Brookings: Experts - Rebecca Winthrop

Improving Education and Learning Outcomes in India

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 6, 2013
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

India has made laudable progress in increasing access to education and building a strong policy and planning framework for education. The next challenge is ensuring a quality education system which produces positive learning outcomes for all children in India. Estimates show that over 3 million children in the country are still out of school, and of those in school, civil society reports show that 53 percent are at least three years behind expected learning levels.

On May 6, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings and the Central Square Foundation hosted a discussion on education reform in India, focusing on policy and practice that promotes equitable learning and on lessons learned from the U.S. experience. Panelists included: Ashish Dhawan, chief executive officer of the Central Square Foundation; Subir Gokarn, research director of Brookings India; Pooja Bhatt, regional portfolio manager of Accenture Development Partnerships at Accenture; and Brookings Nonresident Fellow Urvashi Sahni, founder and president of the Study Hall Foundation. CUE Associate Director Xanthe Ackerman moderated the discussion. Senior Fellow and CUE Director Rebecca Winthrop provided opening remarks.

In 2030, 25 percent of the global talent pool is going to come from India. It’s the kids born today that will go through the education system in India and become 25 percent of the skills for the future. - Rebecca Winthrop

There has been tremendous progress with respect to access in India. Between 2005 and 2009 alone the number of out-of-school-children dropped by 40%. But 3.1 million children are still out of school. Girls, scheduled castes and tribes are among those that are left furthest behind. - Xanthe Ackerman

In Bombay over 75% of children are in private sector schools. Private sector can work for higher income families. However it doesn’t work as well for the lower income families because the quality is poor in both the government schools and in the private schools in their areas. - Ashish Dhawan

There are more girls and marginalized children coming to school but they don’t stay, they don’t learn, and they don’t complete. And the gender equality indicators are poor: In terms of an international gender inequality index, India ranks 126th out of 149 countries. - Urvashi Sahni

There are 27 million children that are born each year. Two-thirds of them will not complete secondary education. The value gap – the opportunity cost – is to the degree of $100 billion per year based on the value of an individual contributions to GDP growth. - Pooja Bhatt

Why Global Education Financing Must Be Part of Europe's Financial Transaction Tax Revenues for Development

Sarah O’Hagan and Rebecca Winthrop — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:17:00 -0400

As the financial transaction tax (FTT) becomes part of the European political landscape and moves its way through EU member-state legislatures, the use of a percentage of tax revenues for development – and specifically for basic global education needs— remains highly uncertain.

The 11 eurozone countries that got the green light from EU finance ministers in January to move forward with a coordinated tax on financial transactions could deliver as much as €35 billion for their national budgets. But the clear consensus shared by these 11 nations— which collectively represent two-thirds of the EU’s economy— on the timeliness and necessity of implementing such a tax now is not equally matched by a consensus on allocating part of the revenues to international development, let alone education. This is an unfortunate state of things given that the idea of using part of the revenues to support global development was a big reason for the huge social movement in support of the tax.

The backdrop to this uncertainty is the austerity agenda being pursued by many governments, in which foreign aid budgets are under pressure. As a consequence, foreign aid to global education risks falling faster than overall aid levels.

To date, only one of the vanguard countries in the FTT movement, France, passed its own FTT in mid 2012 and committed to allocate part of the revenues to development and climate finance. At the time, many called for 50 percent of FTT revenues to be dedicated to overseas development assistance and climate finance, but that figure soon dwindled to 10 percent, and ultimately 4 percent, for health and environmental projects. The ray of hope is that France has expressed its willingness for the EU FTT to also be partly allocated to development and climate finance, and is currently gathering support.

Civil society groups in France and in Europe generally are more effectively mobilized within the health and environment sectors, and are comparatively weaker on the education front. Yet given that global education is a sine qua non for successful economic development, it’s vitally important that global education activists in France and elsewhere not only mobilize within their countries to earmark revenues for development-- including basic education— but also collaborate across the larger European landscape to set a precedent for the use of financial transactions taxes around the world. An EU financial transaction tax for development could indeed put more kids in school and improve their learning outcomes in developing countries.

The European Union, via its member states and the European Commission, is among the largest donors to global education in the world. But the recent OECD Development Assistance Committee data release revealed a decrease in official development assistance for the second year in the row with significant cuts in countries like Spain and the Netherlands. And an agreement among EU heads of state at the February 8 European Council for the 2014-2020 EU budget is not going to fill this gap. In fact, the budget froze the portion earmarked for development at 2007-2013 levels, leaving the EU far from its commitments to reach 0.7 percent ODA/GNI by 2015.

Another worrying fact is that global education may not be a priority sector for the EU in many countries moving forward according to early word from several developing countries partners.

For low-income countries that simply cannot grow and improve their basic education systems without external financing, a decrease in aid flows without a compensating or greater infusion from innovative financing such as the financial transactions taxes, spells disaster. That is why, in addition to pushing donors to respect their commitment in developing countries to aid, the education community should do all it can to ensure that newly enacted financial transaction taxes allocate part of their revenues to global education.

If these examples are indicative of the way financing for global education has worked to date, they amply underscore the patchwork approach that even pieced together will still leave students in developing countries falling behind.

Authors

Sarah O’Hagan
Rebecca Winthrop

Image Source: © Darrin Zammit Lupi / Reuters

The Sprint to the 2015 Development Goals: Reaching the Marginalized with Quality Education and Learning

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 17, 2013
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

On April 17, the Center for Universal Education hosted members of the global education community for a public discussion on the two main challenges preventing the realization of universal education. As the clock winds down on the deadline to achieve the Education for All targets and Millennium Development Goals, there are still 61 million children out of primary school and another 71 million not enrolled in secondary school. There are 250 million children that have not mastered basic reading skills, and 200 million don’t have the relevant skills to support meaningful livelihoods. Evidence shows that education is one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Clearly, more must be done to ensure that all children are in school and learning, especially marginalized groups that are furthest behind.

The first panel examined issues related to financing education. CUE Director Rebecca Winthrop emphasized that although there is a $26 million financing gap for global education, donor support has stagnated and some countries like the Unites States, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium have cut their foreign aid to education. Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), pointed out that education ministers from developing countries are creating compelling education sector plans and working hard to improve their education systems. She stressed how important it is for governments and development partners to invest and support the efforts to help fund the $1.3 billion in pending GPE grants. She noted that innovative solutions could include financial transaction tax systems, local financing mechanisms, private sector partnerships and the use of technology. Nigel Chapman, CEO of Plan International, highlighted the importance of adding a gender lens to the issues of education. In an austere budgetary climate in many advanced economies where official development assistance is evaporating, it is essential that education is not forgotten because it requires complex and long term vision. Elizabeth King, director of Education for the World Bank’s Human Development Network, described the demand for education by countries, governments and communities. She highlighted how education is regularly cited as a top priority for people, even those living in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. King argued that this should send a strong message to the international community that education can play a role in building good citizenship within societies and can be a lever for growth and development. Therefore, it is important for resources to be used effectively and efficiently.

The second panel explored the need for more equitable and better quality education. CUE Senior Fellow Kevin Watkins presented data on the large numbers of out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa, and the causes of non-enrollment and school dropout, such as early marriage, child labor, conflict and poor educational quality. He pointed out that one of the biggest failings of the international donor community is the lack of provision within national education strategies to reach the most marginalized. Watkins emphasized that the reason why progress has stalled is largely because the same interventions and strategies are being used for marginalized groups when new and different approaches are needed. Baela Raza Jamil, director of programs at the Center of Education and Consciousness, described her work with the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in Pakistan and how she has been able to mobilize country-wide attention to issues around deficiencies in quality education in Pakistan.

She discussed the large-scale household and school assessment tools that have been created to measure differences within districts and across provinces. Jamil also talked about a new program, “Learning for Access”, that targets youth literacy and numeracy. Sumaya Saluja of the YP Foundation discussed the critical role that youth can play in tackling challenges in the education system. She described her work to measure school quality and her efforts to change traditional mindsets about girls’ education in India. Albert Motivan, head of Education Indictors and Data Analysis at UNESCO Institute for Statistics, presented evidence to illuminate the macro-level challenges facing global education, including UNICEF’s Out of School Initiative, which shows patterns of enrollment and progression across different segments of the global population. He also discussed the newly released report by the Learning Metrics Task Force, which outlines the different areas of learning that need to be measured, including readiness to learn, literacy and numeracy, competencies around analytic thinking, problem solving and ICT literacy.

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The Sprint to the 2015 Development Goals: Reaching the Marginalized with Quality Education and Learning

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Event Materials

Welcome to Education + Development

Rebecca Winthrop — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:42:00 -0400

Welcome to Education + Development, a new blog by the Center for Universal Education. Our blog will cover issues on global education, learning and international development, with a particular focus on the post-2015 development agenda process. Over the next two years, we will regularly blog on the process toward creating the new development agenda that will replace the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set to expire in 2015. In addition, we will track the progress toward achieving MDG 2 – to provide high quality education for all boys and girls.

Our blog will also examine issues at the heart of the global education and development debate, provide updates on the Learning Metrics Task Force, and analyze the latest research, policy initiatives and developments impacting global education, including:

• Addressing inequality and improving equity in education financing
• Reaching marginalized communities
• Providing access as well as quality learning opportunities for all children
• Promoting youth skills and livelihoods
• Weighing education provision through the strategic use of public and private funding
• Engaging corporate philanthropy in global education

Our hope is that the Education + Development blog will serve as forum for Brookings scholars and guest contributors to have a dynamic dialogue on the critical issues impacting education in developing countries and also serve as an online space to collectively share information and new ideas.

We have included several previous blog posts on the progress thus far in the post-2015 discussions, which serve as a foundation for continued debate and engagement from all members of our community.

We look forward to sharing new blog posts with you and welcome your thoughts and input.

