instruction programme noted as the first to use an MP3 player. Over the next 10 years, Learning at Taonga Market programmes were delivered to 3,000 community learning centres and 1.2 million students who consistently outperformed their peers in formal government schools.

Interactive radio instruction programmes were also developed in 2009 for grades 1 to 6 in French and mathematics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of the Projet d’Amélioration de la Qualité de l’Éducation (Project for the Improvement of the Quality of Education). They reached 3,000 schools, with 1.2 million students outperforming their peers in control schools in reading.

Radio instruction supports learning gains

Since the 1980s, studies in at least 25 countries have documented statistically significant, consistent improvements in student achievement that are positively correlated with exposure to interactive radio instruction.

The first formal experiment with interactive radio instruction, where learners ‘actively responded’ to broadcasts, was carried out in Nicaragua in the 1970s for children who were unable to complete their formal schooling due to their agricultural livelihood. Participating children quickly matched and even exceeded the mathematics achievement of nearby formal school students, despite the fact that many were not even fluent in Spanish. A more recent good example of interactive radio instruction for marginalised learners can be found in Cabo Verde, which has relied on educational radio to reach remote learners for decades. Evaluations have shown that children who had access to the interactive radio programme Projeto PALOP tested better in Portuguese and math compared to children who did not.

In 2018–21, among the poorest 20% of households in 24 low- and lower-middle-income countries, one quarter owned a radio. Benefiting from the access this brings to households, interactive audio instruction is implemented in almost 40 countries globally. The distribution of cassettes, CDs, MP3 files and mobile phones has allowed rewinding, replaying and recording content, countering any problems with radio reception. In Bangladesh, primary school students improved their literacy and numeracy scores through audio lessons using interactive voice response delivered through mobile phones. In Guyana, lessons from the government’s radio programme in mathematics are sometimes pre-recorded onto CDs or in MP3 format and delivered with accompanying audio players to classrooms.

One quarter of the poorest 20% of households in low- and lower-middle income countries own a radio

The benefits of radio instruction are proof that technology does not have to be advanced to be effective in education

Radio started being used in education in the 1920s, and has proved its worth over the years as a low-tech way of accessing education for hard-to-reach learners, including those in emergency contexts. Its effectiveness for teaching and learning ultimately depends on available resources, the policy environment, and specific educational needs and goals, however. In some local contexts, curriculum, scheduling and broadcasting costs. Radio-based instruction is therefore only cost-effective when large numbers of students are reached; it is less efficient when the target population is smaller, for instance with learners who speak a minority language. Sustainability can be supported through strong government commitment, continuous teacher professional development, the integration of programmes into existing curricula, and effective monitoring and evaluation.

As internet is reaching ever more remote communities and access costs decline, it is inevitable that the shape of distance education will change. But for the foreseeable future, radio remains relevant for many learners. And the lessons from decades of its application for learning remain relevant for all types of distance education.

The post Radio delivers education at a low cost to hard-to-reach population appeared first on World Education Blog.

Several months after it first hit globally, governments and experts across the world have now finally begun to register the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Education for children has emerged as a major casualty, particularly in the Global South where many countries were already struggling with learning crises. The school closures, limited access to online learning, and already constrained education systems have coalesced together to bring about an adverse situation. The potential learning losses suffered by children, both temporally and economically, are significant.

The search is on to find an immediate solution for such an unprecedented crisis. Considering the time and resource constraints, a good solution has to fulfill a certain set of criteria. Essentially, it has to be 1) low-cost, 2) scalable, 3) easily available, 4) targeted specifically at the issue of learning losses, and 5) workable. In this regard, accelerated learning has been identified as potentially effective solution to learning losses. Pakistan has a large-scale workable model of accelerated learning underway that covers all bases already, which this blog describes.

As context, Pakistan had already been experiencing a deeply-entrenched learning crisis before the onset of COVID-19. Data from 2019 shows that 75% of children in Pakistan cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. Twenty-four million children are out-of-school, equivalent to nearly 47% of those aged 5-16 years, among these 24 million children, 5.6 million had dropped out from school. This is particularly pertinent as the same solutions offered to bring these children back up-to-speed with their age-appropriate learning levels when re-enrolling them in school can be studied and modified for those now forced out of schools during the COVID-19 crisis. The Advancing Action for Adolescent Girls project (A3G) this blog describes addresses precisely this issue by providing accelerated learning to over 20,000 girls in Pakistan who have either dropped-out or, in some cases, not attended school before.

