Implementing mother-tongue based education in a multilingual context like the Philippines requires a full appreciation of the many languages spoken across communities and schools and among students and their teachers. DepEd’s Learner Information System which assigns a language to students when they are registered fails to capture a true picture of the languages students speak, primarily because it relies on the teacher to select the language assigned to each student. For example, in Region V, most teachers simply assign “Bikol” to their students. The USAID-funded ABC+ project deployed a computerized language identification tool in region V and VI to more accurately assess students and teachers individually and thus identify the primary and secondary languages that they speak.

Wanting to support effective learning in the early grades of school in a linguistically diverse country such as the Philippines it is important answer some basic questions, such as: • What languages do children come to school speaking? • Do children have more than one language that they can use when they start school? • What languages do teachers speak? • And how well do students’ and teachers’ languages match? Data from different sources is used to answers these questions.

POLICY BRIEF: Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)

Traditional projects in education introduce innovations at the school level, sometimes improving learning in a defined number of schools. The hope is that somehow piloted successes can be replicated or taken to scale. But too often they are not. Dissatisfied with this, donors may choose policy-level interventions that promote resource reallocations, specific policy reforms, and investments in administrative and management capacity to effect system-wide change. But the record of policy reforms having impact on learning at the school level is disappointing. If we fund school-level projects, the challenge lies in how to create policy and institutional reforms that support replicable school-level success. If we support policy-level interventions, the challenge lies in how to ensure that national reforms lead to changes in the day-to-day practice of schools. Both approaches require effective programs of what we call reform support. Why is reform support needed? Ten years ago USAID published the Education Reform Support (ERS) series to answer just this question. ERS recognizes that the existing arrangements in the education sector—urban-rural inequities, management environments skewed by bureaucratic concerns, teaching improvements constrained by union prerogatives—are not accidental. Powerful political forces benefit from, shape, and defend the current situation. Changes within the system cannot realistically be implemented without first dealing with the preexisting institutional environment. Altering that environment means recognizing who stands to win or lose from pro-posed reforms, and what incentives signal them to either work for change or defend the status quo. The literature supporting such an understanding of education reform is rich. ERS draws on that literature and goes one step further to outline the tools and techniques for sup-porting and strategically managing the reform process.

The USAID-FCDO Jordan Early Grades Reading & Mathematics Initiative (RAMP) started in 2015 with the goal to improve Kg-Gr.3 students reading and mathematics skills through improving curriculum system coherency, teacher professional development and coaching, increasing parental involvement, and improving standards, evaluation, monitoring, and accountability systems. The presentation is about how RAMP built a resilient MOE early grades system that could mitigate the learning loss caused after the school closure as a measure of the spread of COVID-19. It was notable the early grades school system was more resilient than the upper levels, administrators and teachers were more ready to cope with a new context where children reading and mathematics skills were varying widely: the MOE was able to rapidly implement a national survey (EGRA/EGMA) to measure learning losses and design a remedial program; teachers were able to use diagnostic assessment tools and identified individual students actual learning needs; teachers were familiar with differentiated instruction and remedial strategies for vulnerable children; and a system was already in place to regularly coach teachers in under-served schools/areas.