Warm regards,

Rebecca Winthrop
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Universal Education
@rebeccawinthrop

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop

Image Source: © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

Quiet Progress for Education in Pakistan

Rebecca Winthrop, Elena Matsui and Baela Raza Jamil — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0400

The issue of education in Pakistan rocketed to front page news after the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old girl who was targeted by Taliban assassins last October. Unfortunately, violence and attacks against education persist. At the end of March, Shahnaz Nazli, a 41-year-old teacher, was killed on her way to work at a girls’ school near the town of Jamrud in the Khyber tribal district. Five teachers were killed in January near the town of Swabi in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Acts of violence like these undermine an already weak education system where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of school-aged children are out of school. These enormous challenges are compounded by political uncertainties given the upcoming elections and denouement of the war in Afghanistan.

However, in the shadow of these difficult circumstances, progress is quietly being made in thousands of schools located in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province. A recent report, The Good News From Pakistan, shows positive results emerging from a program that instituted a number of reforms to the education sector in over 60,000 government schools. Based on global evidence of what works in school system reform, the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap targets access, equity and quality, and uses an innovative monitoring tool that can be used to support and encourage policy dialogue. Over the past two years there have been increases in student enrollment, teacher presence and the availability of functioning facilities in the regions where the program has been implemented.

Student learning levels in Punjab have also improved. An independent, citizen-led household-based study, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), assessed over 60,000 children from all 36 districts in Punjab and profiled almost 2,000 public and private schools in the region. It reveals significant gains in learning outcomes for literacy and numeracy. Grade 4 English language learning levels have improved 12 percent since 2011; Arithmetic levels in Grades 4 and 5 have increased 10 percent. Perhaps even more remarkable, the study indicates that gaps between public and private education are closing. Whereas private schools have historically performed better in terms of teacher attendance rates and learning outcomes, now public and private school attendance rates for children (86 percent) and teachers (87 percent) are on par. Public school facilities are also improving. There are more functioning toilets and available drinking water in government schools, which has further reduced discrepancies in relation to private schools.

Something is definitely working. A critical component of the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap includes strengthening district administration by involving, incentivizing and holding officials accountable for progress or failure, as well as acknowledging them publicly. In addition, a culture of evidence-based tracking and accountability is growing throughout the Punjab districts. In particular, monthly monitoring and ranking based on a number of key indicators around governance and quality has helped to bolster the attendance rates in public schools.

The engagement of policymakers as well as citizens is essential to the success of any large scale public sector education reform. While the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap is involving high-level officials and community leaders, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Pakistan is doing its part to include citizens in the dialogue. Every year, 9,000 volunteers from across Pakistan work to collect ASER data that is then shared with the government, civil society organizations, media, bilateral and multilateral agencies and other stakeholders working in the education sector. This process supports the Right to Education (RTE) campaign that has collected almost 2 million signatures from in-school and out-of-school children in an effort to pressure the Pakistani government to implement free and compulsory education for all children aged five to sixteen. United Nations special envoy for Global Education and former prime minster, Gordon Brown, presented 1 million signatures from the RTE campaign to the president of Pakistan on Malala Day, November 10^th, 2012, which lead to the ratification of the first RTE bill in Pakistan. Following the death of Shahnaz Nazli, Malala started a new petition in honor of the slain teacher, which continues to put pressure on the Pakistani government to end the killings and violence that deny children their right to an education–especially for girls.

These advances are important for the people of Pakistan and the 5.1 million children out of school throughout the country. But these efforts also offer lessons for the international community. The Punjab Education Reform Roadmap as well as the work of ASER Pakistan and courageous individuals like Malala and Shahnaz Nazli show that even in the face of daunting challenges and an uncertain future, ambitious goal setting, collaboration and the effective use of evidence can deliver impressive results in a relatively short amount of time. Governments and partners working to improve education systems everywhere should take note.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop
Elena Matsui
Baela Raza Jamil

Image Source: © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

Dakar Consensus: Equitable, Quality Learning for All

Allison Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:37:00 -0400

More than 120 education stakeholders from civil society, youth, private sector, foundations, academics, governments and the United Nations met last week in Dakar, Senegal to review global education progress achieved since 2000, discuss the remaining challenges, and develop recommendations around an education goal for the post-2015 development framework.

Gordon Brown succinctly captured the spirit of the conference discussion in a blog based on a video message he delivered to the Dakar conference, writing that “universal learning is a goal of goals, or a super goal,” because without education we cannot unlock the other development goals, such as employment opportunity, gender equality, environmental care and good health. He concludes that “this is not just about education. It is about achieving the promise of globalization: that there is opportunity for all. Education should be reversing, not reinforcing, inequalities. Let us make sure that with stepping stone targets for education that focus not just on enrolment but on learning too, we can make the next 15 years even more successful for education than the last.”

In their deliberations, the delegates reviewed a wide range of existing proposals and inputs, including recommendations from the U.N.-led global thematic consultation on education, on how to address these challenges. Despite differences on a range of issues, a clear consensus on four priorities emerged during the discussion. The organizers summarized the deliberations as a call for: “equitable, quality life-long learning for all.” The four areas of consensus include:

Equity: A post-2015 education goal must include a clear focus on reaching the marginalized, and in particular populations affected by conflict and disaster were frequently mentioned, as were people living in poverty, ethnic minorities, rural girls and those living with disabilities.
Quality Learning: The goal must also include a strong emphasis on improving the quality of learning outcomes and experiences, something which the existing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have failed to do.
Expanding Access to More than Just Primary Education: The goal must include a continuum of learning opportunities from early childhood on.
Cross-Cutting Nature of Education: The post-2015 development agenda must include education as a cross-cutting issue that supports other development goals. One way for this to be operationalized is to produce targets that integrate education is into other development sectors such as health and the environment. The idea of conceiving of education as helping building resilience across a range of other issues was introduced in this light.

A similar consensus around these themes of equity, learning and the need for a learning continuum from early childhood through adolescence was cited in the summary report of the global thematic consultation on education: Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. This report, which is still in draft form, presents the main themes from the education consultations that have taken place since late 2012, including the global online forums focused on equitable access to education, quality of learning, global citizenship, jobs and skills, and governance and financing of education. The report highlights two priority themes, or imperatives, for the post-2015 development goals on which there is consensus within the global education community: equitable access and equitable quality education, and specifically learning, within a rights-based approach that focuses on tackling inequalities.

Priority One: Equitable Access

As the report from the global thematic consultation on education notes, equitable access to all levels of education remains a key gap in the education agenda. The education Millennium Development Goal focuses on universal primary enrollment; however, there is abundant evidence that education begins at birth and continues in post-primary opportunities, whether through secondary schooling or nonformal technical and vocational education. Thus, the global education report asserts the need for a “foundational commitment” in the post-2015 framework to a goal focused on equitable access across the learning continuum. Within the report, the learning continuum is conceived of as universal coverage for early childhood care and education, from birth to school entry (0 to 8 years), through to basic education, or nine years of schooling that includes lower secondary education.

Priority Two: Equitable Quality Education, Specifically Learning

The global education report states that good quality equitable education and learning emerge “at the heart of the post-2015 education agenda” and that there is an emerging consensus on an education goal with learning as a proxy measure of quality. The report notes that this could be couched in broad terms such as ensuring that all children are prepared for school entry and “leave school with measurable learning standards and the skills, knowledge and values to become responsive, active and productive members of society and the world.”

This is in line with the recent vision laid out by the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF)— a global effort engaging over 800 people, the majority from the global south, across 70 countries— in its report, Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn. The report presents a broad, holistic framework for learning beyond literacy and numeracy. While being able to read and write are critical for enabling all girls and boys to access a broader education, these core skills are far from sufficient. In addition to reading and numeracy, children need to learn relevant transferable skills such critical thinking, problem solving, civic values, mental health and well-being, and 21st century skills such as communication and technological literacy, to prepare them for the workforce and to be active, productive members of their communities.

The global education report and discussion in Dakar also highlighted the importance of having equity as a cross-cutting aspect underpinning these two priority areas of equitable access and equitable learning, with a strong focus on marginalized and vulnerable groups. In particular, gender equality and the needs of children and youth affected by emergencies have been singled out.

The Next Challenge: Targets and Metrics

As noted in the global report and discussed at the Dakar conference, now that there is broad agreement on the themes of an education goal, the challenge will become setting targets and metrics. Across all discussions, there is a debate about balancing global and country-level goals and metrics. It is clear that global goals must reflect national priorities and that more attention must be paid to neglected contexts such as conflict and post-conflict contexts, as well as to those countries with the least promising education metrics. However, one of the lessons from the Millennium Development Goals is that clear internationally comparable measures of progress have acted as a significant spur to global progress. Striking this balance between such goals and allowing for national or regional-level discretion is one critical question, not just for education in the post-2015 framework, but for all policy areas.

The Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) met last month to discuss these challenges and identified a small number of measures for tracking at the global level that should feed into the discussion of targets and metrics moving forward. The task force emphasized the need to operationalize these while simultaneously helping to build measurement capacity at the national level. The six areas for measurement that are important to enable children and youth to constructively participate in a globalized world are:

Access to and completion of learning opportunities through enrollment and completion indicators.
Early childhood experiences that result in readiness for primary school through a school readiness indicator.
The ability to read and understand a variety of texts through a learning to read indicator and reading to learn indicator at the primary and secondary level.
The ability to use numbers and apply this knowledge to real-life situations through numeracy indicators at the primary and secondary level.
An adaptable, flexible skill set to meet the demands of the 21st century through an indicator still to be developed (e.g. collaborative problem solving).
Exposure to a breadth of learning opportunities across all seven domains (physical well-being, social and emotional, culture and the arts, literacy and communication, learning approaches and cognition, numeracy and mathematics, science and technology) through an indicator still to be developed.