The A3G project supports flexible schooling options for second chance education for vulnerable and disadvantaged adolescent girls (aged 9-19) in rural areas in the marginalized Southern region of the province of Punjab, Pakistan. The girls identified have either never enrolled in school or have dropped out in the past 24 months. For girls never enrolled in schools, the project offers a 90-day course called “Chalo Parho Barho”, roughly translated to “Let us read and grow”, which supplies bursts of remedial learning in literacy and numeracy domains. For girls who dropped out of school in the past two years or less, the program provides opportunities for finishing primary and middle grades. There is also a pilot underway with a small group for students who are finishing their secondary school.

Learning in the program is not envisioned as in a formal setting. Instead, it is tailored according to the learning level of each individual child, as recommended in the 2020 GEM Report as the correct approach for inclusion. Once a child comes to the learning center, a one-on-one, facilitated diagnostic assessment is undertaken with the student which determines her learning level. This entire process is based on a ‘teaching at the right level’ (TaRL) approach. Once the learning level of the student is determined, the child is assigned a particular strand to continue his/her learning. The expected student learning outcomes (SLOs) are selected from Pakistan’s National Curriculum for each of the strands. These SLOs are then aligned with the textbooks and selected topics are taught to the students. One diagnostic assessment is taken in the 1st week of enrollment, and one summative assessment is taken at the end of each strand. All students appear in the provincial PEC Examination too. Formative assessments are a component of day-to-day teaching.

This specifically designed curriculum covers an extensive syllabus in a short-period of time and thus prepares children to appear in mainstream education assessments. Not only is this effective, it is also scalable thanks to being low-cost, much less than the average amount spent per child in a government school over the same time period. The program works with capable teachers from within the communities, trains them, provides them with resources, and then encourages them to teach these designed accelerated learning programs. So far, the project has been a success in mainstreaming more than 8000 girls, with a next cohort already preparing for their exams. These girls appeared in the official board examinations for primary and middle grades (administered by the government) and as many as 92% of them cleared the exams.  This highlights its efficacy in helping children catch up on learning losses.

Furthermore, the accelerated learning program is already in the process of adapting to distance-learning approaches. Right after COVID-19 pandemic was recognized in Pakistan and a lockdown policy announced, key content from the syllabus was digitized and steps are now being taken to explore low-tech solutions such as radio/tv.

Furthermore, the program ensures that young girls do not face additional inequity and suffer further stress and anxiety during the pandemic. Girls are taught core life-skills through short animated films and mobile cinema, which can create a positive change in their attitudes and mental resilience. This teaches strong values of leadership, communication, health & hygiene and critical thinking ability.

In a post-pandemic world, a lot of children are at risk of being left behind their global peers due to time away from school. The challenge is to provide these children learning solutions that can quickly make-up for the gaps that may emerge, and to do it within the limited resources available. Given the large-scale and successful implementation over a wide region and with a large number of children, A3G provides governments in the Global South with a potential blue-print on how they can meet their needs.

The post Preparing for the new normal in Pakistan amid COVID 19 – A case for accelerated learning appeared first on World Education Blog.

All over the world, he Covid-19 pandemic has led to school closures. Poorer nations have tended to bring in stricter measures, relative to the severity of their outbreaks, than richer nations. This tendency is expected to continue, since countries with less-developed healthcare systems have to act more cautiously. This raises the questions of what kind of school outcomes are likely to be affected most, and how the most vulnerable students will fare in terms of these outcomes. Prosocial skills – which lead to ‘helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering’ – are likely to be among the outcomes affected for many students, and disproportionately so for those with lower socio-economic status.

Prosocial skills are important in times of health crisis. Their importance has been documented in various contexts, including communities, firms, volunteer associations, political organizations and schools. Within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, several studies show that the speed and effectiveness of the process of crisis recovery are strongly influenced by the levels of trust and social capital, which are positively linked with prosocial behaviours. More prosocial people are more likely to follow physical distancing and hygiene recommendations, inform themselves about how they can help others, donate to fighting Covid-19, and buy a cloth face mask.

Prosocial skills are important for learning. Developing prosocial skills in school is an important goal by itself, but also a means for making a positive learning environment. Analyses on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data, which included a new assessment of student collaborative problem solving skills, found that collaborative school environments are positively correlated with science results, as well as with students’ attitudes toward school. They also show that the relationship between collaborative problem-solving performance and socio-economic status is positive in almost every country/economy that participated in the 2015 assessment, and that richer countries tend to have higher means of the collaborative problem solving skill scores.

