By Lauren Ziegler

There’s no question that children in school today will encounter an entirely different workplace than the one we’re in now. The impact of new technologies and a changing climate will influence the kinds of jobs available and the skills needed to be successful in them. While it’s impossible to know what exactly the future will hold, education scholars are emphasizing the need for young people to acquire skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. These so-called “21st century” skills will help young people thrive in an uncertain future. Around the world, innovators are finding new and creative ways to deliver such skills.

I recently took part in the NXTEducator Summit in Taipei on 21st century skills in Asia, which shed light on the many innovations in the Chinese-speaking world. Co-hosted by the Finnish nonprofit HundrED and the Sayling Wen Cultural and Educational Foundation in Taiwan, the summit brought together more than 100 teachers, administrators, and innovators across China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia to learn from seven featured innovators and exchange ideas for delivering a quality, future-ready education for all of today’s young people.

At the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings, we research education innovations, and the summit provided a window into current trends in the region as well as similarities we see across the globe that can help inform our future work. Below are five takeaways from the summit:

1. Leapfrogging is happening in the here and now. The summit’s featured innovators confirm that rapid, nonlinear progress in education, or what CUE calls “leapfrogging,” is alive and well in communities across the Chinese-speaking world. CUE’s leapfrog pathway highlights how innovation can move education from the status quo to a place where all young people develop the breadth of skills needed to be successful in the future. For example, the Co-Publishing Project in Taiwan works with economically disadvantaged students and students from immigrant families, putting them at the center of learning through hands-on photography projects. Student-centered learning is a core element of leapfrogging, as highlighted in CUE’s leapfrog pathway. The project fosters students’ curiosity about their own cultures and the world around them and allows for their self-expression through the art of photography. Another featured innovation, Teach for Taiwan, recruits university graduates and professionals to teach in economically disadvantaged primary schools through its two-year fellowship program, helping to address educational inequity among rural and urban communities. The innovation represents an example of widening the pool of teachers, another aspect of the leapfrog pathway.

2. Advanced technology is being harnessed for learning. While many well-resourced classrooms have tablets and computers, the use of drones in school is less common. The Drone-based Interdisciplinary Learning and Entrepreneurship Education program in Hong Kong has seized on the greater commercial availability of drones to further student learning. Secondary school students first learn about drones in the classroom, applying math, science, and coding skills to program drones and track their trajectories. They also meet entrepreneurs and professionals who use drones in their day to day careers. Students apply their learnings to the real-life measurement of water quality, first by engineering drones to collect water samples through a testing process in the classroom and then collecting samples from local bodies of water. Back in the classroom, students analyze the collected samples to identify levels of water pollution and pollution sources. The program enables students to solve a local problem through technology, while robustly building their 21st century skills.

3. Familiar models are being used in new ways. Innovation isn’t always the brand new, never-before-seen thing. Indeed, in “Leapfrogging Inequality,” Brookings scholar Rebecca Winthrop defines innovations in education as a break from current practice, whether new to the world or new to a context. Two featured innovations, BEEP Lab and FunMeiker, represent examples of an old idea being adopted to serve a new purpose. Both innovations use concepts from the field of architecture to teach K-12 students. The programs work with local architects as mentors who guide students through the processes of inquiry-thinking, design-thinking, and problem-solving. While architecture’s use in K-12 education is not brand new, these innovations are providing thoughtful, new ways to deliver context-specific concepts and ideas to children in Singapore and Taiwan, such as a focus on the natural and cultural environments in addition to the built environment.

4. Innovation is promoting empathy and cross-cultural exchange. Featured innovation MTA World (Mondragon Team Academy) is a university in which students spend each year in a different country. Students can choose to study in Asia in China and Korea, as well as in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Instead of classrooms, learning takes place through innovation labs where students work in teams of entrepreneurs. MTA recognizes that when young people have the opportunity to interact with others from different backgrounds, they develop new perspectives and ways of working that will serve them throughout their lives. Another innovation that promotes cross-cultural learning at the tertiary level is City Wanderer, in which teams of university students take on challenges in their city that benefit underserved groups—for example by cooking meals for the homeless or spending time with elderly neighbors. By interacting with others from different backgrounds, students develop empathy and a commitment to improve their world.