Information for these areas of measurement would be collected using internationally comparable assessments in some cases, such as reading comprehension and mathematics, and using alternative assessments for others. Data collected against these domains of measurement should describe average achievement levels in addition to progress over time and equity across groups (girls/boys, urban/rural and wealth levels, at a minimum). The work of the LMTF on this front will continue to inform the discussion on targets and metrics within the education community and an open consultation process will begin in mid-April.

The Dakar meeting discussions and outcomes will result in a synthesis report that combines all of the consultation outcomes to date, which will eventually inform the deliberations of the secretary-general’s High Level Panel (HLP) this spring and the secretary-general’s report to the U.N. General Assembly this fall. An explicit education goal focused on equitable access to learning opportunities should resonate well with the HLP as it addresses issues that are integral to ensuring sustainable development, equity and inclusive growth in the post-2015 development agenda. It is also a goal that is relevant to high, medium and low-income countries alike. The focus on equity, learning and a learning continuum from early childhood through to adolescence will also bind together the education discussion within the process to develop sustainable development goals with the post-2015 development framework. For the education community, this prioritization of equitable, quality life-long learning within the post-2015 development agenda will help bring a more coherent approach to the post-2015 development framework and the Education for All goals by addressing the most notable gaps and weaknesses between them.

Authors

Image Source: © Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters

Education and President Obama’s Trip to the Middle East

Maysa Jalbout and Rebecca Winthrop — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:33:00 -0400

In President Obama's visit to the Middle East this week, one aspect that should not be overlooked on his agenda is education in Syria. Education is often not seen as an immediate priority during a conflict, yet is as critical now to Syrian youth and children as it is for the longer-term stabilization and eventual rebuilding of their country. The state of education in Syria is not only a reflection of the current turmoil but, as we have learned from neighboring countries in-post conflict times, especially Iraq, it is also a strong indication of its future.

UNICEF's recent report on the state of education in Syria is alarming. At least 2,400 schools have been destroyed and an additional 1,500 are being used as shelters for displaced persons. In some cities, children have already missed out on almost two years of schooling. Across the country, parents, understandably, are reluctant to send their children to school as school buildings have been targeted by armed forces. Many children fled Syria with their families disrupting their education and forcing them to adjust to new, and often time harsh, conditions. The two years of conflict in Syria has had a severe impact on its education system. If not prioritized now, the consequences could be devastating in the long-term for Syria, as has similarly occurred in Iraq.

Education in pre-war Iraq was arguably one of the best in the region with 100% gross enrollment rates, almost complete gender parity, low drop-out rates, and government spending of approximately $620 per student. Compare that with Iraq during and after the war: gross enrollment dropped, the gender gap increased significantly, the drop out reached 20% and government spending per student dropped to $47. Education continues to be the target of violence and destruction even today. UNESCO reports that going to school in Iraq remains a dangerous activity. In the span of five years (2003-2008), over 31,500 attacks on educational institutions were reported. The impact of the conflict in Iraq on its education system has been devastating and will continue to be felt for generations to come.

For Syria, as in Iraq and in most countries affected by conflict, if education is not prioritized urgently and systematically, we can also expect the same devastating legacy. It will result in less children and youth going to school, fewer years of schooling, lower literacy rates and even worse outcomes for those who were marginalized before the conflict, including girls and women. This Syrian mother's quote in Save the Children's recent report, Childhood Under Fire, depicts the new grim reality:

“My daughter, she is 16 and she loved school. She was the first in her class, and she wanted to become an architect. But this war...we were too worried for her. We could not protect her, so we had to marry her. I know that men are hurting women, old women, single women – everyone. We needed her to have a protector…What about marriage? ‘Your cousin is a good man, take him, he is good.’ So she said ‘As you wish’. But she did not want to get married, she wanted to study. But there were no more schools. So... she was married. This is happening a lot within Syria, many women I know are marrying their daughters – even younger than 16 – to protect them.”

If Syria’s post-conflict education system is left to follow in the same path as Iraq’s, it will not only exacerbate state fragility, but also obstruct development and hurt those who are most vulnerable. This 16-year-old Syrian girl's story could become the story of an entire generation of young women who lose the chance to be educated, to be empowered and to have the tools they need to participate in the rebuilding of their country.

The United States government could lead the way in supporting an education relief plan and a longer-term multi-stakeholder rehabilitation plan of the sector as a whole. It should begin by funding UNICEF's $20 million ask for education programs in Syria for which it has only received $3 million so far. Proven strategies for ensuring continuity of education amid crisis, such as setting up child friendly spaces for learning in homes and other safe spaces, are important not only for children’s learning outcomes but their psychosocial well-being. Funding shortfalls are preventing the provision of urgently needed prefabricated classrooms, repairs and rehabilitation of learning spaces, and the provision of learning materials. For Syrians who fled to neighboring countries, targeted support should be given to U.N. agencies and particularly to Jordan, where over 29,000 Syrian children have been given access to schools despite Jordan’s own schools being already overcrowded and burdened by previous flows of refugees.

To stop at the urgent needs of Syria's education system however, would be short sighted. Supporting Syria's education needs over the long term is a must. As President Obama and his administration consider the future of Syria, they must ensure that the legacy of Syria’s conflict is not another broken education system and its devastating consequences for Syria, the Middle East and the world.

Authors

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

The Learning Metrics Task Force Proposes Six Areas of Measurement for Global Tracking Post-2015

Rebecca Winthrop, Mari Soliván and Kate Anderson Simons — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:26:00 -0500

From Kenya to India to the United States, world leaders are realizing the global learning crisis that threatens to rob millions of children of the fundamental human right to education, and the knowledge and skills required for well-being and prosperity in the 21st century. Well before Education for All (EFA) was endorsed in 1990, educators recognized that providing access to schooling without also ensuring student learning is an empty promise. With a new set of global development goals on the post-2015 horizon, what can the education community do now to catalyze a shift in global focus and investment from universal access to ensuring access plus improving learning opportunities and outcomes worldwide?

Beginning with the End in Mind

To help answer this question, the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) has undertaken an 18-month-long process of research, global consultation and consensus-building on learning measurement with education stakeholders around the world. Taking a cue from effectiveness guru Stephen Covey, the LMTF process is designed to force the education community to “begin with the end in mind.” Accordingly, Phase I of the project sought to identify the learning end-goal by answering the question, what do all children and youth need to learn in order to succeed in the 21st century?

Considering recommendations from a working group of experts chaired by Seamus Hegarty— visiting professor at the University of Warwick and former chair of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)—the task force decided in its first in-person meeting in September 2012 that indeed there were important competencies that all children and youth should master no matter where they live in the world. The first report from the task force, Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn, presents a broad, holistic framework of seven learning domains, with various competencies in each, as the aspiration for all children and youth across the globe. The seven domains are:

• Physical well-being
• Social and emotional
• Culture and the arts
• Literacy and communication
• Learning approaches and cognition
• Numeracy and mathematics
• Science and technology

After establishing what children should learn, Phase II of the project works back to the preceding step: how will we know whether learning is occurring under each of the seven domains? More specifically, how can we measure and track progress in learning at the global and national levels? The Measures and Methods Working Group of 57 experts in education and assessment, chaired by César Guadalupe, Associate Researcher at Universidad del Pacífico in Perú, is currently working to provide technical guidance to help the task force address this question.

A Meeting in Dubai

On February 20-21, the working group presented its recommendations on this topic to the task force at an in-person meeting hosted by Dubai Cares. Representatives of the education community convened from all over the globe to focus their collective expertise on the issue of learning measurement. Among the 44 attendees were representatives of low, middle and high-income countries; stakeholders from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, and Oceania; key U.N. and multilateral agencies; regional bodies; teacher organizations; civil society; and bilateral donor agencies. Not in attendance but still heard were the voices of the more than 500 individuals from 49 countries who submitted comments on a previous draft through public consultation.

With so many diverse constituencies and perspectives at the table, task force members engaged in vigorous debate over the two days. Here we highlight a few of the most contentious topics, and then outline the decisions that emerged from the meeting.

Key Debates

Scope of Measurement and Unintended Consequences

In formulating its recommendations, the task force faced the challenge of striking a delicate balance: how to communicate the importance of all seven learning domains presented in the Phase I framework, while also identifying just a small set of measures for tracking at the global level.

Some members worried that pulling out just a few domains for global measurement might signal to policymakers and education systems that the other domains are less important. This might in turn have the unintended consequence of limiting diversity in national curricula or driving donor funding toward narrow learning goals. Others argued that the task force must limit its recommendations to no more than a handful of clearly articulated goals, or risk having noneducationalists do the job and potentially leave learning out of the post-2015 agenda altogether.

In the end, the task force agreed that it was necessary to identify a small number of measures for tracking at the global level and selected six specific areas of measurement. To guard against unintended consequences, the task force proposed a new global measure that would track the breadth of learning opportunities young people received; namely, are children and youth being given the opportunity to learn across all seven learning domains? The task force also emphasized the need to operationalize the global areas of measurement while simultaneously helping to build measurement capacity at the national level.

International Comparability and Statistical Rigor

Assessments such as PIRLS, TIMSS and PISA are regarded as the gold standard for internationally comparable learning assessment. However, a country can spend up to $250,000 to participate, plus the costs to administer the tests, which can be substantially more. On the other hand, some national assessments have high levels of statistical rigor and provide information that is often more relevant to the individual country context.

The following questions regarding international comparability were hotly debated, both within the working group and at the task force meeting:

Should global learning goals be measured in an internationally comparable way, that is, using the same measures everywhere? Or is it also valuable to use a common tool globally that would allow some basic information to be compared globally but would mainly enable countries to track their own progress over time?

Do all countries have the interest or the resources to participate in the international assessments currently available? Drawing a parallel to the pharmaceutical industry, should the education community make available “generic” (as opposed to branded) test items as a global public good?

How do large-scale international assessments impact policy and practice to improve learning outcomes? Is the information generated from assessment more useful to high-income countries? How can international assessments provide information beyond “static league tables”?