Can online learning develop prosocial skills?

Most experts expect that the Covid-19 pandemic will accelerate global educational trends toward distance learning. Recent work found evidence that various web-based technologies afford a compelling multimodal communication that can contribute to prosocial development. However, we know from previous research on ICT approaches in education that several issues must be addressed.

Distance learning ignores meaningful child participation

First, student participation is important both as an aim and as means for learning. Meaningful participation of children is supported by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children’s views should be sought, heard and taken into account in decisions, in relation to all matters that concern them. However, a recent survey of professionals, contacted through children’s participation and rights networks in 20 European countries, showed that 70% could not identify a single Covid-19 related child participation initiative. Consequently, any new online approaches should incorporate objectives to increase opportunities for children to collectively share their ideas, to ensure that they can highlight concerns, inform decisions, and hold decision-makers to account.

Bandwidth impacts interpretation

Second, the quality of internet connection and related services can have important consequences on how students view their peers and teachers, and wider society. Even short delays on conferencing systems tend to shape participants’ views of other people negatively. Therefore, school systems need to ensure access to good quality synchronous teaching.

Online learning cuts interaction

Third, online learners tend to feel isolated because of their physical separation from other learners and the instructor. Developing learning communities can alleviate the isolation problem and motivate learners to persist in their learning. Several analyses indicate that the development of an online learning community benefits from using both asynchronous and synchronous technologies that create a shared space in which students and instructor interact, that both task-oriented discussions and social interactions should be encouraged, and that students should be assigned tasks that require collaboration.

Future research is needed to validate the guidelines for developing prosocial behaviours and collaborative skills, particularly in times of crises such as that of today. The guidelines should be tested and refined to address context-specific needs and for addressing challenges related to the equitable provision of education during times of crisis. Prosocial skills are as important as any others and deserve not to be ignored.

The post The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on prosocial skills appeared first on World Education Blog.

Since March, teachers from three non-state primary schools run by Peepul, serving low-income communities in south Delhi, have been attempting to reach over 1000 students who can no longer attend school during lockdown. Their challenge: to keep every child learning. Initially, only 55% of these children had access to a smartphone to receive lesson content and stay in touch with their teachers. By casting a wider net to neighbours and extended family, this was increased to 75% of students. But a quarter remain without easy access to learning materials, at risk of slipping through the cracks. Many from migrant families have left the city and returned to villages making them more difficult to track down. Even for those with a smartphone, difficulties abound. With incomes squeezed due to economic shut-down, parents who are small daily wage earners face a choice between purchasing mobile data for their child’s education or buying food for the coming days.

The challenges faced by these teachers and students reveal a glimpse of a story being replicated the world over in government and non-state schools. Discontinuing education during this period could severely impact children’s learning, yet tried and tested strategies for how to continue are in short supply. The education sector is in largely unchartered territory and non-state schools are no exception. Far from it – instead, they are grappling with risks to their survival that are testing their ability to operate through and beyond the Covid-19 crisis.

The non-state sector serves a large and growing share of students, including low-income communities

Following several decades of growth in the non-state education sector, today, around 20-30% of children globally are educated outside of government schools. According to 2018 data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 42% of pre-primary, 18% of primary, and 26% of secondary students globally were enrolled in the non-state sector – a vibrant mix of non-profit, for-profit, and faith-based organizations providing schooling and other education services. In low- and middle-income countries, the sector caters for a sizeable share of the poorest students. In India, just under half of children are educated in privately-managed schools, with one third coming from the poorest 40% of the population. Survey data in seven sub-Saharan African cities found that approximately 1.8 million low-income children were being educated in non-state schools, with enrolment in this sector as high as 84% (Kampala) and 60% (Nairobi).

In a new global education landscape of school shutdowns and ‘distance learning’, the sector is asking itself the question: how do we ensure continuity of learning specifically for the poorest children? GSF has 50 members spanning 33 countries and collectively running or supporting over 17,000 schools reaching 2.5 million children. In a survey of our members, 72% of respondents described the issue of continuing to educate their students as “extremely challenging”. It is often the poorest students who are hardest to reach, an issue just as pressing for non-state schools as for government schools. The difficulties cited by our members in reaching their students echo those of the education sector at large: limited connectivity, the prohibitive cost of data, little access to devices to sustain online learning, and non-literate parents. On top of this, safeguarding and the well-being of children is a big concern, with our members finding that the changed circumstances are making it increasingly difficult to respond to student safety and wellbeing.