5. There is tremendous opportunity for governments to help innovation scale. Six of the seven featured innovations are led by nongovernmental organizations (the seventh is a social enterprise). Many collaborate with formal education systems by partnering with schools to lead after-school and weekend programs. This trend mirrors CUE’s research. In its global catalog of nearly 3,000 education innovations, CUE found that two-thirds of innovations originated from the nonprofit sector, whereas only 12 percent of innovations originated from governments. While innovation tends to occur outside of formal systems for a number of reasons, there is great value in more fully bringing innovation into the mainstream, where it can reach millions more students. CUE has called for a mindset shift among leaders as a starting point to encourage greater uptake of education innovation by local and national governments.

While we can’t say for certain what the world of work will look like 10 or 15 years from now, the conversations at the NXTEducator Summit show us that the education innovations community is putting into practice a range of creative ideas inside and outside of the classroom.

       

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By Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Izzy Boggild-Jones, Onyeka Nwabunnia

2019 marked another eventful year for the impact bond market, with 18 new deals contracted. After nearly a decade since the first social impact bond (SIB) launched in the U.K., there is still much to learn about this innovative financing tool—particularly in identifying the circumstances when impact bonds add the most value. Since the vast majority of impact bonds have thus far been contracted in high-income countries, there is a wide knowledge gap in their application in developing countries, which is where our focus lies. Over the past year at Brookings, we have continued to maintain and analyze our global impact bonds database, and to use this—along with many conversations with actors in the field to monitor and identify key trends.

Below we review the impact bond landscape and our related learnings over the past year, and highlight where we will focus attention in the year to come.

Impact bond landscape

The impact bond market has continued to grow around the globe, with new deals in ten countries. The most new deals were contracted in France (3), Portugal (3), and the United Kingdom (3 ), while Palestine, Russia, and Cambodia all contracted their very first impact bonds. Globally, as of January 1, 2020, 176 impact bonds have been contracted, with the majority of these financing projects in the social welfare and employment sectors. As outlined in our recent blog, growth in developing countries has been slow. Just four of the new projects in 2019 were contracted in low- and middle-income countries. These included two in Palestine: a development impact bond (DIB) for type II diabetes in refugee camps in the West Bank, and another DIB for employment in the West Bank and Gaza. Colombia’s second employment SIB launched in Cali, while a DIB for improving access to sanitation was contracted in Cambodia (see below map).

In total, 47 impact bonds have now completed service delivery according to available data, representing less than a third of the total contracted to date. Since outcome funders only repay investors if impact metrics are achieved, the status of investor repayment is one way to judge the success of the market. Throughout the first half of 2020, we will publish a series of briefs that investigate the several dimensions of “success” in impact bonds. As Table 1 below indicates, the majority of completed impact bonds have repaid investors their principal plus positive returns, while just two projects have made no repayment to investors. We are waiting for information to become public on more than a quarter of completed deals.

Table 1: Investor repayment in completed* impact bonds

Source: Brookings Impact Bond Global Database, January 2020

*Completed means service delivery has ended.

What did we learn in 2019?

In 2019 we published two reports on impact bonds, for a total of seven reports on the subject. The first, in partnership with colleagues at Brookings India, focuses on the promise of impact investing in India. Impact bonds are just one potential use of impact investment, and India has contracted the most impact bonds in any developing country to date, with two in education and one in health. Our second, most recent publication explores the potential for outcome-based financing in education in India. In this report we outline three key factors for the growth of impact bonds in the education sector: ready and able education service providers; technology for data collection, analysis, and action; and willingness of government to engage. As the learning partner in the Quality Education India DIB, one of the two education impact bonds featured in this second report, we are examining how paying for outcomes can improve service delivery, promote collaboration, and strengthen systems. As arguably the most ambitious education impact bond to date, both in terms of scale and the number of stakeholders, the project is an important test case for the potential of the instrument.