Task force members finally agreed that international comparability was important in some areas, such as reading comprehension and mathematics, but measuring learning using a common tool to compare progress over time, or equity in learning outcomes, could also be useful in tracking progress toward global goals.

Measuring Learning in School and Out of School

Some task force members argued it is pragmatic to focus measurement efforts in schools not only because it is economical, but also because the primary aim of large-scale assessments is to influence education policy and school systems. And after all, isn’t the goal to get all children into school? But other members were concerned that a continued focus on measuring learning within schools, where the majority of current assessment efforts are focused already, would lead to further exclusion of out-of-school children and youth. With an estimated 61 million primary-age-children out of school, clearly the access agenda is unfinished. They also noted that household-based surveys can provide information on all children and youth, including those who are not enrolled in school, enrolled in private schools or absent on testing days. Still others pointed out that given current trends and the proliferation of learning technologies, learning might take place in a wider range of contexts in the future. How can the task force’s recommendations allow for these innovations?

The task force decided that access indicators (on enrollment and completion) should be paired closely with learning indicators to maintain a focus on getting children into school while also improving learning outcomes. Furthermore, the task force promotes a broad definition of schooling that allows for a range of intentional learning contexts (e.g., job-embedded learning, nonformal programs, distance learning), beyond the walls of the traditional school building.

Accounting for a Diversity of Contexts and Learning Levels

The task force recognized that while some (mostly high and upper-middle-income) countries participate in rigorous national and internationally comparable assessments, others have a very limited “culture of evaluation” and therefore limited information on how well their education systems are functioning. Another challenge is how to account for existing learning levels in countries where a large proportion of learners would score below the lowest internationally benchmarked levels. Expanding internationally comparable tests to these contexts would not give policymakers, educators or the general public information about what the problem is or how to fix it.

There was general consensus among task force members that building on internationally comparable assessments was advisable in some contexts, but may not be a good fit for countries where vast numbers of children are unable to read in the language of the test. In these environments, additional tools would be necessary to capture all learning levels.

Task Force Decisions

After hours of debate and deliberation on these topics, both in small break-out sessions and as a whole group, the task force came to consensus on the following set of decisions.

The task force has identified six areas of measurement that represent important learning opportunities for children and youth to enable them to be effective members of a globalized society.

1.) Access to and Completion of Learning Opportunities

Rationale: Children and youth must access, and most importantly complete their education. This domain addresses the unfinished access agenda for out-of-school children and youth and emphasizes the importance of tracking completion, which currently is not done systematically. It also allows for a broad definition of schooling, including any intentional learning programs, whether formal, nonformal or virtual. Evidence shows that the skills and knowledge needed for global citizenship are rarely learned outside of intentional learning activities.

2.) Exposure to a Breadth of Learning Opportunities Across all Seven Domains

Rationale: Children and youth should have a breadth of learning opportunities that, at a minimum, covers the seven learning domains. It is expected that an even broader set of competencies is necessary at the national and local levels; however, the task force recommends that the breadth of learning that education systems offer, at least across these seven domains, be tracked globally.

3.) Early Childhood Experiences that Result in Readiness for Primary School

Rationale: The early childhood years are critical to later learning and development. Entry to primary school is a key milestone in a child's learning trajectory, and measuring school readiness can help drive improvements in preprimary education, health, family services, etc. Because of the varying rates at which young children develop, a holistic measure across multiple domains is the best way to capture learning at this stage. School readiness is broadly defined and typically includes aspects of learning related to at least five of the seven domains: physical well-being, social and emotional, literacy and communication, learning approaches and cognition, and numeracy and mathematics.

4.) The Ability to Read and Understand a Variety of Texts

Rationale: Children and youth must be able to communicate in their mother tongue and in the primary language of instruction. Foundational reading skills necessary for learning to read are critical for functioning in modern society, in addition to the ability to comprehend and analyze complex texts through a variety of media. This domain encompasses both primary and lower secondary levels.

5.) The Ability to Use Numbers and Apply this Knowledge to Real-Life Situations

Rationale: Children must be able to count and understand mathematical concepts both to make informed economic choices and to pursue advanced learning in such disciplines as science, engineering, economics, research, technology, etc. This domain also encompasses both the primary and lower secondary levels.

6.) An Adaptable, Flexible Skill Set to Meet the Demands of the 21^st Century

Rationale: Beyond literacy and numeracy, children and youth need a variety of skills across the seven learning domains to succeed in the 21st century. Administered in lower secondary, this domain of measurement might cover multiple competencies such as environmental awareness, collaborative problem solving, information communications technology digital literacy, and social responsibility.

The task force also recognizes that a system of global measurement will only be effective in improving learning outcomes if there is a simultaneous focus on improving capacity within countries to conduct and use learning assessments. The Measures and Methods Working Group proposed the establishment of a neutral international body, which may be an expansion of an existing agency, to operationalize these recommendations. In Dubai, the task force agreed to explore the feasibility of such an advisory group to track progress against the global areas of measurement and help build national capacity for measuring learning. In Phase III of the LMTF project, the Implementation Working Group will investigate this idea further and conduct an analysis of how to best translate these recommendations into practice.

Next Steps and Phase III

The next steps in the process include the April release of the task force’s final recommendations from the meeting in Dubai. A more detailed technical report on the Phase II process and results will follow.

The third and final working group on implementation will convene from March through August 2013. Led by Dzingai Mutumbuka—chair of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and former minister of education of Zimbabwe—the Implementation Working Group will consider, among other things:

The feasibility of setting up a neutral international advisory group on global learning measurement.

How governments can convene stakeholders to improve learning measurement across the seven learning domains.

What resources and financing would be needed to implement task force recommendations.

How to operationalize the two proposed areas of measurement for which there are currently no global measures (i.e., breadth of learning opportunities and 21st century knowledge and skills).

In July 2013, the task force will meet for a third time in person to hear the working group’s proposal.

Finally, a word on project scope. As originally conceived, the job of the Learning Metrics Task Force is to build consensus around global aspiration for learning and the measurement of learning outcomes. The task force recognizes that this is only one small piece of the larger quality puzzle, albeit an important one. Assessments alone will not improve the quality of instruction or learning environments; rather, they provide a better understanding of outcomes to enable policymakers and educators to develop strategies for improving learning, while taking into account many other factors. In response to multiple requests for the task force to make recommendations regarding inputs, such as curriculum, instruction, etc., discussions are now underway to explore whether there should be an LMTF Phase IV to expand the project scope beyond learning metrics.

To receive regular updates on the task force’s progress, send your name and email address to LearningMetrics@brookings.edu. Or visit brookings.edu/learningmetrics for more information.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop
Mari Soliván
Kate Anderson Simons

Image Source: © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

The New Push for Education Reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Xanthe Ackerman, Lauren Greubel and Rebecca Winthrop — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:38:00 -0500

Over the last two years the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has doubled the proportion of the national budget going to education from 6.5 percent to 13.8 percent. Such a large increase is uncommon. More than doubling the percent of the national budget appropriated to education is indicative of a greater shift in national priorities to move education up the ladder of importance. Still, for this commitment to translate into positive outcomes for the millions of children who are in school but currently not learning, and the 7 million primary school-age children who are out of school, the DRC and its partners must address challenges made more complex by on-going conditions of insecurity.

In 2012 the ministry of education finalized a new strategy that outlines its national objectives for the next three years. Knowing that the depth of the problem is too great to address without support, the government has made a concerted effort to reach out to international partners, including through two trips to Washington D.C. and New York in the last three months - one by Minister of Education Mwangu in December 2012 and a second by Prime Minister Mapon this past February. The Brookings Center for Universal Education, together with the Africa Growth Initiative, co-hosted the prime minister and his delegation and engaged in a discussion about economic stabilization and education policy and partnerships.

Despite the step change in recent budget allocations to education, the country has a long way to go in reaching universal primary enrollment and improving the quality of education available to all the children in its country. On the 2011 Human Development Index, the annual rankings of national achievement in health, education and income in 187 countries, the DRC was ranked last. Ravaged by over 15 years of conflict that ended in 2008, the country faces the threat of on-going violence and instability in the eastern region that prevents broader economic and social development. Although 11 heads of state signed a peace accord on February 24th at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, the government and the M23 rebels remain locked in tense negotiations. Rebel tactics in the DRC have been particularly brutal, including widespread rape of girls and women.

Reaching the lost generation

During past years of conflict in the DRC social services were slowed or even stopped. By the government’s report, in 1990 the national allocation to education was 1 percent of the national budget and in 1999 only 32 percent of children were in primary school. Since then, 2.7 million children have died as a result of the conflict. Other children did not go to school because they were working, fighting, or were displaced from their homes due to instability. The prime minister dubs this generation, who are now young adults, the “lost generation” because of the opportunities that passed them over. Data from a 2010 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted nationally reflects the impact of war on these young adults. It found that nationally only 51 percent of young women age 15-24 years are literate, a figure that falls to only 28 percent for women from the poorest quintile. These youth make up the country’s unskilled labor force and a large percentage of the unemployed – almost 70 percent of youth have no job. The government and its partners are now tasked with providing employment opportunities for this generation. One way they are doing so is by creating jobs in the agricultural and social service sectors.

Not only does the country need to create jobs, but also ensure there are skilled people to fill them. The DRC is a country with the third largest population in sub-Saharan Africa. It is endowed with some of Africa’s most fertile soil, unparalleled hydroelectric potential and many of the world’s most precious metals. Its labor market demands workers with strong foundational skills including literacy and numeracy, and noncognitive attributes such as critical thinking and interpersonal communication. But also skills that are relevant to – and meet the needs of – a growing economy, such as information and communication technology fluency, computer literacy and industry specific technical skills. The government is partnering with private universities, the business sector and NGOs to create targeted vocational programs such as specialized training programs in mechanics and plumbing.