Non-state organisations are valuable collaborators in efforts to keep children learning through the crisis

In GSF’s member survey, 59% of respondents reported active involvement in community efforts to tackle the pandemic, from disseminating accurate health information and WASH resources, to providing families with food. SEED schools in Lagos, Nigeria, a network of 715 low-cost private schools, have established SEED C.A.R.E.S., a holistic effort to provide crisis support to students, such as food aid to families and resources for remote learning to schools.

Spark Schools in South Africa have made all of their instruction materials open source, and Rising Academies developed free, structured curriculum content for delivery via radio and SMS in Sierra Leone and Liberia – Rising on Air. Rising’s response, learning from the Ebola crisis, sought to support governments with a far-reaching low-tech solution that could be mobilised quickly to maintain the connection between schools and children, vital for improving the prospect of children returning to school long-term. So far, Rising on Air materials have been used by governments and partners in 14 countries.

Covid-19 is placing the survival of non-state schools at risk

Of surveyed GSF members, 62% described ‘continuing to operate’ also as “extremely challenging” in the circumstances. They reported not only battling lost school-fee revenue, but other crucial sources of income at risk, with donors pausing contributions; government subsidies on hold or delayed; and reduced access to capital from financial institutions squeezed by economic shocks. Among respondents, 59% are not receiving additional support from government, investors or donors. The existence of affordable private schools in Bangalore and low-cost private schools in Lagos is ‘hand to mouth’, depending on meagre fees received from parents who may have lost livelihoods. Schools such as these do not have a financial ‘buffer’ – they cannot afford to continue paying rent on premises and salaries for staff. Even when schools re-open, contractions in household income will inhibit the ability of families to pay school fees.

During this pandemic, governments and education partners around the world are right to prioritise government schools where the majority of children are educated. But segments of the non-state education sector face closure or collapse without support. Failure of these schools, either now, or in the future, would affect swathes of children and leave public education systems to absorb high numbers of additional students, something we may be seeing early indications of in Peru.

Our plea to governments, the private sector and education funders is not to forget the non-state education sector. It is grappling with specific vulnerabilities without the safety net of the public purse to ensure both short-term survival, and continuity of services when schooling resumes.

We ask that:

1. Governmentsconsider, in the design of subsidy and support programmes, the unique vulnerabilities of the non-state education sector, and that they provide targeted subsidies for vulnerable households in low-income communities;
2. Private sector institutions – financial institutions, network providers and education technology companies – extend support to non-state providers through: access to credit for low-fee private school providers suffering a fall in revenue; concessions on costs of data – a major barrier to accessing online learning in low-income communities; and expanded access to online learning resources for students and teacher training resources;
3. International education fundersoffer maximum flexibility with existing funding and provide additional short-term funding to ensure survival of grantees and investees and the resumption of services when the pandemic allows.

The post Why non-state education requires support in the current pandemic appeared first on World Education Blog.

This analysis was a follow on from a broader analysis of donor aid to gender equality in education from our new Gender GEM Report released today at the G7 France – UNESCO International Conference. The Report, as we showed on this morning’s blog, gives five key steps to stamping out gender inequality in education.

Key for the G7 ministers of education and development lining up in Paris today is our emphasis on the need for donors to have up-to-date policy frameworks on gender equality in education and to follow champion countries such as Canada. But this is just a starting point. Programming needs to sharpen its focus on the key question of how interesting and innovative projects can graduate into national policies. Adherence to principles of aid effectiveness and donor coordination requires agencies to build in sustainability, capacity development and evaluation so that good practice is identified and rolled out.

As part of the preparation for today’s Conference, the GEM Report team and UNESCO sent a questionnaire to the aid agencies of the G7 countries, selected international organizations and NGOs, asking them to put forward their flagship projects for tackling 12 priorities in girls’ education. We wanted to look at the different types of responses to gender inequality key actors are taking. The full summary is in our new Report. The key policies we identified are here:

1. Fight negative gender norms. Many focus on sports for development, mentorship schemes, engaging community level champions and encouraging girls’ participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects to build better gender norms.
2. Increase equitable access to education: The key policies prioritized here are conditional cash transfers, food for education initiatives, second chance programmes and strong technical and vocational training for women in key industries.
3. Strengthen teaching and learning resources: Donors support the revision of curriculum frameworks help develop gender-responsive toolkits for teachers, and encourage the provision of financial incentives for female teachers in remote locations.
4. Improve the learning environment: Donors are supporting the roll-out of community schools and local learning centres, encouraging the development of legal frameworks and codes of conduct, and stand behind minimum standard packages on water and sanitation.

