In high income countries, 9 out of 10 children can read by the age of 10, but in low-income countries 9 out of 10 cannot. This is unacceptable. The reasons for this shockingly low achievement are many and complex, but one critical barrier is the poor quality of teaching that far too many already disadvantaged children experience.
In May 2020, RTI examined early grade reading data from 27 datasets across 8 countries (which we have since updated to 87 datasets from 15 countries). These datasets all contained data for students in consecutive grades (e.g., grades 1 and 2; grades 2 and 3; etc.) and were used as a starting point for us to model the impact of COVID-related school closures on learning loss.
In international development cooperation, there is an increasing focus on adaptive management, intentional and resourced learning, and the use of learning to improve activity implementation and impact. Programs are being called on to incorporate operations or action research into their Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) plans.
October 5, 2020 marks World Teachers’ Day and this year, particularly, we want to recognize the immense contributions teachers make in our lives and to our futures. Teachers are among the many unsung heroes of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, as parents got a glimpse into teachers’ day to day realities when suddenly faced with closed schools and their children at home.
Like many countries around the world faced with rising cases of Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19), classroom instruction in the Philippines is shifting to remote learning. For 22,668,397 Filipino children [1] there will in all likelihood be no face-to-face classroom instruction for the duration of the 2020-2021 school year [2]. And like all countries committing to fully remote learning, a key question is whether the education system is ready for remote learning for all? The