The DRC faces twin challenges of remedying the lack of skills and employment opportunities for the “lost generation” with improving its education system to best meet the needs of today’s children. To achieve this the government announced that primary education would be free up through third grade in 2010 and have been adding one grade level each school year since. Still, reaching the most marginalized with quality education remains a formidable challenge, including that the implementation of the free primary education policy has been criticized by some members of civil society.

Ensuring equity

Recent data from UNICEF shows that the DRC’s national net enrollment rate is 75 percent for primary school. Reaching the last 25 percent of out-of-school primary aged children – approximately 7 million children by some estimates – is essential for the DRC’s long-term growth and prosperity. But the last 25 percent is will be the hardest to reach. They are the children from the poorest families, the most rural and conflict-affected areas, and those disadvantaged by their gender or disability.

Reaching the conflict-affected with education services is a particular challenge. The use of child soldiers is pervasive in the DRC and recruitment prevents some children from staying in school. As of 2011, an estimated 7,000 child soldiers remained in both armed groups and government forces (despite large scale releases of child soldiers from the national army in preceding years and reforms making recruitment of children under 18 illegal). As of December 2010 there were 2.7 million internally displaced persons in the country and an additional 491,481 refugees in other countries from the DRC, a large percent of which are children whose access to education has been disrupted. International actors have an important role in supporting demobilized child soldiers and in delivering services to IDPs, including food, health support, shelter and education services; but the government has the ultimate responsibility to ensure their right to education.

In addition to living in conflict-affected areas, other factors such as gender, poverty and location create disadvantage. Data from UNESCO’s Education For All Global Monitoring Report’s new World Inequality Database on Education shows just how stark the disparities can be. For example, only 6 percent of urban 17-22 year olds face extreme education poverty (less than two years of schooling) compared to 23 percent of their rural counterparts. Two percent of the richest quintile face extreme education poverty in contrast to 26 percent of the poorest quintile. However, the greatest disparities exist between regions: In Kinshasa only 2 percent of the population experience extreme education poverty, compared to 32 percent in North Kivu – the site of much current and ongoing conflict. The impact of poverty on education is evident among the more than 40 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 14 who have been child laborers, especially in mines.

Girls are especially vulnerable and the disadvantage they face is reinforced in conflict-affected areas. The Gender Parity Index for primary school is 0.93, but falls to 0.83 in Katanga in the conflict-affected east of the country. Only 7 percent of males face extreme education poverty, compared to 23 percent of females. Rape is frequently used as a tool of war, many times against children. In 2007, UNICEF reported 18,000 survivors of rape in eastern the DRC alone, half of whom were children. During surges in rebel activity, as recently as the fall of 2012, reports show that sexual assault of women and girls sharply increases.

Improving education quality

Improving equity in access to education is one step the government of the DRC can take to strengthen economic growth; another is improving the quality of education for children once in school. Learning outcomes in the DRC are low. In a RTI International 2012 Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) baseline assessment of Grades 4 and 6 students showed that 29 percent of boys and 44 percent of females could not read one word. Furthermore, the assessment found that two out of three Grade 4 and 6 boys, and more than three out of four girls in the same grades, were unable to answer a single reading comprehension question correctly.

Poor learning outcomes are due in part to an undersupported teaching force. In primary school, the national average is one teacher for 37 pupils, but in marginalized or rural areas, there can be over 100 pupils per class. Similarly there is a lack of education materials, with one textbook for every two students at the primary level. Estimates suggest that there are between 350,000 and 450,000 teachers, with just over half of these teaching at primary level. The average age of teachers is 50 years old and while almost 74 percent of primary teachers are trained, only 33 percent of teachers at secondary level are trained. Salary expenditure consists of four-fifths of the education budget, yet teacher salary levels remain among the lowest in the world and have declined in real terms by up to 40 percent.

The DRC has made improving the quality and relevance of education the second priority of its education strategy. To promote quality education, an 2012 RTI report said the government committed to increasing free textbook distribution, creating a national policy on teacher training, establishing a national action plan to add value to the teaching profession, training teachers and instituting curriculum reform.

Funding gap

In 2012 the government developed an Interim Education Plan with three objectives: increasing access, equity and retention, improving the quality and relevance of education and strengthening governance. In addition to the increase in budget allocation to education over the last decade, the government reports widespread economic reforms that have resulted in a stabilized exchange rate, lower inflation rate, and an increase in public revenue collection so that it now accounts for 28 percent of the GDP, compared to 5 percent in the 1990s.

In December 2012 the DRC was awarded $100 million by the Global Partnership for Education to help increase access to primary education, improve the quality of education through better learning materials and strengthened teacher training, and improve management in the education sector. While the government’s budget for education from 2012 to 2015 is $1.2 billion, in a presentation by H.E. Mr. Maker Mwangu Famba to the Brookings Institution, he explained there is still a $270 million financing gap. In addition to the additional funds, the country seeks technical support to aid in the absorption of funds and efficient delivery of services.

On April 18th and 19th, the minister of education and the minister of finance will return to Washington D.C. to attend the Learning for All Ministerial meetings at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Invited by World Bank President Jim Kim, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, the delegation will meet with members of the international community to discuss how to provide quality education for all and to continue to accelerate progress toward the reaching Millennium Development Goal of universal access to education in the DRC.

Authors

Xanthe Ackerman
Lauren Greubel
Rebecca Winthrop

Image Source: Sharon Farmer

How Do You Support Teachers? Pay Them

Rebecca Winthrop — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:23:00 -0500

In many fragile and conflict-affected states, teachers are largely responsible for rebuilding and sustaining education systems, even when the government is unable or unwilling to do so. Teachers can be found working in some of the hardest conditions around the world and are often on the front lines of violence.

Education, and, with it teachers, have increasingly become targets of attack.

Between 2006 and 2009:

439 teachers, education employees and students were killed in Afghanistan;
117 teachers and students were assassinated in Colombia and 435 education staff also received death threats;
and the list goes on.

However, this form of violence is not the only thing that makes teaching especially difficult in these contexts. Teachers, like their students, have often been affected in other ways by the crisis themselves, including having their livelihoods disrupted by being displaced from their homes and losing loved ones. In addition, often the teachers working in this context are paid infrequently, if at all. A survey of teachers in post-war Liberia showed that, routinely, teachers had to work three jobs (two after they were finished teaching) just to feed their families.

Read the full blog post on Education for All Blog »

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop

Publication: Education for All Blog

Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn

Rebecca Winthrop and Maribel E. Soliván — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:03:00 -0500

Over the last few weeks, Allison Anderson has written about the recent UN High-Level Panel meeting in Monrovia and other pieces in the “multilayered puzzle that is the post-2015 process.” The Learning Metrics Task Force, convened last summer by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics and the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, seeks to provide another important piece of the post-MDG puzzle.

Comprised of national and regional governments, U.N. Education for All-convening agencies, regional political bodies, civil society and donor agencies, the task force is working on a fast-paced schedule leading to September 2013 to build global consensus on measuring learning and make concrete recommendations to inform the post-2015 agenda. The first report from the task force, “Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn,” presents the results of the first step in that process.

Before the task force could consider which measures of learning to recommend for inclusion in global development goals, it first had to answer some foundational questions:

Are there essential competencies that all children and youth need to master to be successful in school and life, regardless of where they live?
Should the task force limit its recommendations to what is measurable now, or should it also consider opportunities for expanding current capacity for measurement?

To answer these questions, the task force sought guidance from a technical working group of 37 experts in early childhood, primary and postprimary education, as well as feedback gathered through global consultation from more than 500 stakeholders in 57 countries. Here’s what they learned.

Seven Domains of Learning
The task force identified the following seven domains of learning as important for all children and youth:

Physical well-being
Social and emotional
Culture and the arts
Literacy and communication
Learning approaches and cognition
Numeracy and mathematics
Science and technology

All seven domains are applicable from early childhood through postprimary, although at different stages some domains are more relevant than others.

The task force also learned that there is broad interest globally in exploring ways to measure learning beyond literacy and numeracy, where the current capacity for assessment is concentrated. Accordingly, the following framework was developed as the basis for the next set of task force recommendations. Figure 1 represents the task force’s vision for what every child across the globe should learn and be able to do, whether at the classroom, system or global level, by the time they reach postprimary age.

Finally, the task force charged the second technical working group on measures and methods with investigating a “hybrid model” for measuring learning, which would look at two tracks: improving the measurement of learning at a global level and at a national or subnational level.

Next Steps
Later this week the task force will meet in Dubai for the second in-person convening. Over two days, the group will hear options for this hybrid model and make final decisions on what it should look like. In the third and final phase of the project, the task force will consider how these measurements might be implemented to build national, regional and global capacity for assessment, and ultimately to improve learning for children and youth around the world. We look forward to sharing these decisions as they develop.

For more information about the Learning Metrics Task Force, visit www.brookings.edu/learningmetrics or email learningmetrics@brookings.edu to receive updates.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop
Maribel E. Soliván

Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

In the run-up to 2015 and beyond, the global education community must work together to improve learning and propose practical actions to deliver and measure progress. In response, UNESCO through its Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution have co-convened the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF). The project’s main objective is to shift the focus of global education debates from access to access plus learning. Based on input from technical working groups and global consultations, the task force will make recommendations to help countries and international organizations measure and improve learning outcomes for children and youth worldwide.

In the first phase of the project, the Standards Working Group prepared a series of initial recommendations to identify the competencies, knowledge or areas of learning that are important for all children and youth to master in order to succeed in school and life. This initial work (based on current discussions, policies and research) was then enriched following a broad consultation involving more than 500 individuals in 57 countries.

The final Phase I recommendations from the task force are presented in its first report entitled, Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn, which presents a framework for what every child and youth should learn and be able to do by the time they reach postprimary age.