As a further response to this year’s G7 focus, the GEM Report team carried out an analysis to feed into its call to strengthen gender-responsive education sector planning. We looked at the 20 countries with the largest gender gaps in education to see what policies on gender equality they prioritized in their plans.

Our analysis found that cash and in-kind transfers are the most popular policy, featuring in three out of four plans. Curriculum and textbook reform, girls’ participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programmes, and safe access to schools, were the least common, appearing in only a fifth of countries’ plans. The plans of Angola, the Central African Republic, Djibouti and Mauritania made scant references to gender inequalities in education, but those of Niger, Guinea and Somalia have strong roadmaps for change.

You can access all our key messages from today’s Gender GEM Report and join in the conversation with #DontIgnoreHer.

The post Over half of G7 aid to education goes to achieving gender equality appeared first on World Education Blog.

“We were blind, now our eyes have been opened … the educated children help us see. (Zahra, mother)” (Changezi and Biseth, 2011)

Family and community involvement is key to overcome disadvantage in education – and all the more so for migrant and refugee students. The world is full with such examples, for instance in the United States for Latin American or Vietnamese diasporas, in the Netherlands for second-generation Turks and Moroccans, in Pakistan for Hazara girls or in Canada among African and Caribbean-born immigrants.

However, there are many reasons why parents of migrant or refugee children may be reluctant to become involved in their education. One of these reasons is because segregation by origin often overlaps with socio-economic segregation. They may feel marginalized and lack confidence because they don’t speak the language of instruction or because they have a lower level of education. This can prevent parents from becoming fully involved in their children’s schooling. In France, for example, only 5% of parents of immigrant students from Sahel, Latin America and the Caribbean have a university degree compared to 19% of French parents. Moreover, more than twice as many children with Turkish or Malian parents repeat as least one grade in high school in France compared to children with French parents.

Immigrant parents may also not feel as welcome to engage with schools as native-born parents and can feel they have little influence on how their children are treated or taught in schools as a result. Such discrimination can be intentional or unintentional and stem from factors including lack of connection with immigrant communities, inadequate teacher education or a testing culture focused on narrow learning metrics.

Many programmes encourage the links between schools and the community

The importance of parental and community involvement has led to many initiatives often started by NGOs and civil society providing mentoring or guidance to parents and/or their children.  In some cases programmes are started by governments too. In France, for example, the programme ‘Ouvrir l’école aux parents pour la réussite des enfants’ is co-funded by the Ministries of the Interior and National Education to foster parents’ knowledge of the French education system. Ten times the number of schools benefit from the programme today than ten years ago. In 2017-2018, almost 8,000 parents of foreign students took these courses in France, with women in the majority. Most of them had come from Africa and the Maghreb, but also from Asia, Eastern Europe or South America.

Local governments also play a major role helping engage migrant parents in their children’s education. In Zurich, Switzerland, the Quality in Multi-Ethnic Schools project focuses on language, attainment and integration support. It aims to foster parental involvement using intercultural mediators between parents and teachers and establishing parent councils. In Lithuania, the Your Diary program, is a digital platform allowing teachers, pupils, parents and school administrators to share information about education activities and events. Other examples that fulfil similar aims include the programmes Escolhas (Portugal), SPICE (Spain and Iceland), and Flex-id (Norway). In Argentina, Spain, Italy and Mexico, Scholas Occurrentes provides instruction and recreational activities to build bridges among children and youth of different origins.

Cultural facilitators or brokers (teachers, instructional aides, school counsellors, community members) with backgrounds similar to immigrant students can also bridge language and culture differences between immigrant and host communities. They can offer translation services, help navigate the education system, educate school personnel about cultural practices and beliefs, help parents advocate for their children’s needs, and provide other practical assistance, such as locating language classes or employment opportunities. In Sweden, for instance, the municipality of Linköping trains tutors with knowledge of Somali or Arabic to act as ‘link people’ for the Learning Together programme. Sharing common language and culture, they act as role models, helping foreign-born parents stay motivated and avoid misunderstandings.

