As a continuation of the report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, which tells the story of where and how effective learning interventions have scaled up around the world, the Millions Learning case studies provide an in-depth look at 12 of the programs and policies explored in the report.

These case studies focus on a range of topics—from teacher development to financial literacy to early grade reading to technological innovation—each unpacking the factors behind their expansion and increased scope of impact.

In each case study, you will find the following:

• An at a glance overview of the program or policy;
• Background on the intervention’s inception, organizational model, and scaling story;
• Evidence of the case study’s impact on improving learning outcomes;
• A timeline of the case study’s key scaling events;
• An analysis of the case study’s scaling experiences, including the key drivers that have contributed to, or in some instances impeded, the process; and
• A synthesis of the case study’s lessons learned.

Rich with detail, these case studies offer valuable insight to help current and future education interventions expand access and improve education quality for children and youth around the world.

To learn more about the Millions Learning case studies, please visit our interactive case studies and/or watch our case study videos.

      

 

 

We conclude our Millions Learning video series with Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Street program, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Sesame Street utilizes television, radio, videos, websites, books, and social media to educate preschool-aged children on literacy and math, emotional well-being, health and wellness, and respect and understanding across more than 150 countries. Sesame Street began in the United States in 1969 and today serves as the single largest informal educator of young children in the world, reaching approximately 156 million children.

In this video, Sashwati Banerjee, managing director of Sesame Workshop, India, shares how research is part of the organization’s DNA, as well as the role that technology plays in expanding access to Sesame Street and evaluating its impact. Banerjee then explains how Sesame Street’s 39 local co-productions balance maintaining Sesame Street’s universal style with localizing content based on country-specific needs.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Sashwati Banerjee of Sesame Workshop, India

      

 

 

As we near the end of our Millions Learning video series, we highlight Pratham’s Read India initiative, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Read India works to ensure that children in grades three to five acquire basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills by identifying children’s current learning levels, regardless of age or grade, and grouping them by level for instruction—also known as “teaching at the right level.” Starting in 2007, Read India reaches today more than 6 million children indirectly through its state- and district-level partnerships.

In this video, Madhav Chavan, Pratham co-founder and executive board member, sheds light on Pratham’s experience working with policymakers at all levels to implement Read India across 23 Indian states. He then discusses the role of technology in Pratham’s work and its future potential, as well as Read India’s success in mobilizing a broad volunteer base. Chavan closes by outlining the importance of scaling up in small steps, ultimately using “quick wins” to demonstrate that large-scale progress is possible in the long run.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Madhav Chavan of Pratham

      

 

 

As part of our Millions Learning video series, we learn about INJAZ, one of the 14 case studies explored in the Millions Learning report. INJAZ, an independent Jordanian nonprofit, provides youth from grade 7 to university level with workforce readiness and entrepreneurial education to prepare them for changes in the labor market. Since its inception, the INJAZ curriculum has been delivered through a network of 28,000 trained volunteers across Jordan, reaching 1.2 million youth to date.

In this video, Deema Bibi, CEO of INJAZ, discusses how partnering with the private sector has contributed to INJAZ’s expansion in Jordan, allowing it to shift from an extracurricular activity to part of the official secondary school schedule. Bibi then shares INJAZ’s experience of scaling across all 12 Jordanian governorates, as well as the specific factors that have contributed to the program’s overall success.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Deema Bibi, CEO of INJAZ

      

 

 

Up next in our Millions Learning video series, we explore the Zambian government’s Lesson Study practice, which is one of the 14 case studies investigated in the Millions Learning report. Lesson Study is a practice of peer-to-peer collaborative learning by which teachers share knowledge and skills to improve teaching methods. This approach promotes teamwork among teachers and improves the supervision of school managers, ultimately strengthening Zambian school systems.

In this video, Esvah Chizambe, assistant director of the Directorate of Teacher Education and Specialized Services in Zambia’s Ministry of General Education, discusses how Lesson Study has maintained quality as the practice has scaled across the country. This has been possible by establishing clear roles, structure, and responsibilities across the education system, while also providing enough flexibility to adapt the practice to the needs of teachers and students.

Chizambe highlights the importance of Zambia’s 10-year partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which has provided important technical assistance and ensured that the Zambian government maintains program ownership.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Esvah Chizambe of Zambia’s Lesson Study

      

 

 

As part of our Millions Learning video series, we are diving into Worldreader, one of the 14 case studies explored in the Millions Learning report. Worldreader provides culturally and linguistically relevant digital books on low cost e-readers and mobile phone applications to children and their families in low- and middle-income countries. The non-profit organization integrates context-appropriate technology, access to more than 31,000 books in 43 languages, teacher support, and community engagement to help instill a love for reading among users.

In this video, Carol Williams, director of Worldreader West Africa, discusses the different uses of Worldreader’s digital content by girls and boys, as well as the role that partnerships have played in Worldreader’s success. In doing so, Williams explains some challenges Worldreader has faced in scaling up to ultimately reach 5.6 million people.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Carol Williams of Worldreader

      

 

 

We are kicking off the new Millions Learning video series with a spotlight on Teach For All, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Teach For All is an international network of local, independent partner country organizations dedicated to improving educational opportunities for children and youth around the globe. From China to Bulgaria to Peru to Ghana, each partner organization recruits and trains recent top-performing graduates and professionals to teach in their country’s underserved communities for two years, with the ultimate goal of developing a cadre of education leaders, both inside and outside of the classroom.