Download the executive summary » (PDF)

Download the full report » (PDF)

Download Executive Summary in Arabic » (PDF)

Download Executive Summary in French » (PDF)

Download Executive Summary in Spanish » (PDF)

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Could Financial Transaction Taxes Underway in Europe Help Education in Developing Countries?

Sarah O’Hagan and Rebecca Winthrop — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:12:00 -0500

On January 23, the European Union’s finance ministers unanimously endorsed Financial Transaction Taxes (FTT) by giving a green light to 11 eurozone countries to impose a coordinated tax on financial transactions – an act filled with potential not just for national budgets, but overseas development assistance as well. Such taxes may or may not eventually cross the ocean to U.S. markets, but as the group of nations that include the eurozone’s four biggest economies (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) begin to negotiate the tax’s rate and design, policymakers should consider the possibility of using even a small percentage of the revenues gained to provide a new source of development finance–money that can change the world.

The animating force behind the idea is to skim “excess” revenue from the financial sector to repair national budgets severely strained in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, thus holding financial institutions accountable for their role in causing the recession. An additional benefit cited by the tax’s supporters is it would place some constraints on the increasing volume of high-frequency trading that has at times threatened the stability of financial markets.

The nation at the forefront of the FTT movement is France, which passed a 0.2 percent tax on financial transactions in 2012. At the U.N. General Assembly in September of that year, French President Francois Hollande declared that France would also commit at least 10 percent of the tax’s revenues to development, citing Unitaid as inspiration and saying: “Let’s introduce this tax across the world and ensure that revenues go towards development.”

The 11 states planning to adopt an FTT should take their cue from France and allocate some revenues for development aid; but crucially, they should avoid the French error of not prioritizing global education within that assistance. Improving educational attainment in developing countries in particular is a powerful cornerstone of sustainable global growth that the G-20 has been focused on promoting.

Writing in Foreign Affairs in Nov/Dec 2010, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put it succinctly: “Education has immeasurable power to promote growth and stability around the world. Educating girls and integrating them into the labor force is especially critical to breaking the cycle of poverty. It is hard to imagine a better world without a global commitment to providing better education for women and youth – including the 72 million children today who do not attend primary school.” Duncan emphasized that rich countries benefit from poor countries’ improved educational levels since better-educated populations overseas means greater markets abroad for U.S. and European goods. More important are the global trends he identified, including that “the widening gap between the economic fates of workers with college degrees and the fates of those without underscores that knowledge today is an international public good.” Demography has already made evident that the majority of global talent in the future will come from the developing world –India alone is estimated to provide 25 percent of global talent by 2030. The children born today who will enter developing country educational systems will constitute the mobile global labor force that companies everywhere will compete to hire.

EU tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta called the EU’s concerted decision “a major milestone for EU tax policy” and indicated that it would be levied on both sides of any stock or bond trade involving a buyer or seller based in the vanguard transaction tax bloc. The tax, often called a Tobin Tax for the economist who originally devised it some 40 years ago, would likely be charged at a rate of 0.1 percent of the value of any trade in shares or bonds, and 0.01 percent of any financial derivative product. Negotiations on its exact specifics may stretch over months or even years, but some countries are pushing for the tax to be in place as soon as next year. Countries supporting the financial transactions tax at present are Austria, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia, while the agreement enables the possibility for other EU states to opt in later. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted, “Most of Europe will now tax financial transactions, generating billions for hard-pressed budgets. U.S. should do the same.” Previous numbers for back-of-the-napkin revenue estimates for a European FTT across the full 27-nation bloc were in the neighborhood of €57 billion a year, and the 11 nations pushing ahead with the idea represent roughly two-thirds of the EU’s economy.

If part of the impetus behind the creation of mechanisms like the FTT is to foster sustainable, stable growth, then there is clear logic and symmetry in dedicating some of the FTT revenue to global education. For countries that are cutting their bilateral aid to education, such as the Netherlands, moving to pledge a portion of this extra public revenue to education should be a natural step. Moreover, these revenues can enable the EU to contribute to the targets of the Education First initiative, the U.N. campaign designed to massively increase political and financial support for education. With the support of the current French presidency of the G-20, the introduction of a financial transaction tax at global level could be on the table at the next G-20 summit in Cannes in November 2013.

The promise of a progressive tax on an activity engaged in only by the affluent, which also taxes it so lightly as almost to escape notice, has the potential to raise hundreds of millions for a sector that, alongside health, underpins the development trajectory of all nations –yet lags severely in dedicated, long-term financing. Creating new funds for development should be part of the rationale for instituting a European FTT, and education is the key ingredient for success. Civil society groups within the 11 European states and their governments must work to keep education on the table. In an ever more interconnected world, they must not repeat the mistake of France and omit funding for education. Education is fundamental for development. Arne Duncan, again: “Education, in short, is the new game changer driving economic growth.”

Authors

Sarah O’Hagan
Rebecca Winthrop

Supporting Teachers in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

February 12, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Teachers living in situations of armed conflict, forced displacement, and state fragility risk their lives to be on the frontlines of educating children. Often they are the only educators present, working in difficult and dangerous conditions with little or no support, sometimes without receiving a paycheck for months. Supporting the wellbeing of teachers is essential in any context, but it is particularly important for advancing education during and after violence and crises.

On February 12, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings (CUE) hosted a discussion on the policies needed to support teachers working in fragile and conflict-affected states. The discussion drew on findings from a recent report by CUE and CfBT Education Trust, “Building Effective Teacher Salary Systems in Fragile and Conflict-affected States.” Panelists included: Lori Heninger, director of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies; Susy Ndaruhutse, head of international development and education at CfBT Education Trust; and Brookings Senior Fellow Rebecca Winthrop, director of CUE. Yolande Miller-Grandvaux, senior education advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development, moderated the conversation.

Audio

Supporting Teachers in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States

Event Materials

Education World Forum: Similarities in Technology—from Sri Lanka to Sweden

Xanthe Ackerman and Rebecca Winthrop — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:15:00 -0500

Last week in London, 93 countries’ representatives attended the largest non-declaration-producing gathering of international education leaders worldwide. Over 100 education ministers and their delegations attended the 10th annual Education World Forum (EWF) in London sponsored by the British Council, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Promethean, Pearson and many other partners. The discussion centered on the role of technology and the broader challenges and opportunities that countries face in pursuit of their goals. The EWF culminated in guided tours of the Bett, the largest education technology show on earth, where delegations, often accompanied by innovation ministers, researched technology solutions for their school systems. Attending delegations represented 77 percent of the world’s learners and included countries ranging from Sweden to Uzbekistan to Sri Lanka.

There are many aspects of the use of technology in education that are universal, despite different contexts and applications. No matter the level of development, technology should be fit for the purpose set out by education planners. Without a clear framework driven by policy objectives, priorities and values, technology may replicate or even magnify problems in the sector at greater risk and expense. Still, exposure to technology-driven models informs policymakers of a wider range of tools to prepare students for the idea economy, as argued in a Getting Smart by former Gates Foundation Executive Director of Education Tom Vander Ark. Playing with the Promethean Activ Table, for instance, provides a powerful illustration of technology’s ability to support collaborative learning in elementary school students—the table is designed to support play among six children, and each one has to agree before changing tasks by pressing the touch screen.

Worldwide, planners grapple with the question of whether or not technology will directly impact learning outcomes. The theory that replacing pen and paper with tablets and in-class demonstrations with avatars will better excite and involve children may be rooted in our experiences observing the magnetic force field of iPads and videogames on children from as young as one year of age. Although we still need more evidence about how the many new forms of technology affect learning, exchanging pen for stylist without improving other critical conditions in developing countries is unlikely to transform learning outcomes. Additionally, the positive impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is mediated by many factors, including infrastructure, understanding of ICTs among teachers and leadership, the extent to which technology meaningfully supports pedagogy, and time to learn about and plan for the integration of technology. In many developing countries, limitations in these and other factors create barriers to technology adoption. Meanwhile, evidence from the United States emphasizes the importance of basic elements of education—with the effectiveness of the teacher the most important in-school factor affecting learning outcomes. At the Bett show, one of the best attended demonstrations was given by a teacher who passionately illustrated the power of the quadratic equation with a rope with bobbles on it as a means of showing what his computer was doing automatically. His antics, not the computer, were captivating.

Worldwide, technology is transforming the reach of education. In developing countries, a variety of forms of technology—including mobile phones, radio and television—have supported learning in innovative ways, creating an extended virtual classroom. In high- and low-income countries alike, blended and e-learning modalities are powerful ways to reach learners—equally in rural Nova Scotia and Botswana. Once learners are connected, technology is also seen as an equalizer: In Uruguay, parents refer to Plan Ceibal, a program which distributed tablets for 500,000 children, as a democratization of learning because any child with access can equally fulfill their curiosity.

Many ICT strategies in low-income countries now hinge on electrification or solar energy and internet coverage as critical steps toward more ambitious goals. The extent to which low-income countries will focus on attaining power and coverage in remote areas and for marginalized groups such as young mothers or people with disabilities depends on national priorities. Just as in the case of access to education, access to technology in rural, poor and sparsely populated parts of a country may be more expensive per user or less of a political priority. If disadvantaged groups are not explicitly targeted by ICT strategies, the inadvertent result may be that they fall further behind. On the other hand, ICT strategies and specific technology can be used to counteract challenges that disproportionately affect marginalized groups, for instance the use of digitized curriculum to support teacher training and gender-sensitive practices in rural India.

Despite the cost related to adoption, over time appropriate technology adoption offers the opportunity for cost savings and efficiency on a scale that cannot be ignored. In many countries, the cost of textbooks is one of the larger line items in education budgets. The introduction of pre-loaded tablets, at a cost as low as $50 per student, could significantly reduce this cost over time and opens up possibilities for publishing in local languages. Similarly, countries are analyzing the potential savings related to the introduction of simulated science labs where an initial investment in hardware and software replaces the recurring cost of laboratory materials and reduces safety hazards. Education management systems offer the possibility of removing person-hours in exam review—this could cut costs over time and the amount of time that students in low-income countries have to wait to receive end-of-school results (wait times can be as much as five months for secondary students in Malawi, during which time rural girls are susceptible to societal pressure to accept marriage proposals). In the U.K. and other developed markets, schools increasingly turn to cloud-based systems or blended systems as more efficient than servers alone.

