This report is an analysis of the education technology (EdTech) ecosystem in the Philippines. This report seeks to identify opportunities for EdTech alternatives to help the Philippines break away from the status quo in teaching and learning. It will contribute to ongoing policy review and curricular reforms intended to improve country-wide achievement in basic education. The information was gathered by a team of researchers from the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc. (FIT-ED), and RTI over the course of four months in the second half of 2019. The study team interviewed over 50 key informants from government, civil society, and the private sector and visited schools, consulted relevant documents, and administered a large survey, all designed to answer the questions: what technology is being used in education, how is it being promoted and adopted, what are the effects, and how can good practices be scaled up? The result is the following ecosystem profile, based on the Scaling Equitable Education Technology (EdTech) Ecosystem Model published by Omidyar Network, now Imaginable Futures,1in 2019 (Omidyar Network, 2019a). Cite this report: Pouezevara, S. (2020). Philippines EdTech ecosystem profile. Prepared for USAID under the All Children Reading-Philippines Project, AID-OAA-TO-16-00017. Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI

La Agencia de los Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional (USAID) decidió financiar este estudio para proporcionar información actual al Ministerio de Educación (MINED) y al Gobierno El Salvador sobre el desempeño en lectura de los estudiantes de segundo y tercer grado a nivel nacional y, específicamente, en las escuelas ubicadas en los municipios del Plan El Salvador Seguro (PESS). PESS es un plan nacional para ayudar a 50 municipios cuyos índices de violencia y delincuencia son altos. La vinculación entre educación (tanto matricula como aprendizaje) y la violencia es una de las razones clave por la cual tanto el MINED como USAID quieren obtener más información sobre el estado de las habilidades lectoras en los grados iniciales. El MINED destacó su compromiso en mejorar la lectura cuando se inauguró el año escolar 2018 con una promesa de terminar con el analfabetismo. Para entender el desempeño en lectura de los grados iniciales, USAID solicitó a RTI que efectuara el presente estudio utilizando la Evaluación de Lectura Inicial (EGRA, por sus siglas en ingles), un instrumento adaptado y validado en más que 70 países. EGRA mide las habilidades básicas para poder leer con fluidez y con comprensión, que es el objetivo final de la lectura.

The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the success of the Journeys intervention in improving school climate; shifting gender attitudes toward more gender equality; strengthening student’s SEL; and reducing the prevalence and extent that pupils experience bullying, corporal punishment, and sexual violence. A second objective of this study is to evaluate how progress on the intermediary variables of school climate, gender attitudes, and violence impacts improvements in attendance and reading outcomes.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Uganda-funded Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity designed an eight-week social and behavior change communication (SBCC) pilot to measure the efficacy of SBCC in reducing teachers’ use of corporal punishment in schools.

This report describes the results of a program designed to expand use of Tangerine:Tutor (now known as Tangerine:Coach), a model scaled successfully in Kenya, to Ugandan coaches. The first aim of the program was to improve the quality of interactions between Coordinating Centre Tutors (CCTs, or “coaches” for convenience) and teachers, as well as the quantity of those interactions (increase the frequency of school visits). During this pilot effort, which lasted approximately 18 months, we studied the added value of a digital case management tool and job aids to improve coaching activities in two Early Grade Reading (EGR) programs in Uganda. The iterative, user-centered design and monitoring focused on changes in the quality and quantity of coach and teacher interactions.The second aim was to improve the quality of communication between CCTs and Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), between CCTs and districts and between local stakeholders and institutions (i.e., schools, TTCs and district offices) and the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES). This aim was to be accomplished through a Web-accessible dashboard based on the digital tools that quickly communicated school support coverage, as well as teacher and learner attendance. The pilot effort successfully introduced the case management tool and job aids, built a dashboard to communicate progress and trained users across four regions of Uganda.

Children’s development is significantly attributed to their experiences at home, from birth through the early years of schooling, and responsive caregiving from early on has a significant impact on later learning outcomes. Interventions aimed at increasing parental engagement in children’s early learning can be expensive, however, and there is limited evidence as to what works best for parenting programs in low- and middle-income countries. This report presents the findings from a parent engagement pilot intervention conducted by the Tayari program in three counties in Kenya that tested two methods of providing parents with home-based responsive play activities to promote children’s holistic development.

This report summarizes the findings of the 2018 Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Initiative (RAMP) Lot Quality Assurance Sampling Assessment, measuring impact between 2017 and 2018. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK Aid have funded RAMP as a national effort designed to improve the reading and mathematics skills and performance of students in Jordan from kindergarten 2 through grade 3 (K2–G3). This five-year program began on January 1, 2015, and is scheduled to end on December 31, 2019. Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah formally launched RAMP as part of the broader Ministry of Education (MoE) initiative to improve education. The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International leads implementation with its partners: Queen Rania Teacher’s Academy, ChangeAgent for Arab Development and Education Reform, We Love Reading, The Kaizen Company, Mercy Corps, Dajani Consulting, and Prodigy Consulting. The RAMP team and the MOE conducted a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) assessment in November 2018. Approximately 200 assessors (most of whom were MOE supervisors) were trained to collect reading and mathematics performance data across all 42 field directorates in the kingdom. For this activity, an approach was used at the school level, which led to a final sample of more than 39,000 Grade 2 and Grade 3 students in 2,076 schools. Performance comparisons made on three key indicators (reading comprehension, oral reading fluency, and mathematics) provides illustrative evidence of the gains made by RAMP schools over one school year. Large gains were seen on reading comprehension with the percent of students reaching the comprehension benchmark, increasing from 43% in 2017 to 55% in 2018. Gains in terms of oral reading fluency increased from 13% in 2017 to 19% in 2018. The smallest gains were in terms of mathematics (where the percent of students reaching the benchmark improved only slightly from 28% in 2017 to 30% in 2018).

This report examines available evidence from the Asia region on the current state of ECE interventions, focusing on the 10 countries in the region3 that currently benefit from US Agency for International Development (USAID) education programming. In Asia, many national governments have prioritized the expansion of access and quality improvements of pre-primary education (Sun, Rao, & Pearson, 2015). USAID will support those efforts as part of a coherent approach to improved learning outcomes in primary school.

Omidyar Network commissioned Scaling Access & Impact: Realizing the Power of EdTech to evaluate what might be necessary to enable, scale, and sustain Equitable EdTech on a national basis. We examined initiatives in Chile, China, Indonesia, and the USA that demonstrate how EdTech reached a broad spectrum of students. Download the executive summary to learn more about some of the events, actions, and initiatives that have contributed to the equitable scaling of EdTech as well as help inform policies using the highest-impact interventions.