Yesterday was the SECOND day of the Research on Improving Systems of Education annual conference (#RISEConf2021)! School management, equity and choice, and what education interventions we should trash!
@Gabriela_LSC: Training school heads on violence prevention in Peru increased reports of violence and reduced transfers from schools. (It didn’t affect test scores, but come on, not everything has to improve test scores. Let’s just keep the kids from getting hurt!) #RISEConf2021
@JacobusCilliers: A school governance reform in Tanzania that shifted focus from school inspections to school support had little impact BUT adding low-cost measures to increase follow-up from ward education officers modestly boosted learning. riseprogramme.org/sites/default/…#RISEConf2021
@leecrawfurd: Government education officials in many countries underestimate the extent of the learning crisis. #RISEConf2021
@NKarachiwalla: Distributing “large cash grants through school councils to public schools in rural Pakistan” led to “learning increases in both the public and private sectors. Private school improvements appear to be driven by competitive pressures.” wpcarey.asu.edu/sites/default/…
@mandabeat: In Indonesia, making public junior secondary schools *less* selective led to lower learning gains than expected but the gap narrowed between the top and bottom quintiles. #RISEConf2021
@dawit_tibebu & @caine_rolleston: Ethiopia invested in a broad reform to boost learning, but learning outcomes actually declined. Could it be because of a decline in preschool / school readiness? #RISEConf2021
@soyoonahn73: Providing a five-day STEM boot camp in Tanzania led to more progressive gender attitudes among girls (but not boys). It also boosted girls’ weekly hours of studying in STEM-related subjects. riseprogramme.org/sites/default/…#RISEConf2021
The last session of the day was provocatively titled “Trash this!” in which esteemed speakers highlighted which education interventions they’d get rid of! #RISEConf2021
@lwantchekon would get rid of donor interference in education! He’d redirect aid to focus on incentivizing agency by government officials, promoting stakeholder involvement, and involving communities in decisions and monitoring. #RISEConf2021
Rukmini Banerjee would get rid of the age-grade curriculum—in other words, the system that teaches children based on their age rather than their level of learning. “Sometimes when I look at these [textbooks], I feel it’s designed to ensure that many children get left behind.”
Jishnu Das would trash vouchers. “80% of the [voucher] money goes to children who would have gone to private schools without the vouchers… Since taxes can be quite regressive, it’s taking money from the poor to give to the rich.” #RISEConf2021
The “winning” idea is … trash the age-grade curriculum! Rukmini Banerjee for the win! #RISEConf2021
Want more education research?! (Of course you do!) Yesterday I summarized the previous day’s presentations.
Gabrielle Wills: “In 2020 grade 2 students lost between 57% and 70% of a year of learning relative to their pre-pandemic peers. Among a grade 4 sample, learning losses are estimated at between 62% and 81% of a year of learning” in South Africa. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Moitshepi Matsheng (@Young1ove): While schools were closed during COVID-19 in Botswana, “SMS messages and phone calls with parents to support their child” improved “learning by 0.12 standard deviations.” Now being adapted in several other countries! nber.org/papers/w28205
Each year, the World Bank's Development Impact blog publishes a series of posts by job market candidates about their original research. Here's a running thread.
"Digitising microfinance loans to create female enterprise growth" by @EmmaRiley19
Recent research in Africa demonstrates the return to “structured pedagogy” interventions to boost learning. In our paper “Education in Africa: What Are We Learning?” (cgdev.org/publication/ed…), @AcostaAminaM & I identified several recent papers. [thread]
What are "structured pedagogy" interventions? In our review, we define them as "those that provide a variety of inputs to improve teaching, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials
for students."
Several studies come out of a pilot that was then scaled in Kenya, but there are others as well! (So if you're familiar with that work, don't stop scrolling.)
Once I asked policy makers in a middle-income country what I could do to make sure an education report I was writing would be useful to them. One said, “Stop telling us about Finland & Singapore!” Here are two alternative examples of successful education reform. [thread]
The state of Ceará & the municipality of Sobral, both in Brazil, have managed a complete turnaround in their basic education systems over two decades. Two new reports extensively document how.
Not enough for you? Here's a 15-page executive summary laying it out in more detail: "Getting Education Right: State and Municipal Success in Reform for Universal Literacy in Brazil." bit.ly/3eineM2 by @loureiroandre and me
As we rounded up analysis and news on the economic impact of #COVID19 from the last week, a concerning, recurring theme that @AcostaAminaM and I observed is the impact on the food supply.
Researchers at @IFPRI conducted phone interviews in #Ethiopia & find that the #COVID19 pandemic is "beginning to disrupt food value chains... impacting the livelihoods of farmers & the diets of rural and urban households." ifpri.org/blog/impacts-c…
.@PJakiela, @maryamakmal, and I have a new working paper out today: “Gender Gaps in Education: The Long View” which draws on 50 years of data from 126 countries. cgdev.org/publication/ge… [thread]
We document four facts about changes in gender gaps in education over time, using the Barro-Lee data on educational attainment among the population age 15 and above (barrolee.com).
Because we focus on educational attainment among all people age 15 and above, changes happen more slowly than if one were to focus on just the youngest cohorts. But this captures the current adult population, which is relevant for the education level of the society.