Where teaching and pedagogy are evolving in line with our changing world, technology can support teachers and reinforce the need for relevance in education. OECD data shows that even with high levels of unemployment in 2010, over 40 percent of employers in Australia, Japan, Mexico and Switzerland still reported difficulty filling jobs with qualified candidates—pointing to the fact that education systems are not adequately preparing learners for the demands of market. Skills drive outcomes, and the skills that the 21st century workforce demands include problem-solving and collaboration. A powerful example of how technology has responded to this reality is the Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) assessment system developed after three years of research in partnership by Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and the University of Melbourne to promote collaborative learning and ICT skills. The assessment system focuses on tasks that teams of students perform and provides formative assessment data to teachers within thirty minutes. Australia, Finland and Singapore have introduced the assessment into their education system. Developing country delegations at EWF were interested to learn that Costa Rica made 21st century skills a priority and implemented the assessment system while still tackling challenges related to literacy and numeracy. A variety of other tools also encourage collaborative work through interactive hardware and software. “Flight Up” in Finland supports brainstorming through the use of tablets and an interactive blackboard, giving better opportunity to introverted students who are less likely to raise their hands. Pre-loaded tablets support changing pedagogy in another way: Teachers are able to give reading assignments based on where children are developmentally, instead of having one assignment for the class that leaves some students behind. This could help to address the damaging effect of overambitious curricula and the need to allow children to read and learn at stage-appropriate levels.

The field of technology and education is hard to navigate given the multitude of options and the unclear evidence of impact. In this environment and given scarce resources in developing countries, it is critical to root choices in priorities that support learning outcomes and to consider the fundamentals that will affect foundational skills. Although the evidence to support best practices in technology adoption is inconclusive in many regards, studying data from pilot projects and considering how technology promotes effective teaching and education system management, extends the reach of the classroom, prepares learners for the demands of the market and the world, and creates cost-savings can help guide decisions.

Authors

Xanthe Ackerman
Rebecca Winthrop

Tracking Post-2015 Opportunities for the Education Sector Worldwide

Rebecca Winthrop and Allison Anderson — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:45:00 -0500

To advance progress for children and youth worldwide, it is critical for the global community to recognize education as essential for human development. As Education For All and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sunset in 2015, and the U.N. secretary-general launches Education First, the education sector has a unique opportunity to raise the profile of global education goals to ensure access plus learning becomes a central component of the global development agenda.

Online discussions for the global thematic consultations on education in the post-2015 development framework are now in progress, along with countless other meetings and events hosted by civil society, NGOs, development agencies and more. The official consultations, supported by UNICEF and UNESCO, include four phases of e-discussion that are taking place between December 2012 and February 2013 on the topics of equitable access to education; quality of learning; global citizenship, skills and jobs; and governance and financing for education. Each of the e-discussions will run for 2 weeks and each week will have a new set of questions to guide the discussion. Other key events during the consultation process will include a global meeting on education in Dakar, Senegal, on March 17, 2013, and the finalization of a synthesis report on March, 31, 2013 that summarizes input to the online discussions. Opinions gathered will be used directly by the U.N. and world leaders to plan a new development agenda.

The public consultation on education is one of 11 themes being addressed in the post-2015 consultation process. The other themes are growth and employment; health; inequalities; environmental sustainability; governance; hunger, food security and nutrition; conflict and fragility; population dynamics; water; and energy.

Opportunity to Influence the Discussion on Quality of Learning
The second stage of the education consultations on Quality of Learning is open until January, 21 via the Global Thematic Consultation online discussion on education in the post-2015 development agenda.

The questions posed are:

How should learning outcomes be measured and how can measurement of learning improve education quality?
What could be a universal measurable indicator to measure quality of learning in (a) formal education and (b) the nonformal sector? Should there be targets, and interim targets?
What would be your recommendations to address and improve the quality of education in the post MDG framework?
What are the key policy implications for an education goal in the post-2015 development agenda?
How could access to education, equity and quality learning be combined in a post- 2015 learning goal?
What specific actions should be taken to facilitate the quality education for the most marginalized groups, such as girls and women, ethnic and other minorities, disabled, refugee and IDPs and child soldiers?
What specific actions and interventions should be recommended for each of the following actors: governments; school boards and other school-based actors; stakeholders, such as teacher and student unions, parents associations, etc; civil society; communities; private sector; academia, including universities and research institutes; media; U.N. system and international donor community.

Answers to these questions could be answered in a number of ways and it will be essential for the education community to engage in these consultations. There are, however, some emerging areas of agreement that we see from our research and policy work, including:

A focus on literacy is essential but not sufficient. We have yet to find an educator that disagrees with ensuring children master literacy skills early in their educational career in order to prepare them for their lives, livelihoods and future education. However many argue that while this is an essential foundation, it must be accompanied by other foundational skills such as numeracy and problem-solving or critical thinking. Indeed, the U.N. secretary-general’s Education First initiative sets a goal of ensuring all children are fully literate and numerate after four years in school. The initial recommendations of the global Learning Metrics Task Force recommend children are supported in seven crucial domains of learning, including literacy and numeracy as well as physical well-being, social and emotional development, culture and the arts. Ultimately, in the decades to come, the quality of education systems will determine if a country’s young people will be active participants in the knowledge economy or will be left in the margins. To be active participants, young people must be fully literate but also must be able to work in teams, communicate across cultures, and analyze problems to develop creative solutions.

A focus on the education continuum from early childhood through post-primary is needed. Educators agree that the capacities built in early childhood greatly impact the success of children in primary school, which in turn is the platform for their ability to transition well to the various forms of post-primary education (formal or nonformal). Quality education needs to be prioritized across this education continuum and a narrow focus on only one piece is not likely to produce the desired results. The current MDG focus on primary education should be expanded in the next round. Our Global Compact on Learning report, along with the U.N.’s Education First initiative and the global Learning Metrics Task Force all seriously consider the full continuum of education starting with early childhood and moving through post-primary.

Schools will be only one venue for learning in the future. The role of schools in developing the skills and capacities of young people is changing. Technology has opened access to learning opportunities that were previously unattainable. Girls in rural Pakistan can study by text message even if they can’t leave their homes in insecure areas. Children in rural Ghana can access the world’s libraries through an e-reader even when they have no books in their school or house. The future of education will be less about bringing children to schools – which has been a major focus in the first set of MDGs – and more about bringing learning to children. Teachers will do more coaching and guiding and less lecturing. Those in developed countries who are pushing the bounds of open educational resources argue that, in the future, young people should be doing their homework at school (where teachers and peers can problem solve together) and learning their lessons at home (via video or other means). Two decades from now the lines between formal education and nonformal education could be so blurred that we may abandon the distinction all together and only discuss learning and equity in accessing quality learning opportunities.

In the coming months, the Center for Universal Education will continue to track and share, via blog posts such as this one, opportunities for education stakeholders within the post-2015 discussions and events. Stay tuned for our next blog post, which will map and share current proposals for education within the future development goals.

Authors

Promoting Gender Equality through Education in India

Rebecca Winthrop — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:25:00 -0500

Protests continue in India, weeks after the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year old university student on December 16th and her subsequent death two weeks later – and rightly so, the incident itself was beyond the pale. A young couple in Delhi boarded a private bus after seeing a movie and instead of discussing character development and plot turns on the way home, the bus doors locked and they were subject to brutal attacks by the other passengers and driver as the bus drove around the city for over two hours. Witnesses driving by did nothing and the victims were eventually dumped out of the bus under an underpass.

But the awful details of this crime are not the main reason for the protests. Instead it is the deep and pervasive gender inequality in India of which this heinous act is a symbol. Girls and women are attacked every day and Indians across the country, particularly young people, are sick of it. Enough is enough they say. There are real reasons why half of all the girls in India don’t want to be girls, and it’s time to change.

If there is any silver lining to this tragedy, it is that the issue of gender equality is on everyone’s lips. Urvashi Sahni, an alumna of our girl’s education Global Scholars Program, is tracking this issue from India and writes that for one of the first times the debate on gender equality is “engaging voices from all sectors of society including students, civil society, academia, political parties, the police, the judiciary and the government.” Now the question remains: what will India do to improve the status of girls and women?

Much of the public discussion focuses on short and long-term solutions such as reforming the law enforcement systems, updating the legal code, supporting the women’s movement, developing new systems of accountability and, of course, having “greater dialogue about India’s patriarchal norms.” All of these things are important but it is the last that is perhaps the most difficult for policymakers and bureaucrats to tackle. Even if it is the most difficult, upending gender norms is perhaps the most fundamental thing needed for long-term sustainable change. Without transforming, in the deepest sense, how girls and women are valued in India, important interventions around such things as legal reforms and police training will end up in the problematic category of “necessary but not sufficient” for developing gender equality in society.

If done right, education can play an important role in redefining gender norms in India. Around the world, there have been numerous excellent examples of education changing people’s way of viewing the world and leading to new forms of behavior, ways of relating with others and ultimately social norms. Indeed, there have been decades of academic research on this topic, so much so that entire subfields of education theory and practice have developed (see for example Jack Mezirow and the field of transformative learning and Paulo Freire and the field of critical pedagogy).