Initiatives to reach the most vulnerable parents outside traditional structures are particularly important for the most vulnerable families, such as the undocumented. For example, the Education without Borders network in France offers sessions to advise undocumented families on their rights and to help them complete official document.

Including the local community in decisions about curricular content can also influence the implementation of intercultural education policies. In Lisbon, an alternative inclusive curriculum, developed with parents and students, bridged home and school cultures and led to more positive, trusting views of schools among fifth- and sixth-graders. A resource on the Arab community in the city introduces Arab culture and discusses myths and misconceptions about Arabs and Muslims. The series offers suggestions to teachers on how to connect with immigrant and refugee parents and communities and get to know students in an open way.

Our latest Report was about building bridges, not walls, to foster an inclusive education for migrants and those forcibly displaced. These bridges also refer to those that must be built between schools and the family, creating the inclusive society that an inclusive education needs to thrive.

The post Parents and communities need to be engaged in migrant children’s education appeared first on World Education Blog.

Two-thirds of migrants are destined for high-income countries, where they make up almost one in five students. But they are unequally spread between schools. In Berlin, for instance, one in five primary schools enrol twice as many students with migrant background than live in their catchment area. In 2017, in Italy, 17% of primary classrooms had more than 30% first-generation foreign-born students.

In France, five times as many children of non-EU immigrants as children of French or EU parents attend lower secondary school in disadvantaged areas. In the Netherlands, some schools now have 80% immigrant students. We also found that non-native speakers in the United Kingdom were more likely to attend school with disadvantaged native speakers.

This segregation is exacerbated by native students moving out of schools where there may be high concentration of immigrants to wealthier neighbourhoods, for instance in Denmark and the Netherlands. In the United States, for every four new non-English speakers in public secondary education, one native student switched to private school. As we covered in last year’s GEM Report, school choice is increasing inequalities; we found that it increased ethnic polarization of schools in Australia.

We described some of the policies countries have trialed in order to address this segregation at the global launch event for the Report in Berlin yesterday. The francophone community in Belgium, for instance, tried a few years ago to introduce a lottery system for school assignment, which overruled the previous law that assigned schools by proximity. But this was also overturned with a weaker approach based on partnerships between schools. France tried to change its catchment area boundaries, but saw many children of middle-class parents switching their child to private schools as a result in cities like Marseille. Italy set a quota of no more than 30% of ‘foreign-born’ students in a class, but still almost 20% of classes exceeded the limit.

If not separated by school, our report also found that many countries are separating low achievers into less demanding tracks. And, while vocational training can motivate disadvantaged students put off by more academic tracks, it may also compromise subsequent opportunities for students with immigrant backgrounds. Sorting by ability in this way also leads to inequality and a stronger association between social background and student results.

But such tracking starts as young as age 10 in Austria and Germany. In Germany, even after controlling for test scores in reading and mathematics, immigrants were seven percentage points more likely than their native peers to receive a recommendation for the lowest track.

We found the same issues in other countries too: Over five times as many students of Moroccan descent were in vocational training in the Netherlands, for example, in comparison to the Dutch. And this tracking particularly disadvantages male students with immigrant backgrounds.

The reason why these issues matter of course, is that they affect migrants’ experiences, and opportunities in school. In the European Union, twice as many foreign-born youth as natives left school early in 2017. Learning outcomes are also far lower: In 2015, in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, first-generation immigrants were 32% less likely and second-generation immigrants 15% less likely than natives to attain basic proficiency in reading, mathematics and science.

These cases brought to light the need to spend proper time examining education systems to fully understand the different degrees of inclusion of migrants in schools. They showed that immigrants may be nominally included, but practically excluded from education, and where work remained to be done.

The post Immigrants and refugees are at high risk of segregation into different schools and slower school tracks in European countries appeared first on World Education Blog.

As Malawi prepares for Presidential elections next May, the Minister of Education Bright Msaka has announced the abolition of secondary school fees with immediate effect. The move is being presented as removing barriers preventing all children accessing secondary education, but the speed of the change could end up increasing the marginalisation of children from the poorest households.

Malawi is not alone in abolishing fees for secondary schooling: other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Ghana and Sierra Leone, have recently made similar announcements. The reform seems to be closely linked to national political cycles, while using the education Sustainable Development Goal’s target 4.1 as justification. While expanding access to equitable and inclusive quality secondary education has many benefits, connecting the move to political announcements raises important questions, with higher risks for long-term consequences.

Risks of overnight change

Political parties would today do well to remember the experiences of the roll-out of fee-free primary education in Malawi as part of an election promise in 1994. Overnight, primary enrolment surged by 50%, rising from 1.9 million to nearly 3 million students. With limited forward planning, the education system was caught unprepared, as our evidence at the time showed, and the poorest suffered the most. Primary schools struggled under the huge increase in the numbers of children enrolling without financial compensation for the loss of fee income

While the latest fee abolition will hit school budgets, fees themselves still only comprise a small share of the amount households spend on education. It is highly likely that schools will need to find ways to charge parents and communities even larger ‘unofficial’ sums to make up the fee gap. Such informal approaches to raising funds lack transparency, and can often hit the poorest households and communities the hardest.

The problem starts with primary

The Minister justified his announcement on the basis of the “financial challenges facing most parents especially the rural masses”, stating that “many children that get selected to secondary schools do not go to school because their parents cannot afford fees.”

However, our research suggests the problem actually begins earlier in the educational cycle. During a recent visit to a primary school near the lakeshore area of Northern Malawi, we witnessed enrolment of 400 pupils with just three teachers and three classrooms for all eight grades. To reach the school, we had to crawl uphill to avoid slipping and falling into the river, which had to be crossed via an unfinished bridge.

This school is sadly not unusual. Most pupils enrolled at primary level are concentrated in the lower grades, where it is not uncommon – especially in more remote rural areas – to find up to 200 children being taught by a single teacher, sitting on dusty floors either in a cramped classroom space or outdoors. This lack of classrooms and teachers has persisted for the past 20 years and continues to contribute to limited learning taking place.

Under conditions like these many of the most disadvantaged children do not even make it to the end of the primary cycle, let alone transition to secondary. Based on the latest government enrolment data, almost two-thirds of all school students in Malawi are concentrated in the first four grades of primary school. The last primary grade (Standard 8) accounts for just 5% of all enrolled children, as many have already left the system. As a result, enrolment in secondary school is minimal (Figure 1).

Figure 1: In Malawi, enrolment diminishes as children progress through the education system

Source: Education Management Information System data, 2016

The most disadvantaged suffer the most, with only 15 out of every 100 of the poorest girls in rural areas entering secondary school, and almost none having the opportunity to complete this level (Figure 2). Without reforms at the primary level, these children will have no chance of benefiting from the abolition of secondary school fees. While aid from the UK and US is supporting reforms to improve learning in the first four grades, these have yet to take effect.

Figure 2: In Malawi, only around one-quarter of the most disadvantaged children complete primary school

Source: Authors’ calculations from the World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE), 2015

Skewed government funding

Malawian primary schools face a severe shortage of resources, hitting the disadvantaged the most. Even over the period of the Millennium Development Goals, government spending on primary education as a share of total education spending has fallen from 53% in 2000 to 44% in 2015. By contrast, both secondary and post-secondary have seen their share rise. In 2015, secondary education’s share of total spending was 28%, up from 21% in 2000.

This shift away from primary schooling is even more concerning given that spending on education fell by as much as 13% between 2013 and 2017 in real terms. In addition, our recent analysis shows that Malawi has one of the most skewed public spending patterns across African countries: only around US$10 is spent on the poorest 10% of the population for every US$100 spent on the richest.

Yet despite the equity case for greater investment in primary education, particularly in the lower grades, the new commitment to fee-free secondary education will clearly require additional resources. Schools will need compensation for lost revenue in collecting fees, but also more money for the extra buildings and teachers needed. It is not clear that a careful analysis of these cost implications has yet been undertaken. Without an immediate increase in funding for the education sector overall, the already limited resources available for primary schooling are likely to be squeezed even further, again harming the most marginalised most.

A better solution

A more cost-effective – and equitable – way for government to support ‘the rural masses’ would be to prioritise funding to the parts of the system that will enable the most disadvantaged to make progress.

First, it would require prioritising education as a whole within the national budget. Second, it would mean giving greater importance to primary education within the education budget. Third, and crucially, it would be about making sure the lower primary grades get their fair share of resources. Fourth, it would mean targeting support towards the most disadvantaged who do get to the end of primary, and for whom secondary school fees do act as a genuine impediment towards secondary school transition. Fifth, current levels of aid to education are very small. If donors are willing to invest more, primary schooling needs to continue to be their priority.