In this video, Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, discusses Teach For All’s unique approach to building a pipeline of future “learning leaders and champions” and the role that a supportive policy environment plays in enabling this process. Kopp then explains how Teach For All grew from the original Teach For America and Teach First in the United Kingdom to an international network of 40 partner countries, sharing her own lessons learned along the way.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Wendy Kopp of Teach For All

      

 

 

Jenny Perlman Robinson, a nonresident fellow in the Center for Universal Education, and Rebecca Winthrop, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education, discuss a new report: "Millions learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries."

In this podcast, Robinson and Winthrop discuss the state of children’s education around the world while highlighting some cases that show how the quality and reach of children’s education can be improved. “Nine out of 10 kids in the world is in primary school, but there is still a lot to be done,” Winthrop says. “A lot of kids are dropping out before they finish secondary school. Seventy-five percent of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa enter primary school but only 8 percent finish secondary school.” 

Also in this podcast a Coffee Break from Paul Ginsburg, director of the Health Policy Center, and an interview with author Malcolm Sparrow on his new book, “Handcuffed: What Holds Policing Back, and the Keys to Reform.”

Show Notes:

Millions learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries

Getting millions to learn: The impact of Sesame Street around the world

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen in all the usual places, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu. 

Also, check our our new podcast, Intersections, where two experts discuss angles on policy issues, hosted by Adrianna Pita.

Thanks to audio engineer and producer Zack Kulzer, with editing help from Mark Hoelscher, plus thanks to Carissa Nitchy, Bill Finan, Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Rebecca Viser, and our intern Sarah AbdelRahim.

      

 

 

Over the past few decades, there has been tremendous progress getting more children into school around the world. However, too often students are still not mastering core academic content and higher-order thinking skills. In other words, this rapid scaling of schooling over the past 150 years has not translated into the scaling of learning.

In a new video, we introduce the Millions Learning project, which examines where and how quality education has scaled in low- and middle-income countries around the world, with the ultimate goal of helping more children and youth gain access to high-quality learning experiences that lead to lasting improvements in their lives.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education in Developing Countries, and watch the live webcast of our report launch event, Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?, on day two of our Center for Universal Education Symposium.

Video

• Why focus on scaling learning for children and youth in developing countries?

      

 

 

Event Information

In 2015, 193 countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new global agenda that is more ambitious than the preceding Millennium Development Goals and aims to make progress on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Goal 4, "To ensure inclusive and quality education for all, with relevant and effective learning outcomes," challenges the international education community to meet universal access plus learning by 2030. We know that access to primary schooling has scaled up rapidly over previous decades, but what can be learned from places where transformational changes in learning have occurred? What can governments, civil society, and the private sector do to more actively scale up quality learning?

On April 18-19, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings launched "Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education in Developing Countries," a comprehensive study that examines where learning has improved around the world and what factors have contributed to that process. This two-day event included two sessions. Monday, April 18 focused on the role of global actors in accelerating progress to meeting the SDGs. The second session on Tuesday, April 19 included a presentation of the Millions Learning report followed by panel discussions on the role of financing and technology in scaling education in developing countries.

 Join the conversation on Twitter #MillionsLearning

Video

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?
• Scaling quality education: The launch of the Millions Learning report
• Do funders help or hinder scaling in education?
• What role can technology play in scaling education?

Audio

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 1 (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 2 (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160418_millions_learning_transcript
• 20160419_millions_learning_transcript

     

 

 

Around the world, countries are grappling with how to scale quality education for their children and youth. Quality education is at the center of a nation’s progress, and it is also enshrined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which 193 countries have recently committed to support.

Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries tells the story of where and how effective learning interventions have scaled in low- and middle-income countries. The study emerges from wide-ranging research on scaling and learning, including a deep dive into 14 case studies where state and non-state actors have pioneered, and in collaboration with a range of partners, scaled new approaches to education. While there is growing evidence of what is working to improve student learning, the report takes a look at how effective approaches that improve students’ learning have scaled.

Ultimately, Millions Learning finds that scaling quality learning requires a new norm of inclusive and adaptive education ecosystems—where there is space for innovation and experimentation to thrive, as well as the ability for ideas and approaches that most effectively improve learning to take root and spread. Based on the literature and cases explored, Millions Learning finds that governments play a pivotal role in this ecosystem. Not only is it their responsibility to deliver on every child’s right to a quality education, but they must also actively foster an environment in which all actors can effectively contribute their expertise—from households, to communities, to civil society organizations, to the private sector, and to academia. This requires leveraging all assets these actors bring as well as ensuring that the most marginalized children are reached.

In this study, you will find the following:

• An overview of the urgent need to accelerate progress in global education;
• Definitions of the different pathways to scale;
• An analysis of 14 “core ingredients” that contribute to scaling quality learning, organized into the four main areas of design, delivery, finance, and enabling environment;
• Recommendations of five key actions needed to create inclusive and adaptive education ecosystems.

Ultimately, Millions Learning seeks to catalyze a discussion, based on new evidence and insight, on how best to ensure that millions more children and youth learn the knowledge and skills needed to lead healthy, safe, and productive lives today and into the future.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report and/or join us for our report launch event, Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?, on April 18-19, 2016 at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education.

July 15th marks the world’s first International Youth Skills Day, a day to reflect on the importance of young people developing the skills, competencies, and knowledge they need for a safe and dignified livelihood. One organization that is already responding to this challenge is INJAZ.

In partnership with the public and private sector, INJAZ trains young people in Jordan to develop the soft and hard skills necessary to become competitive job candidates and successful entrepreneurs. Over the past 15 years, INJAZ has reached over one million young people in secondary schools, universities, and youth centers across Jordan through a multi-stage growth and positioning strategy, driven in part by visionary leadership, private sector engagement, and local champions.

INJAZ is responding to a shared regional struggle in the Middle East of growing youth populations paired with limited job opportunities by preparing youth to become productive members of their society and accelerate the development of the national economy. While the Middle East and North Africa experienced three percent growth during 2013-2014, the region has the highest unemployment rates in the world, particularly among youth aged 15 to 24-years-old.

INJAZ started in 1999 as a project under Save the Children with $4.9 million funding from USAID. Initially, it began as an extracurricular afterschool activity. In 2001, INJAZ was formally launched as a Jordanian NGO under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah. By 2002, INJAZ’s program was incorporated into the formal school class hours by allocating 40 minutes weekly to deliver the program.

In its early stages, INJAZ partnered with Junior Achievement (JA) and received the rights to use JA’s curricula in return for a yearly fee. During this time and with multiple years of generous support from USAID, INJAZ began developing and piloting its own curriculum in schools based on local needs. Today, INJAZ is a self-sustaining local organization with programs implemented across all 12 governorates through approximately 300 educational institutions and 40 universities and colleges every year.

Engaging the private sector. INJAZ adopts a unique approach to training students by partnering with private sector companies and engaging their qualified staff as unpaid trainers, or “volunteers,” to teach INJAZ programs at schools and universities. Private sector volunteers commit to teaching INJAZ courses for one hour per week for six to eight weeks every fall and spring semester depending on the nature of the course. A cadre of more than 800 individuals volunteers at approximately 1,300 sessions each year, forming the largest network of committed volunteers in Jordan today. A byproduct of this collaboration has been advancing a culture of volunteerism in Jordan. Beyond volunteering to teach, private sector companies support INJAZ by adopting schools, sharing information and data, and providing employment and internship opportunities to graduates.

Benefitting from visionary leadership. Much of the scaling success lies in the leadership of INJAZ. In 2004, a visionary social entrepreneur, Deema Bibi, was brought on to systematize, scale up, and sustain INJAZ as one of the leading youth employment organizations in Jordan. Bibi’s growth strategy was to expand the program in both reach and impact. She has strengthened INJAZ’s foundation by building institutional capacity and financial sustainability, and putting into place systems and procedures so that the institution could operate independently. Within three years of her arrival, INJAZ reached all 12 governorates throughout Jordan.

Leveraging local champions. Her Majesty Queen Rania’s early support has been instrumental in providing INJAZ with credibility and access to a wider network. The governmental King Abdullah II Fund for Development has also given significant support to INJAZ as it serves as the umbrella under which INJAZ operates in universities. Additionally, government support, specifically INJAZ’s partnership with Jordan’s Ministry of Education, has been crucial for scaling the school program, given the ministry’s role in institutionalizing and accrediting programs in schools. In 2010, the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MoPIC) became another key partner in helping INJAZ expand into Jordanian universities and colleges.

INJAZ’s Board of Trustees, comprised of representatives of well-established local and international companies and organizations, has also provided valuable insight into the local business and political environment. This contributes to the design of different INJAZ programs and sets the direction of the organization’s growth. The 50 CEO-level board members also contribute to the sustainability of INJAZ by making a contribution of $10,000 each (approximately 7,000 Jordanian dinars), a practice that started by the end of 2005 and has helped significantly in growing the organization.

There are three main challenges that INJAZ will need to continue to address as it enters this next phase of independence and expansion. These include:

1. Ensuring sustainability. It will be interesting to watch as INJAZ manages its newly found independence from USAID. Given that its leadership has been planning for sustainability over the past 10 years, it should be in a good position to weather some of the inevitable challenges ahead. These will likely include building financial sustainability beyond the generous annual contributions provided by its board, as well as maintaining costs and quality as INJAZ continues to expand to other types of learning environments (e.g., in and out of school), across education levels, and in its updated methods of delivery. The variations in INJAZ’s model have cost implications as well as risks to the program’s fidelity, but have been considered essential by INJAZ’s leadership for growth and quality of delivery.

2. Measuring impact. It is clear that students’ exposure to entrepreneurial and workforce skills has grown through INJAZ’s expansion. While INJAZ began as an extracurricular pilot project today it is participating in the national education system by offering courses addressing life skills, entrepreneurial skills, social and financial education, and many other market required skills. What is less clear, however, is what measurable impact this exposure is having on young people’s employment opportunities, civic engagement, life skills, and leadership skills. INJAZ will need to continue to rigorously test, report, and adjust based on these outcome metrics.

3. Standardizing volunteer engagement. One of the challenges of having such a large cadre of unpaid volunteers is the variability in quality. Volunteers come to INJAZ with a range of relevant training experience. It appears that the impact of each INJAZ class depends heavily on the volunteer’s ability to interpret the curriculum and present it appropriately to the class. Therefore, to help ensure the impact of its courses on students, INJAZ is has put into place a mandatory training at the beginning of each semester prior to teaching a class.

We look forward to learning from INJAZ as the organization continues to grow and evolve and sharing these experiences through the Millions Learning project.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education.

I have met many educational leaders in the midst of our Millions Learning project, but I find particularly inspiring those who are young, ambitious, bold, and impatient to see results. One such group is the founders of the nongovernmental organization Educate!, which develops Ugandan secondary school students’ business and leadership skills through hands-on learning and intensive mentoring. Eric Glustrom and Boris Bulayev, two of the three co-founders, started the initial iteration of Educate! while they were in college. Later joined by Angelica Towne, the three officially launched Educate! in 2008 and are part of a dynamic team behind the quickly expanding organization.