India itself has good examples of education changing social norms towards gender equality. An interesting case of girls’ education programs run in the province of Uttar Pradesh demonstrates that schooling, if done right, can help change gender norms, even in the most marginalized societies. Founded by Urvashi Sahni, the Study Hall Foundation has demonstrated that at the same or lower cost per student as the government schools, their schools can educate girls in a way that enables them to both excel academically, but more importantly emerge as empowered young women. In one of their schools, Prerna, girls outperform their peers both within the province and across India. Ninety percent of Prerna girls complete their education to year 10, compared to below 30 percent nationally, and they do so while outperforming in virtually all subjects (in math and science the Prerna girls perform about 20 percentage points higher on exams than the national average). But most importantly, these girls are changing the gender norms in their communities. They are beginning to fight back when they or their peers are planned to be married off at too early an age. Through street protests and cajoling discussions, they have convinced their parents to keep them in school instead. They initiate community-wide discussions on violence against women. They apply for higher education scholarships and convince their families to let them go once they receive them (an incredibly 88 percent of the girls go on to higher education).

The success of this program is not because the students come from well-to-do families, they don’t (the average family income of students is $108 and 60 percent of their mothers and 40 percent of their fathers have never been to school). It is also not because teachers have higher qualifications or are better paid than government teachers. Rather, according to Mrs. Sahni, it’s because every day the girls’ talk about their worth, value and the issues they face around gender equality. “Gender equality needs to be taught, like math, science, and any other subject” says Sahni, who describes how in Prerna gender equality classes are regularly taught alongside a government curriculum. Then, she is quick to point out, teachers need to be encouraged and supported to fulfill their role as social change agents.

Now this is an idea that the Indian government would do well to listen to. It very well may be a center piece for transforming India’s “patriarchal norms”.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop

Promoting Girls' Education in India

Rebecca Winthrop and Urvashi Sahni — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Education is a necessary component for the growth and prosperity of any country, but it is critical for developing economies. Studies show that educating girls is particularly important and can help reduce poverty as well as other social ills. In India, Dr. Urvashi Sahni strives to meet the growing need for girl’s education through her Study Hall Educational Foundation and the Prerna Girls School. Center for Universal Education director, Rebecca Winthrop talks with Sahni and says educating girls continues to be a problem in developing countries.

Video

Promoting Girls' Education in India

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop
Urvashi Sahni

A Game-Changer for Global Education

Rebecca Winthrop — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:56:00 -0500

Recently at the Brookings Center for Universal Education (CUE), we were joined by colleagues from around the world in a two-day conference to discuss the status of global education and strategies for future action. Activities during the two-day conference included: a public event with United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and Director of the White House National Economic Council Gene Sperling; a private meeting with a delegation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; a meeting convened by Women Thrive Worldwide; a private all-day research symposium on ‘Learning in the Developing World’; and presentations by CUE’s Global Guest scholars.

The central theme of the events was to understand the new opportunities that Education First, the U.N. secretary-general’s new five-year global education initiative, affords our community. There was broad agreement that this new initiative has the potential to be a game-changer in global education if it succeeds in its mission to, in the words of Carol Bellamy, get existing and new actors alike to “do more and do better.” Not only does Education First inject much needed leadership and energy into global education advocacy and provide a bold vision for the future, but it also puts forward a set of concrete steps for actors to take if they want to lend their hands to the effort.

Education First aims to put children in school, ensure quality learning, and foster global citizenship and outlines 10 key actions to make these goals happen. In our discussions there was considerable interest in the specific targets set forth in the initiative and agreement that if Education First is to be successful, actors should focus on tackling different priorities in-line with their scope of work. In addition to governments, multilateral agencies and civil society organizations, participants expressed interest in ensuring business and private philanthropists align their efforts with the Education First agenda. The 10 key actions and the specific targets within them are collectively quite an ambitious and broad agenda. They include:

Enroll all children in school. This goal provides an extra push to meet the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and includes an important focus on gender, while also removing cost barriers and access inequities at both the primary and secondary level. In his speech, Gordon Brown spoke about his plan to work closely over the next several months with World Bank President Jim Kim and several heads of state, including, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to accelerate progress toward these goals. He plans to hold an education summit with ministers of finance and education from these countries and others during the World Bank’s annual spring meetings to pressure governments and donors alike to ramp up action.
Sustain education in humanitarian crises, especially conflict. This goal shines a much needed spotlight on the plight of children affected by emergencies – which comprise a large percentage of those who miss out on quality learning opportunities. It calls for education to be protected during conflict and for development specialists to make sure national education plans have strategies for continuing learning if disaster should hit. But perhaps my favorite target is the call to “make education a central pillar of every humanitarian response – ensuring education is at least 4 percent (up from 2 percent) of the overall humanitarian budget.” Lori Heninger, the director of the Inter-Agency Network of Education in Emergencies, representing some 8,000 members around the globe, announced that they would be bringing their substantial weight to bear on this goal through a new advocacy initiative.
Ensure all children are literate and numerate. As Gene Sperling stated in the discussion, there are some times when you have to “walk and chew gum at the same time” and putting all children in school and ensuring they learn well while there is one of them. In this key action, the Education First initiative moves beyond the MDG mandate to focus on education quality by calling for all children to be fully literate and numerate after four years in school. This global learning target is being discussed in relation to the post-2015 development agenda. There is a need to work with ministries of education to make sure learning resonates at the country level. However it is also necessary to align targets within international donor agencies as different organizations currently have different goals: USAID identifies literacy at grade 2, the Global Partnership for Education at grade 3, and now Education First at grade 4. The role of the Learning Metrics Task Force, which is jointly convened by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, is helping to sort through some of these issues. The task force facilitates a process to begin a global dialogue between countries and actors on these learning issues. The focus of the task force is to find ways to measure a broad range of important metrics to ultimately help improve students’ learning achievement. Helping to identify a small number of those metrics that could go into the next global development agenda is one part of, but not the sum total, of the effort. Indeed the task force’s work is very closely linked with one of the Education First strategies, which is to “track every student’s learning outcomes, and use the information to help improve their achievement.” Interestingly the task force’s purpose parallels comments made by Homi Kharas, in showing an openness to identifying education and learning targets in the next global development agenda for which we do not currently have good measures.
Train more teachers. There is a major shortage of teachers, especially those working in low-income countries. During our conference, questions around how to best retain and support teachers were discussed, especially in light of Education First’s targets to hire 2 million more teachers, and ensure all teachers are well-trained and have improved conditions of service. Ensuring teachers who have left the profession are brought back was mentioned as an important strategy for addressing these issues. Education International and the Global Campaign for Education shared a new initiative they have launched, titled Every Child Needs a Teacher, to advocate that every child has a trained teacher.
Equip classrooms with books and learning materials. Education First calls for 4 million more classrooms to be built in marginalized communities, and for teaching and learning materials to be readily available. Also important for thinking about ways to go to scale, technology needs to be harnessed to both expand the reach of teaching and learning materials as well as improve their quality. How to leverage things such as e-readers with solar power, or mobile phones to help with this issue remains one of the key questions needing further research.
Prepare students for livelihoods. This key action seriously considers the secondary education needs by calling for the global community to halve the number of adolescents out of lower secondary school, ensure that education is relevant for local economies and livelihoods, and prepare young people with critical thinking and 21st century skills. It is also a call to provide alternative learning opportunities for those youth who have missed out of formal schooling. Achieving this was discussed in depth both in reviewing this year’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report recommendations and in debating the issues with academics in our research symposium. The role of non-cognitive attributes – such as communication, collaboration, empathy and determination – was hotly debated in the research symposium. During the research symposium, James Heckman of the University of Chicago and Larry Aber of New York University argued for a much more robust policy orientation around the cultivation of non-cognitive attributes in education systems. Building the foundation for these skills during early childhood and cultivating them through primary and especially during post-primary education is a missing link to improving life outcomes as well as learning outcomes.
Improve child nutrition. Ensuring young children get a successful start on life through proper nutrition is just as important for educational outcomes as is the range of education system inputs typically focused on. Education First calls for the number of children under age 5 who suffer from stunted growth be cut in half, as well as to improve social supports that deliver nutrition to those in need – either through schools or communities. Forging bridges between sectors is something that the MDGs have not been very successful in doing given their sectoral, and hence siloed, nature. However, cross-sectoral collaboration is essential for human development, as discussed during the Women Thrive Worldwide side meeting. Many of the presenters at our event discussed the common ground between health and education, agriculture and education, and women’s empowerment and clean water in particular as they relate to forging a common cause for the next post-2015 development agenda.
Instill life-long learning. Coupled with the target of reducing child stunting, these specific calls for action make a powerful case for how to move forward early childhood development, even if not labeled as such. This includes increasing the participation in quality early childhood development programs for marginalized children in low-income countries from 15 to 45 percent, as well as halving the number of illiterate women and men by 2015. As is too often the case, the question of adult education received very little airtime in these discussions, although early childhood development was fulsomely debated in the research symposium.
Foster global citizenship. What global citizenship means, why it is important, and how to measure it was discussed heavily during the proceedings. Particularly insightful were comments from Patrick Awuah, founder of Asheshi University in Ghana, which uses a purposeful global citizenship model of education. The benefits are not only in the ethical development of students, as Patrick is quick to point out, but also in their employability. His university transitions students to employment at higher rates than any other institution in Ghana. The focus within Education First is to develop the values, knowledge and skills necessary for peace, tolerance and respect for diversity, cultivate a sense of community and giving back to society, and ensure schools are safe and free of any form of violence or harassment.
Close the financing gap. Those who have critiqued the secretary-general’s initiative as not having clear financing targets, should think again. The call is for at least 5 to 6 percent of national GDP to be invested in education, and for the global community to support low-income countries with an additional $24 billion per year to fill the financing gap for primary and lower secondary education, and to ensure effective and accountable use of resources aligned with national education plans.

Clearly there is a wide range of important topics for all actors concerned with education to contribute to a part of this broad agenda. Indeed, combining all our efforts–from developing country actors to multi-lateral institutions, civil society, business, media and philanthropy—is the only way this vision will move from a potential game-changer to an actual force for change.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop