Since 2010, USAID has increased funding to partner country institutions by 50% [1], and the current administration’s localization agenda suggests that the government-to-government (G2G) modality may be increasingly frequent. Implementing partners operating in countries with a G2G arrangement, must pay careful attention to the meaning of technical assistance and system strengthening for scale and sustainability. This topic was covered by three presentations in a panel session, including: (1) Driving government ownership of a new language policy through a Government-to-Government partnership: The case of Senegal; (2) Government-to-Government programs to improve student learning: The case of Nepal; and (3) The case of Jordan

Building on past efforts in dropout prevention, the Guatemala Basic Education Quality and Transitions Program seeks to support the Ministry of Education to deploy an open-source mobile application to teachers’ devices that will both facilitate data collection and display easily understandable information on student learning, attendance, and risk of dropout. The application will enable teachers to regularly assess student learning, track daily attendance, and report on key variables that past research has shown to be indicators of risk of dropout, including trauma, economic stress, and other destabilizing conditions. The data will be shared at the school, municipal and ministry level, but only in anonymized and aggregated form, which we expect will reduce teacher fears of punitive accountability. Free community Wi-Fi and school-based internet connectivity will improve teacher’s ability to access the application and other education data, resources and tools while also improving digital inclusion for students to access online learning opportunities and resources. This presentation was delivered by Cynthia del Aguila at the 2023 CIES Annual Conference.

This presentation, given at the CIES 2023 Annual Conference, highlights the global shift in measurement and improvement in learning outcomes since the adoption of SDG 4.1.1, under which countries are asked to report on the “the proportion of children and young people…achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics”. Building on these results, the World Bank and UIS estimate that eighty percent of children in poor countries cannot read a simple sentence by the end of primary school. In reviewing the results of multiple regional and systems-level learning improvement programs to better understand the distribution of learning outcomes and system-level impact we find that: 1) while some progress has been made, the massive changes required to move the needle on the share of children reaching minimum proficiency remains elusive and 2) a small share of schools account for the majority of the gains. Finally, the panelist will create a link between this challenge and the theme of the panel; that education change will only be successful if work is undertaken to better understand and diminish the restraining forces of mindsets and education system social norms.

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.

This paper brings together two promising intellectual trends in development: Doing Development Differently (DDD), and whole-system reform. In addition, it provides a framework for evaluating system reforms, as rigorously as possible. This paper adapts some concepts from the paper “A Practical Approach to In-Country Systems Research” written for the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Programme. This version turns more toward the Doing Development Differently movement rather than education systems reform. The original paper was presented at the first RISE conference in Washington, DC, June 18–19, 2015.

Case studies of RTI's work on strengthening institutional capacity in Nepal, Jordan, Malawi, and Uganda focusing on three core functions: (1) setting and communicating expectations; (2) monitoring against expectations; (3) providing targeted support to struggling schools.

The CRLA was initially conceived as a 5-minute start-up reading assessment designed to help teachers quickly determine the reading profiles of their G1-G3 learners, and develop appropriate reading instructional strategies. The main goal is to identify children who need additional support in reading. The CRLA was developed in response to the extended break that learners experienced over the summer of 2020 due to the pandemic. After 32 weeks of no class, teachers needed a rapid, easy to use tool, to determine what level of readiness and support the returning children needed. The beginning of school year tasks focused on letter sounds, isolated words and sentence in reading in MT (G1), Filipino (G1-G2) and English (G1-G3). In the Philippines, learners are expected to transition from their mother tongue (MT) to Filipino and English (L2 and L3 respectively) by grade 4. However, the earliest standardized assessment used in the Philippines is for Filipino starting in G3 and English starting in G4. Prior to the CRLA, there were no existing standardized tools or systems used to assess in the MT. It was also a tool that could be administered remotely (online or even over the phone) which proved critical for schooling in the new normal where face to face classes were not permitted. Thus, the CRLA met the needs of teachers who were missing such a tool in their early grade assessment toolbox. The CRLA was initially piloted in November 2020 with select schools. The experience of the pilot led DepEd to scale up the CRLA to all schools in the ABC+ Target Regions. The feedback from the schools and teachers who utilized the CRLA was encouraging. Many schools used the results of the CRLA to develop remedial and focused reading programs in the context of the new normal and identify the struggling readers to provide additional support. Based on the success of the beginning of school year RLA, the Department of Education requested ABC+ to help develop middle and end of year assessments that would align to their curricular competencies. Keeping to the same criteria (rapid and easy to administer and analyze), the team incorporated listening comprehension, oral reading fluency and reading comprehension tasks for end of year administration. At the request of DepEd, ABC+ is currently in the process of expanding the number of MT languages supported by the CRLA and incorporating it into their operations manual for mother tongue-based multi-lingual education.

A storybook for grade one students in Liberia.

A storybook for grade one students in Liberia.

This playlist was part of a knowledge sharing activity organized by the All Children Reading (ACR) Philippines project regarding countries' experiences re-opening schools on the occasion of the 4th education forum of the Department of Education. This forum is a platform to share updates of major on-going reform initiatives of the Department with development partners including USAID and a venue to inform, deliberate on and coordinate efforts and actions towards quality basic education. Staff of ACR-Philippines interviewed education stakeholders in the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Romania, the United Arab Emirates and United States about what happened when they reopened classrooms. Representatives spoke with us about their experiences, including the preparations they have made—what worked and what did not work. They also describe the challenges that they have encountered and how they managed these issues.