Educate! addresses a challenge that is far too common in many countries around the world—a mismatch between what is taught in school and what skills are demanded by the labor market. Perhaps no country faces this challenge more acutely than Uganda, which has the world’s youngest population coupled with a youth unemployment rate as high as 62 percent. The vast majority of jobs available are in the informal sector.

In response to this reality, Educate! has been working since 2009 to transform education in Uganda—with plans to do so across Africa—by scaling a practical, experience-based education model that teaches secondary school students the skills needed to start their own businesses.

More specifically, Educate! addresses the skills mismatch in three ways:

1. Delivering entrepreneurship and leadership training directly in secondary schools, targeting core skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, confidence, and resource mobilization;
2. Providing practical in-service training to teachers to develop these core skills; and
3. Advocating for its model of experience-based entrepreneurial education to be integrated into Uganda’s national education system.

Today, Educate! operates across 15 districts of Uganda reaching 85,000 students per year through its direct interventions in 250  public, private, and religious secondary schools (approximately 10 percent of secondary schools). It has reached an estimated 25,000 students per year through reforms they successfully advocated for in Uganda’s national curriculum and exams. It is being replicated and adapted in other countries across Africa.

The results have so far been impressive. Internal evaluations found that graduates earn 160 percent more than students who are just entering the program and 94 percent of graduates from the first two classes run a business, hold a job, or attend university. Mid-line results from a randomized control trial find that Educate! students overall earn double the income of their peers, are 64 percent more likely to own their own businesses, and are 123 percent more likely to have led a community project.

While there is a lot we are still learning, it appears some of the factors behind Educate!’s significant growth and impact include the following:

1.      Designing for scale, replicability and cost-efficiency from the outset

From the outset, Educate! has piloted with scale in mind. It has sought to aggressively grow without sacrificing quality. To achieve this, Educate! has gone through an iterative process to simplify and consolidate core program components that had previously been delivered separately. It has been honest about the trade offs involved with going to scale, making some cost- and efficiency-saving adjustments to the model. These adjustments included cutting back the curriculum so that it could be delivered in one rather than one-and-a-half years, increasing the number of students per mentor, and leveraging the role of teachers to support students in the annual business plan competition. Educate! is now scaling one replicable model in all schools across Uganda.

In addition to simplifying and bundling its core components to reach more schools, Educate! recognized early on that in order to achieved its desired impact, it also had to focus on systemic change. For them, this has meant advocating for changes to the national curriculum, exams, and teacher training so that future generations of students will leave school with the requisite skills needed to improve their lives. It also contributes to greater adoption by keeping its curriculum and materials open source and allowing “copylefters” to take and adapt the program to other countries.

Unlike many pilots that begin with a gold-plated model that is prohibitively expensive to scale, Educate! has considered financial sustainability from the beginning. The program reduces costs by leveraging existing infrastructure through partnering with schools, estimating current costs at $5,000 per school per year on average and projecting that costs will continue to drop with greater scale. A portion of this is increasingly covered by a cost-sharing model whereby Educate! charges schools a sliding fee to participate in the program. Schools contribute up to $200 per year, with plans to increase the cost as schools gain confidence in the model. As Educate! scales, it continues to experiment with other cost optimizing measures, such as redesigning the mentor role as a stipend fellowship rather than a full-time salaried position. It will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on mentor retention and program quality.

2.      Investing in tracking and analyzing impact

Educate! invests considerably in building tools that go beyond tracking participation to measuring impact. It dedicates 12-13 percent of its budget to monitoring and evaluation. This includes tracking 20 performance indicators on a weekly and monthly basis through SMS messaging and smartphones. Educate! built its own tool to measure leadership, creativity, self-efficacy, and savings behavior as it couldn’t find any existing tools to measure these “soft” skills appropriate for sub-Saharan African context. This instrument is called the Secondary Skills Assessment Tool and is open source for other organizations to use. It is continuously refined based on adjustments made to the program. Data is collected in real time, allowing Educate! to monitor  performance and make any necessary changes across all schools. This rapid program monitoring helps to maintain quality control as Educate! continues to expand.

3.       “Riding the reform” wave

Educate! has been opportunistic in its expansion and has strategically seized key moments to promote systemic change. In Uganda, it worked in partnership with the International Labor Organization and the Ugandan National Curriculum Development Center to advise on how pieces of Educate!’s leadership and entrepreneurial curriculum be adapted and integrated into the national upper secondary school curriculum and how these skills could be assessed in the national exam. As it expands to other countries, Educate! continues to look for opportunities to leverage reform efforts that are currently underway.

Perhaps infused by the DNA of its founders, Educate! is ambitious in its plans and impatient to achieve them. At the same time, it has been thoughtful and deliberate in its expansion—listening and learning from other’s experiences, making difficult choices where needed, and ultimately moving closer to its goal of ensuring that young people in Africa are equipped with the skills and competencies needed to drive long-term sustainable development in their countries.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education.

We were excited to learn of First Lady Michelle Obama’s visit to Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program in Siem Reap, Cambodia last week while traveling to promote the Let Girls Learn initiative. We too have been spending some time with Room to Read recently in order to better understand their impressive efforts at ensuring more children around the world are reading.

Room to Read is an education-focused NGO that improves learning for children in 10 countries across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. They do this by focusing on systemic changes within schools in low-income countries during two time periods that are particularly critical in a child’s schooling: early primary school for literacy acquisition, and secondary school for girls’ education. Room to Read’s literacy program develops children’s skills and habits of reading throughout primary school so they become lifelong, independent readers. Room to Read’s girls’ education program concentrates efforts during a girl’s transition into secondary school, when she is at the highest risk of dropping out of school. Through these approaches, Room to Read has reached more than 9.7 million children in 10 countries over the last 15 years.

From their earliest days of providing books and building libraries in Nepal, Room to Read has continued to expand their activities based on the needs of local communities. Through their library program and early cross-national evaluation, they identified that children were not in the habit of reading for pleasure and were not able to read at grade level. Therefore, in 2008, they piloted their reading and writing instruction program activities in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. This led to pilots in other countries and eventually a much larger-scale intervention that was incorporated across Room to Read programs. After noticing that girls were dropping out before transitioning to secondary school, Room to Read established its girls’ education program to help girls receive individual material and academic support; increase family, community, and school support for girls to stay in school; and help girls develop key life skills and negotiate important life decisions.

For Millions Learning, we are interested in Room to Read’s efforts to improve reading and writing skills among more than 87,000 children in 1,187 schools in 10 countries. Room to Read strengthens the teaching and learning of literacy skills in early primary grades through placing literacy coaches in the classrooms alongside teachers as well as implementing an approach to teaching children how to read, write, and develop the habit of reading rooted in scientifically based instructional methods. Instructional support and related library activities are informed by ongoing student assessments and continuously refined. There are a number of interesting aspects of Room to Read’s impact and expansion that we’re exploring, including:

1. Continuous refining of approach as projects progress. Room to Read uses early grade reading assessments and other internal metrics to measure the impact of their support for reading instruction. Compared to an evaluation of 70 educational interventions in low to upper-middle income countries (of which Room to Read was not a part), Room to Read’s effect size is nearly 10 times greater than the average impact of the 70 other interventions evaluated. They argue that the success of Room to Read comes from the five components of their reading instruction—phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension—coupled with frequent and timely school-based support to teachers from literacy coaches, as well as access to extensive reading content in school libraries. But Room to Read also uses this data to determine where programs need improvement, and continuously and honestly reevaluates how best to strengthen them. For example, Room to Read closed the instructional component of its Literacy Program in Vietnam based on findings that many children in Vietnam were already achieving foundational reading skills through the national reading approach, determining that Room to Read’s scarce financial and staff resources could be better targeted to other program activities.
2. Investing in a country for the long-term. Before starting operations in a new country, Room to Read must first raise a minimum of funding for 3 years of operations. The philosophy is that an effective program requires building networks and establishing roots without fear of discontinuing the program mid-stride. Room to Read’s flexible fundraising model supports this type of approach—approximately 60-70 percent of their budget comes from individuals who are committed to and passionate about Room to Read’s mission. They not only have leveraged individual donor support but also brought together a chapter network of over 15,000 volunteers around the world that host events and fundraise for the organization. Additionally, Room to Read recruits local country directors to lead local program staff, including an in-country research, monitoring, and evaluation team. Room to Read’s investment within the countries they work has led to stronger and more honest partnerships and more opportunity to understand how to continue to improve their activities.
3. Pursuing a decentralized approach while maintaining program quality. Room to Read recognized early on that local adaptation and ownership was critical to the success of the programs, and it has built flexibility into its projects accordingly. It builds strong relationships with local partners and works within already existing community networks to identify the context-specific issues that their program must address to improve learning. However, when it comes to scaling, there can be a real trade-off between allowing for local ownership and adaptation while maintaining fidelity to the program model. As local engagement increases, additional components are often added to the programs, not eliminated, and this can create more complicated and complex programs to scale. Room to Read is therefore going through a reflection and revision process to identify core components to simplify and standardize to ensure that their work is as impactful and cost-effective as possible as they continue to expand.

As we continue to explore these and other cases, we will share more emerging lessons and challenges of improving learning outcomes at large-scale. We hope that you to continue to join us and share any thoughts in the comments section below.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education.

When it comes to improving the quality of education, we know that teachers matter. The interaction that takes place within the classroom is arguably the biggest factor affecting whether and what children learn. We’ve seen around the world that a “good” teacher isn’t necessarily defined by his or her number of advanced degrees or years teaching; rather, good teachers are adequately prepared, supported, motivated, and compensated.

Quality teaching requires teachers who are well trained and motivated, both before and during their careers. The practice of Lesson Study is one innovative approach to support in-service training that has proven to be effective in various countries around the world.

Lesson Study is a peer-to-peer learning approach where teachers share knowledge and skills to improve teaching through planning, demonstrating, and assessing lessons. It consists of a fellow teacher planning and observing a lesson followed by a discussion with peers about ways to constructively improve these lessons. Through these conversations, teachers learn techniques to improve teaching methods and develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. As a positive spillover, the entire school system is strengthened through encouraging teamwork among teachers and improving the supervision of school managers who participate in the practice.

Lesson Study is originally a common practice of Japanese teachers to share and improve their knowledge and skills. After U.S. researchers wrote a book entitled “Teaching Gap” in 1999, which asserted that the key to Japanese students’ high performance in math was the Lesson Study practice of teachers, the practice received interest from researchers and officials in many countries. Now, the practice is found in more than 50 countries around the world. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a technical cooperation organization of the Japanese government, has supported 24 countries in the world in incorporating Lesson Study activities into their teacher education programs.