The lessons from the introduction of fee-free primary education almost 25 years ago are just as relevant for Malawi’s politicians today as they announce fee-free secondary schooling. If past experiences have taught us anything, it is that without careful planning, announcement of such policies will have lasting implications for efficiency, equity and learning.

The post Who benefits from abolishing secondary school fees in Malawi, and what are the costs? appeared first on World Education Blog.

In late August, Sierra Leone’s newly elected President Julius Madaa Bio, announced a five year initiative to roll out free pre-primary, primary and secondary education on 17 September. The new policy is intended to guarantee free school places for one and a half million children, as well as training for thousands of teachers, and free textbooks for all.

Mr. Madaa Bio campaigned hard on the promise of free education in the build-up to the election, which might have helped seal his victory. Across Sub-Saharan Africa many electoral platforms have been built around the pledge. A study of African elections and education policies noted 16 instances of user-fee abolition in sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2007, for instance: 11 countries were found to have abolished school fees immediately after elections, and in 8 of those instances, a new national leader had been elected.

Yet, electoral promises are one thing, delivering is another. In our 2015 report, we noted that many countries in the region had failed in fully carrying through school fee abolition since 2000, often due to inadequate financing.   

The new Sierra Leone administration is staking its reputation on this policy and the President has promised a large cash injection from his own pocket. Along with the Chief Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Basic Primary and Secondary Education he will contribute three months’ salary to the initiative, while the Finance Minister will donate two, according to local media reports. Government spending on education will be hiked from 11% to 20%, and support is coming from international partners too, including the World Bank, the United Nations and the United Kingdom.

Behind the great ambitions, there are, however, grounds for cynicism. The President’s political opponents and members of the public have voiced strong doubts that free schooling will ever be more than just an ideal. This cynicism comes from a previous failed attempt in the country to roll-out free primary education in 2010.  When trying to make up for the revenue lost in school-fees, the per pupil subsidy was set too low at $2.20. Schools’ operating costs were not adequately covered, and schools differing needs were not taken into account. Fees were hastily brought back., in many parts of the country.

Many parents also dismiss President Bio’s announcement as pure populism, claiming that education will remain out of reach because of the expense of uniforms alone. The costs of uniforms are so crippling that, according to Poverty Action Lab, giving a uniform to a student in Sierra Leone reduced school absenteeism by 43%. Others claim that subsidies for university students will be entirely withdrawn to fund free schooling, although the education ministry says they will not be withdrawn altogether.

Whatever the doubts, the initiative is certainly ambitious given Sierra Leone’s history.  The country is still recovering from civil war of 1991-2002, and its recent Ebola epidemic which killed 4000 people. In many parts of the country there aren’t enough school buildings, and currently only 40% of teachers are formally-trained at primary level. This is why NGOs in the region are praising the free-school initiative’s ‘direction of travel’, while cautioning that the sheer scale of the training and infrastructure needs means progress can only be gradual.

If free education for all is to be achieved, in addition to building new schools and tackling the lack of teacher training, the government also needs to address serious problems of inclusion. Many rural children in Sierra Leone do not regularly attend school even when there are no fees to pay, likely due to hidden costs of education such as uniforms or books, or the requirement to do farm or other work.  There is hope on this front, as we noted in the 2015 GMR. From 2000 to 2010, the percentage gap of those who had never been to school in urban and rural areas in Sierra Leone fell from 31 to just 8 points.

Similarly, ambitions to improve access to education for all do not fit with the fact that pregnant girls are still banned from going to school in the country. UNICEF figures show that 39% of girls are married before the age of 18, and Sierra Leone’s early pregnancy rate is one of the highest in the world. Such ingrained cultural barriers to education clearly won’t be smashed overnight, although rapid progress is being made. 

Sierra Leone was known as the ‘Athens of West Africa’ because it was home to the first higher education institution in the region, Fourah Bay College, established in 1827. West Africa’s first girls’ secondary school, the Annie Walsh Memorial School was also founded in Sierra Leone in 1849.  In reality, this was no golden age of universal education. Resources and funding were concentrated across a handful of institutions in the capital, Freetown. But today the country has demonstrated its commitment to developing its education system in the face of significant challenges. Perhaps with the right level of budgetary commitment and foreign aid earmarked for schooling it can deliver on this academic year’s promise of free and inclusive education for all its children. We hope so.

The post Free education for all in Sierra Leone? Can it happen? appeared first on World Education Blog.