To support the Ministry of Public Education (MoPE) in achieving its reform agenda, USAID initiated the Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program (UEEP) to improve the quality of education and enable all students to be proficient in 21st century skills such as problem solving and critical thinking. UEEP is implemented by a Consortium of partners including RTI International, Florida State University, and Mississippi State University. The Program aims to achieve three overarching results: improved Uzbek language (UL) reading and mathematics outcomes in grades 1–4; enhanced information and communication technology (ICT) instruction for grades 1–11, and improved English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction in grades 1–11. In this presentation, we will describe the process of revising the student standards for Grades 1-4 in mathematics, led by Florida State University and UEEP math experts, with ongoing review and feedback from MoPE representatives. The revision of student standards was the first step of the country’s curricular reform, followed by the creation of TLMs and a corresponding teacher professional development package. This process consisted of several stages, beginning with comparing current MoPE standards with the GPF, student math standards from South Korea and the TIMSS framework for assessment. These three resources were chosen for specific purposes. The TIMSS framework reflected the Government of Uzbekistan’s priority to prepare children in Grade 4 to take TIMSS assessment and perform well. This framework only reflected Grade 4 learning, so it was used primarily to backwards map other standards in Grades 1-3 to ensure that all content on the TIMSS framework was adequately covered by the end of Grade 4. The GPF was the most detailed reference, and was used to map the current standards and identify gaps in the progression. However, there was concern from the Government of Uzbekistan that the GPF might be targeting skills that are too easy for children in Uzbekistan. Because of this, we also brought in the South Korea standards, which provided us with a reference from a country that is seen as a model in Uzbekistan, and we were able to use the South Korea standards to make decisions about certain skills. This process allowed us to ensure that the standards development process met national priorities (i.e. Presidential Decree on Improving Math Education, 2020), reflected best international practices in mathematics, created standards that were age appropriate and measurable, and was logically organized. We will discuss how we used a quantitative comparative analysis of Uzbekistan's existing standards for different grade levels with the GPF and South Korea standards to identify revisions needed to facilitate more alignment. The rigor of that exercise allowed us to revise and to create a set of standards that could be approved by MoPE. The rigorous student standards development process described in this presentation allowed us to create a set of standards that were approved by MoPE. These standards were the cornerstone of further reforms including creating a scope and sequence and Teacher/Learning Materials (TLMs) for Grades 1-4, currently being piloted with 10,000 teachers across Uzbekistan.

This presentation on development of an assessment system under Senegal's new bilingual policy includes an explanation of the bilingual policy in Senegal and plans for development of a national assessment system including use of the ANLAS methodology (Analysis of National Learning Assessment Systems)

The purpose of this panel presentation is to present the results of two uptake studies to understand how mathematics, Uzbek language arts, ICT, and EFL teachers in Uzbekistan are using and applying newly developed teaching and learning materials in the classroom.

The purpose of this field guide is to introduce concepts, tools, and group activities that can be used to guide educators in co-creating locally defined prototypes of future learning spaces that will not only enhance social, emotional, and academic learning for all Filipino learners, but will ensure that learners flourish and develop a sense of agency, proactive citizenship, and work readiness for a successful future. The guide was created from selected content, exercises, and group processes that were introduced in the Leaders in Futures of Education (LIFE) course (June 20–July 19, 2022) and the Prototyping Future Learning Spaces Workshop (August 15–19 2022), which were attended by DepEd central office representatives, representatives from three regional offices (i.e., Region III: Central Luzan; Region VI: Central Visayas; and the Cordillera Administrative Region), and prototyping teams consisting of representatives from five SDOs—Tanauan City, Tuguegarao City, Pasig City, Caloocan City, and Quezon City—and at least one cooperating school in each SDO. This field guide provides a framework for DepEd partnerships across the country to begin their prototyping journey for co-designing future learning spaces for Filipino students.

The All Children Reading–Asia (ACR–Asia) Return to Learning Cambodia Case Study was designed to research the Cambodia Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport’s (MoEYS’s) response to the disruption in learning created by the COVID-19 pandemic during different phases of school closure and reopening in the 2019–2020 and 2021 school years. The study used qualitative interview methods to study the education system’s response, from the central ministry level down, to how school directors and teachers implemented expectations communicated to them. Forty-four participants were interviewed, including central MoEYS personnel, school directors, teachers, and caregivers. Participants were asked about the phases of MoEYS response to the pandemic and what procedures, implementations, and subsequent outcomes occurred The presenter will present findings that positive changes were implemented in the participating schools. Many stakeholders within the education system and its stakeholders act and react to an education crisis in ways that would not be typical of the system functions and individual behaviors experienced in a regular school year. Fundamentally, the education system and its actors showed that during COVID-19, they could carry out a set of core functions (RTI International, 2018). These core systems functions were to set and communicate expectations, monitor progress, provide targeted support to facilitate students’ access to continued education during school closures, and make stakeholders accountable for meeting the expectations.