One of these countries is Zambia, where the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training, and Early Education is implementing Lesson Study across all ten provinces—reaching around 42,000 teachers out of 91,000 total. Since 2005, the government has worked in partnership with JICA to institutionalize Lesson Study across Zambia as a way of improving primary and secondary math and science instruction. These efforts have focused on around 2,700 primary and secondary schools (out of about 9,000 schools in the country). Through the institutionalization of program guidelines in national policy and budgetary plans, the ministry requires each school to conduct monthly lesson study cycles. The program is jointly financed, with the Zambian government contributing $11.85 million and the Japanese government $2.75 million from 2005-2013.

Internal and external evaluations have shown that with Lesson Study, pupils have more opportunities to conduct hands-on activities, improve critical thinking, and develop teamwork and presentation skills. As teachers’ approaches to teaching have evolved from the more traditional “chalk and talk” method to an inquiry-based approach, the process of students’ learning has also transformed from rote memorization to creative thinking. Impact evaluations found that as a result of improvements in teacher’s teaching skills, students’ pass rates on national grade 12 exams improved in Zambia’s Central province (where Lesson Study was implemented at the time). After three years of introducing Lesson Study in Central province, students’ pass rates on science exams were 12.4 percent higher than in schools without Lesson Study.

For Millions Learning, we are interested in understanding how a Japanese model of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers has been expanded and adapted around the world. So far, it seems four features stand out from Lesson Study as particularly interesting:

1. Ensuring national ownership and sustainability. Lesson Study was not imposed onto Zambia, but rather invited as part of a response to national reforms aimed at improving the quality of teaching. The Zambian government had a vision for improving the quality of education and Lesson Study was one tool to achieve it. Lesson Study doesn’t require building new and costly structures for implementation; it works through existing administrative structures for school-based training programs. Today, JICA provides ongoing technical support through periodic trainings for lead teachers, education officers, and school heads; material development; and other capacity strengthening. The vast majority of the financial resources come from Zambian government. From the beginning, Lesson Study has been designed to complement the existing Ministry of Education in-service training program, not as an external, short-lived donor project.
2. Taking a phased, long-term approach. Lesson Study in Zambia did not scale overnight. It took a step-by-step approach over 10 years to cover all provinces. This expansion of Lesson Study follows the “School-Based CPD Master Plan” designed by the Zambian government for the period of 2006-2023. JICA has remained a constant partner throughout these 10 years. This contrasts with the average donor engagement of 613 days from start to completion. This long-term commitment and phased approach by all partners has been an important aspect to Lesson Study’s success.
3. Approaching teaching as a learning process. Lesson Study is not designed as a linear training course but a continuous cycle of experimentation, practice, learning, and revision. This concept of continuous learning and adaption is critical for successful scaling and often absent in large systems and institutions. As shared by JICA’s chief adviser in Zambia, Mr. Kazuyoshi Nakai, “Lesson Study is a learning framework which gives an opportunity to teachers to continuously study and thereby improve on their practice.” In Zambia, the general three-step Lesson Study cycle has been expanded into eight steps as outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The cycle of Lesson Study in Zambia



Source: Zambian Ministry of Education, 2010. 

4. Changing mindset from training to supporting learning. In Japan, Lesson Study is not considered a method of training, but a practice of collaborative learning. The “trainers” are not lecturers or professional facilitators but teachers themselves. This change of mindset might be one of the keys for scaling up the practice to large numbers of teachers. It approaches teachers as the key change agents. Regardless of teachers’ existing knowledge and skills, Lesson Study recognizes that they might have ideas and experiences within the classroom that can be shared with other teachers.

The Millions Learning team is currently in Zambia visiting schools that implement Lesson Study and meeting with teachers participating in the process, government officials, JICA, and others working for education reform in the country. We look forward to sharing more of what we learn and, as always, welcome your feedback.

I am grateful to Sheikh Tanjeb Islam, Haeyeon Jung, Kazuyoshi Nakai, Ainan Nuran, and Marijke Gilmour Schouten for their kind assistance with the research supporting this blog. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is an ongoing research collaborator with the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are not determined or influenced by any donation.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education.

What is Sesame Workshop?

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit organization behind the world-famous television program Sesame Street. It is the single largest informal educator of children in the world, reaching millions of children in more than 150 countries. Sesame Workshop’s projects occupy the unique intersection of early childhood education and media. What had started as an educational television program more than 40 years ago is now a multimedia platform that uses everything from radio, video, and books to the latest in interactive media and technology. Beyond math and literacy skills, Sesame Workshop’s programs teach children crucial lessons about health, emotional well-being, and pro-social interactions such as respect, gender equality, and de-stigmatization of disease and disability.

The founders of Sesame Street conceived of the program in the late 1960s against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, which—among its many accomplishments—focused national attention on the gaps in school readiness between low-income minority children and their privileged counterparts. Since then, Sesame Workshop has tailored its programming directly to the needs and developmental level of its target audience, preschool children—especially those who are underprivileged and have no other access to preschool education.

The globalization of Sesame Street began shortly after its initial broadcast in the United States in 1969. International producers wanted a series that would address the challenges and educational needs back home. In response, Sesame Workshop created a flexible production plan that has continued to evolve over time and is now used to develop all of the international co-productions. This model is highly flexible and allows for different degrees of adaptation to the local context.

There are many reasons why we started looking at Sesame Workshop as a case study in scaling educational opportunities. Sesame Workshop provides informal learning opportunities for young children, particularly in contexts where formal preschool systems are not well-established or are beyond the reach of most of the population. There is a wealth of evidence that demonstrates children learn from Sesame Street’s international co-productions. A recent meta-analysis published in a peer-reviewed academic journal synthesized the findings from 24 studies in 15 countries and concluded that “…Sesame Street is an enduring example of a scalable and effective early childhood educational intervention.” In addition, Sesame Workshop programs have proven sustainable over 44 years and across vastly different contexts.

So how does Sesame Street do it?

1. A Local Approach. In working with producers in other countries, Sesame Workshop provides the frameworks for the series that are to be created by local production teams within a country. As a result, all of the international co-productions share Sesame Street’s style and target age group as well as the core learning goals for that age group. But the specific educational goals of each country’s co-production are tailored to the unique needs of children in that country and culture. They are developed by early childhood specialists in each country in conjunction with a local production team. Studio sets reflect the local culture and are inhabited by local characters, developed specifically for each adaptation. This results in a fully local Sesame Street with its own name, language, curriculum, and Muppets.

For example, the Bangladeshi co-production, Sisimpur, emphasizes literacy, math, girls’ education, and the environment, while Kilimani Sesame in Tanzania has a special focus on malaria and HIV/AIDS education.

2. The Role of Research and Data. From its beginnings, research has played a prominent role in the Sesame Street model. Programming is a continuous process that begins with the assessment of need. It is followed by a content seminar with education advisors during which educational objectives are outlined. Only then production takes place including workshops, script, material review, taping, and so on. Broadcast and material dissemination is followed by summative evaluation, which in turn feeds back to the needs assessment.
3. Partnerships. The project’s long-term success has depended on a broad base of partners, including funding agencies, local production partners, broadcasters, government ministries, the education and academic community, and other private and public partnerships. 

Sesame Workshop’s content creation model is a collaborative process among producers, researchers, and educational content specialists. Producers are responsible for the creative elements of the production, whether it be television, radio, print, or other media. Educational content specialists set the curricular priorities. And researchers represent the voice of the child and provide information about the program's effectiveness.

4. Financing. Sesame Workshop projects have received significant financial support from bilateral and multilateral donors including: the governments of Canada, the European Union, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States; the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); foundations including Bernard van Leer, Dell, Ford, Gates, and Rockefeller; corporations including MetLife, Qualcomm, and Sanlam; and broadcast partners.
5. Technology. With the emergence of new digital platforms, Sesame Workshop has started experimenting with other ways to deliver educational content, including online, on mobile devices, and on game screens. Sesame Workshop has not only widened the menu of devices used, but has also maximized the potential of each medium to enhance learning. Several Sesame Street digital content and apps are available in Mandarin, Hindi, and many other languages. In areas where children lack regular access to electricity, television and computers, Sesame Workshop has started delivering education materials through “lower” technologies such as radio and print with the help of community organizations.

Flexibility to change with the times and to accommodate different contexts has been a hallmark of the expansion process to international contexts since the beginning.

We look forward to sharing more of what we learn from Sesame Workshop’s experience—the factors behind the program’s scaling success, as well as the challenges confronted and adaptations made along the way.

We hope you are enjoying our profiles in this blog series of some of the cases we are exploring, and welcome your thoughts and reactions as we continue.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education. 

The Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial, which originated in Colombia, is most commonly known by its acronym SAT (rhymes with “cat”), translates into English as the Tutorial Learning System. SAT is an alternative secondary school program offering grades 7-12 for young people living in isolated, rural communities in five countries in Central and South America. It provides a relevant, flexible education in areas without access to traditional secondary schools.

It is said that “SAT students learn for life; others learn for exams,” a sentiment shared by Heriberto Flores, former director of education for Lempira State in Honduras. Like many other government officials, Flores became an ardent supporter of SAT after visiting the program and witnessing results first hand. Such support from local and national governments has been critical to the program’s success.

SAT was first developed in Colombia in the late-1970s, by the NGO Fundación para la Aplicación y Enseñanza de Ciencias (Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences, or FUNDAEC). It was conceived of as a development project wherein education would provide people with the knowledge and skills they needed to positively impact their communities, and this remains its guiding principle.

Today, SAT is implemented in Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Ecuador, and Guatemala also hosted an SAT program until 2005. Together, an estimated 300,000 young women and men have completed the program in these countries. While implemented by local NGOs, SAT is accredited as an official secondary education program. It has been adapted to other countries in Asia and Africa as a sister program known as Preparation for Social Action, or PSA.

For Millions Learning, we have been intrigued by SAT and interested in understanding its experience for various reasons, including: its expansion and adaptation across countries; the robust evidence of its impact; and its cost-effectiveness relative to other alternative secondary school programs. Furthermore, an impact evaluation in Honduras found that SAT students outperform their peers in other alternative schools on test scores. Evidence also suggests improvements in broader skills, such as promoting civic responsibility, empowering girls, and building trust. SAT achieves these results while focusing on some of the most educationally marginalized and difficult to reach young people, most of whom are often beyond the reach of government schools.

The program has withstood the test of time, having existed in some countries for more than 15 years, and with aspects of it incorporated into some national education systems. SAT seems to become more sustainable as more young people graduate from its program, because many such graduates then return to become SAT teachers, known as tutors. This terminology is an important distinction at SAT, and reflects tutors’ responsibility to help facilitate and guide the learning process rather than just impart information.

SAT falls on one end of a continuum of case studies that we plan to review for Millions Learning. It is not a national-level education reform where incremental, albeit important, changes have been made around the edges of the larger system. Rather, it is an “education revolution,” according to Soheil Dooki, the director of Asociación Bayán, the NGO that implements SAT in Honduras. In SAT, it is considered important to learn things broader than just traditional academic skills; there is a strong emphasis on analysis, inquiry, community service, and moral and character development.

SAT has been developed with the “end-user” in mind. SAT’s schedule is determined by each community, and accounts for when students need to participate in agricultural activities that are the primary income in most of these countries’ rural areas. Tutors at SAT are hired and managed by an autonomous NGO, and receive ongoing training in the specialized SAT curriculum. This curriculum, rather than traditional subjects, focuses on five capabilities that are considered relevant for life in these communities: math, sciences, language, technology, and service to the community. Students stay with the same teacher for all six years and participate in hands-on learning, incorporating academic theory into relevant agricultural practices.

SAT occupies a delicate space between government support and civil society autonomy. For example, in Honduras, SAT is a formally recognized alternative education program, which means that students graduate with the equivalent of a secondary school degree. Additionally, the Ministry of Education pays for the salaries of tutors at SAT centers while Asociación Bayán is responsible for hiring, training and monitoring them. We found that the importance of this partnership—and the distinct role of each partner—cannot be overstated. Integral to SAT’s success has been: the role and autonomy of a well-managed NGO in implementing the program; the political and financial support from the government; and the buy-in, participation, and ownership from the community.

SAT’s success has not come without challenges. Alternative education is still considered an inferior option to traditional public schools in many of these countries. In Honduras, because most of the tutors are not considered permanent teachers, their salaries come from a discretionary government budget that is less stable and as a result, payment can arrive late. At a more philosophical level, anything that appears to be challenging the status quo, or changing mindsets of how learning is conceived, can face its fair share of critics and opponents. Expansion of SAT has also been slow and carefully controlled so as to consider the balance between growing and maintaining program quality.

We look forward to sharing more of what we learn from SAT’s experience—what appears to be behind the program’s success, as well as the challenges confronted and adaptions made along the way. As part of this blog series introducing each in-depth case study, we welcome your thoughts and reactions on the specific cases or larger themes that are emerging.

     

 

 

Editor's Note: This blog series discusses select case studies, and what makes them interesting, that have been chosen for preliminary research by the Millions Learning project at the Brookings Center for Universal Education. 

Seven months ago, as part of the Millions Learning project, we wrote a blog asking for help in identifying examples from around the world where learning had improved among large numbers of children and young people. We asked people to submit case studies, and we conducted our own investigation and outreach as well. The idea was to draw from these cases some of the factors underlying the success stories in large-scale gains in learning. We also wanted to understand what challenges had been met, with the intention to help inform future efforts to scale education.

When we called for case studies last summer, we didn’t know if we should expect three or 300 submissions. And of those submissions, we were concerned that few would meet our criteria of demonstrating a measurable improvement in learning outcomes among a significant number of children and youth. We were interested in interventions that went beyond increasing sheer numbers in school, and included those that had evidence of improving literacy, numeracy, social and emotional, work readiness, and other types of cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

We were pleasantly surprised with the results. Over the course of three months, we received more than 75 submissions, and identified over 40 more that met our criteria. Of these 75 submissions, over 15 reached more than one million children; approximately 38 demonstrated improved learning based on an external evaluation; almost all included some kind of costing data (although far from enough) and nine were still going strong after 10 years, with three in existence for over 25 years.

It was extremely difficult to narrow it down, but we have selected a small group of 15 cases for a more in-depth review. At the same time, we won’t limit our analysis to only these cases. We will also be drawing lessons from the larger universe of interventions and other sources of evidence, such as systematic reviews, international and regional assessment data and other scaling-related studies.

We are excited to spend the next few months exploring these 15 cases in greater detail and sharing the findings widely. Our plan, however, is not to quarantine ourselves to our offices for the next few months and emerge at the end with some big conclusions. Rather, part of the process of developing Millions Learning is to involve many partners in the discussion and contribute to a broader conversation around how to best scale up development impact.

With that in mind, over the next few months, we plan to introduce a various selection of some of these interventions—providing a brief overview of the policy or program, describing what it is about the case that makes it compelling, presenting some questions or issues we plan to explore in further detail, and requesting readers’ reactions and thoughts.

A word about these cases. These cases were selected first and foremost as they met our criteria of demonstrating an improvement in learning at scale in a low or middle-income country. Beyond that, we believed that there was an interesting story to tell—some contentious issue addressed, some bold course-correction made in the process of expanding, a new angle or aspect that has yet to be explored. This was all balanced against the desire to identify a range of scaling pathways, types of interventions from early childhood to post-primary programs, as well as diversity in geography and populations reached.

What these cases are not is a “greatest hits” of scaling learning. They are not meant to represent the top 10 best efforts to improve learning. They are not meant to provide any recipe or blueprint to scaling. And as we will discuss, they do not purport to establish causality between the intervention and the results achieved. 

But what we do hope is that they will shed some light on the nuances and drivers behind large-scale success in improving learning outcomes, particularly among those most marginalized and difficult to reach. We hope that they will uncover not only the technical design of the interventions that demonstrated learning gains but additionally—and perhaps more importantly—the stories behind their implementation. What made them effective in one location but not in another? What obstacles were confronted that had to be addressed in order to expand?  What key decisions, events, or processes led to millions of more children learning valuable skills? And how can all of these lessons inform future efforts around education reform, especially as we look ahead to implementation of the next set of global development goals. We invite you to join this conversation and look forward to your comments.