What’s next in 2020?

Tying payments to outcomes is one way to ensure that funding is focused on results. Outcome-based financing has the potential to drive collaboration toward the achievement of results, to improve data systems, and to direct funding toward service providers and interventions generating measurable impact. Our research in 2020 will explore the experiences of different stakeholders engaging in impact bonds, the facilitating factors for success, and the barriers and challenges—with a particular interest in education and developing countries. We will continue to build knowledge by engaging broadly with stakeholders across the sector and look forward to learning from the many exciting ongoing projects.

One of our key learnings over the past five years has been the central role of data in outcome-based financing. Earlier this year we outlined the four types of data necessary for outcome-based financing: cost, cost of inaction, real-time performance, and results data. We are investigating how technology can help collect and analyze performance data in real-time and inform decisions. We are also updating our Standardized Early Childhood Development (ECD) Costing Tool to allow for the costing of both ECD and education programs, in a user-friendly online version.

Finally, we have been thinking a great deal about how impact bonds are changing the lives of individuals benefitting from them. Behind the numbers are human beings whose welfare and even survival depend on the services received. In the coming year, we will explore some of the stories of the individuals behind the education impact bonds in developing countries through visual media. Through these stories we hope to provide a more nuanced, human interest perspective on this nearly decade-old financing mechanism.

       

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By Seema Jayachandran

When Michael Kremer looked at the data for a study underway in Kenya in the 1990s, he was taken aback.

Mr. Kremer, a professor at Harvard, expected that the data would show how much better children in western Kenya did in school when they had textbooks. But the preliminary answer was: not at all.

“I was totally shocked by the result,” he said in a recent interview. “Even people who were skeptical that more resources was the way to improve education thought textbooks would help.”

Yet instead of amounting to utter failure, the field experiment helped him earn a share of this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, along with the MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, for pioneering the use of field experiments to study which policies best improve the lives of the poor. The Nobel committee noted that “their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research.”

The unexpected result of that particular experiment, conducted with Paul Glewwe, now an economist at the University of Minnesota, and Sylvie Moulin, then at the World Bank, prompted Mr. Kremer to think harder about the schooling system in Kenya. He said he began to realize that one problem was an excessive focus on top students, and he went on to design and test other measures that would help a broader range of people.

The field experiments conducted by Mr. Kremer, Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo—which they sometimes work on together—resemble the drug trials that pharmaceutical companies use to test new medicines. The economists’ experiments typically compare participants in anti-poverty programs with peers without access to the programs. The researchers choose program participants by lottery, or the arbitrary order in which a program is offered to people.

For example, in the study on textbooks, a nonprofit rolled out a free textbooks program gradually over several years. Some lucky schools received textbooks one to four years before others. To assess the benefits of textbooks, the researchers compared the test scores of students in the lucky schools with those of peers in the schools still in line to get textbooks.

Using field experiments to study poverty this way has attracted both praise, as evidenced by the Nobel award, and criticism on technical and broader grounds. Angus Deaton, himself a Nobel laureate, has cautioned that field experiments should be designed carefully to shed light on why a method worked and where else it might work. Otherwise, he has said, such experiments might not advance knowledge much.

I can attest to the new Nobel winners’ role in reshaping the field of development economics. They certainly influenced me. All three were my teachers when I was in graduate school at Harvard starting in 1999. In those days the field was small enough that they taught a combined class for Harvard and MIT students, and Mr. Kremer and Mr. Banerjee were among my advisers.

I have run randomized experiments in India, Uganda and elsewhere on topics such as how to improve child nutrition, protect forests, and reduce gender discrimination. Some of the interventions I have tested had beneficial effects, and others did not.

Learning early that a program has limited benefits is useful for the organization running it and the donors funding it. They can redirect their time and money elsewhere, or try to change the program to make it more effective.

But Mr. Kremer’s Kenya textbook study illustrates another value of discovering that a program falls short of its promise. This type of so-called null result, where the impacts of an intervention are indistinguishable from zero, can lead us to think differently and more creatively.

When Mr. Kremer and his colleagues looked at their data in more detail, they saw that textbooks did help the students whose test scores were very strong before the experiment began. That finding got the researchers thinking harder about what features of the Kenyan education system led to this pattern, he said.

The deep problem with the schooling system, Mr. Kremer believed, was that it was geared toward the top students. He speculated that this might have been a vestige of the colonial era, when access to education was mostly limited to children from relatively privileged families. Today, education is available to children from a much wider range of family backgrounds, but the curriculum has not been adapted enough, he said.

An obvious change would be to rewrite the textbooks so they are at the right level for the average student. However, because of the big variations in student preparation, that redesigned textbook would still be too hard for some people and too easy for others.

What was needed was instruction tailored to the needs of students at different levels. While Mr. Kremer was puzzling over his results on textbooks, Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo began a field experiment in India to evaluate a program aimed at helping struggling students catch up. In Indian schools, as in Kenya, such students were often left to flounder. The researchers collaborated with an Indian nonprofit that placed extra teachers in schools to help the weaker students master basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Ms. Duflo said, in an interview, that it was largely a coincidence that her first foray was so thematically aligned with Mr. Kremer’s results. She and Mr. Banerjee were keen to collaborate with the nonprofit, Pratham, which happened to be pursuing remedial instruction.

But Mr. Kremer’s surprising results deeply influenced her, she said. She remembers him puzzling over them when he taught her as a graduate student at MIT.

“The fact that he didn’t find what he expected—it’s not so important that it was a null result as much as that it was unexpected—it made me much more interested in randomized trials than I would have been if I thought it was just a way of confirming intuitions you already have,” Ms. Duflo said.

Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo found that the remedial instruction in India had large benefits for the weaker students, and further studies also showed that remedial education seemed to work while adding other resources did not.

Ms. Duflo and Mr. Kremer then worked together, along with Pascaline Dupas, now at Stanford University, on another educational program in Kenya directed toward the entire spectrum of students. They studied what happens when you place students into classes based on their academic preparation.

With less variance in students’ level, teachers could aim their instruction more precisely. The researchers found that the program increased student achievement for the entire range of students.

The negative finding about textbooks was important in the development of Mr. Kremer’s career. “I’m happier when I find that something works,” he said. “But I’m not in despair if I don’t—the key thing is listen and learn from it.”

       

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By Emiliana Vegas, Rebecca Winthrop

With protests in places as disparate as Paris, Beirut, and Santiago, 2019 saw civil unrest around the world. The role of education in building more democratic societies and informed citizens capable of reaching their full potential, while always important, has never been more critical in a time rife with inequality and discord.

As yet another year comes to a close, we at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) reflect on seven key education trends and themes that give us hope for a more prosperous future in the next decade. These seven themes and trends, listed in no particular order, draw on research from both inside CUE and external colleagues.

1. The potential of civic education to develop citizens. Startlingly, the OECD found that, on average globally, approximately 9 out of 10 15-year old students can’t tell the difference between fact and opinion. Civic engagement groups are taking note of this worrying trend and have launched coalitions to teach youth digital literacy, civility, and community engagement to foster good around the world; books with lessons on the history of education and democracy; and campaigns to recommit to democratic, nonpartisan values and institutions.

2. Rethinking the education workforce. Teacher quality is a key determinant of student success, but teachers are undersupported and in short supply, particularly in certain regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Two marquee reports that published this year—“Learning to leapfrog: Innovative pedagogies to transform education” and “Transforming the education workforce: Learning teams for a learning generation”—consider how to widen the pool of individuals who are considered educators, with an aim of unburdening teachers from administrative tasks and creating a broader education workforce.

3. Innovative ways to measure student learning. To help students thrive in the 21st century, a broader definition of learning and skills is needed. To this end, the World Bank, in coordination with the UNESCO Institute for statistics, announced the Learning Poverty target, the goal that all children should be able to read by age 10. In addition, with support from CUE, countries in Africa and Asia are developing new ways to learn and assess 21st century skills such as creativity and problem-solving to ensure that all children have the breadth of skills needed to reach their full potential and thrive in our rapidly changing world.

4. Blending urban and child development. Children spend a full 80 percent of their waking hours outside of school, and cross-disciplinary solutions to better take advantage of this time in urban areas are growing in popularity. Brookings launched the Playful Learning Landscapes initiative and gained new expertise through the appointment of Fellow Helen Shwe Hadani. Large-scale events, such as the Conscious Cities Festival in NYC and the Urban95 festival in Rotterdam, contemplated how to transform public spaces into playful learning opportunities.

5. Scaling quality education to increase impact. Scaling quality education programs doesn’t happen automatically—rather, it requires deliberation and strategy from the start. With the launch of numerous Real-time Scaling Labs (applied research projects to learn from, document, and support education initiatives as they scale) by CUE and partners around the globe, and reports considering how to pay for education outcomes at scale in places like India, expanding and deepening the impact of small-scale initiatives was a priority focus.

6. Preparing for a changing work environment. While robots are unlikely to wholly replace workers, concerns about technological advancements eliminating jobs in some industries while expanding others abound. The “World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work” found these fears to be largely unfounded, but other reports offer guidance on industrial development strategies to grow “good” jobs and to upgrade low-wage workers’ career prospects.

7. Leaving no learners behind. Ambitious Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 has been around for years, but outside-the-box thinking is needed it if we are to achieve it by the target date of 2030. Whether looking at a country’s investment in girls’ education and rights or how a “leapfrog” mindset can help the most marginalized students catch up to the learning levels of today’s highest achievers, ensuring no one is left behind must remain high on the agenda over the next 10 years.

Looking ahead into the new year and next decade, we are hopeful that progress in these seven areas continues. We look forward to collaborating with colleagues across Brookings and around the world to help create a more just, equitable society where everyone can develop the full breadth of skills needed to lead healthy, productive lives.

       

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By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Helen Shwe Hadani

Voldemort would be smiling. Evidence of the dark Potteresk forces occupy the world news. Strongmen autocrats like Erdogan expand his dictatorship in Turkey. Authoritarianism rules Hungary and Brazil and foreigners are meddling with our democracy at home. Accosted by “breaking news,” we hear of children still living in cages at the southern border of the U.S., of millions of families starving in Yemen, and of children fleeing alone from dire conditions in Venezuela.

Amidst the gloom and doom, a historical hero brings us a well-deserved respite. Fred Rogers, the legendary children’s television host reminds us that kindness and generosity are the antidotes to our current sense of despair. This holiday season, everyone should get a dose of Fred’s teaching in the new movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Fred always looked people in the eyes when he spoke with them, he valued every child he met, and demonstrated that the differences among us paled in comparison to our many similarities. With Fred, rich and poor, disabled or typical, black and white, were simply adjectives to ignore not to heighten. With Fred, feelings were valued and emotion and love were the main topics of conversation. He not only shared his message but lived it. The movie, starring Tom Hanks, offers 1 hour and 48 minutes of smiles and blissful emotional health. It offers a way-out through kindness.

The film is not really about Mr. Rogers, but rather about the way he befriended a journalist named Tom Junod (called Lloyd in the movie) and how he helped Tom come to appreciate himself. And in many ways, the film was not about Fred’s friendship with Tom, but rather about an approach to life and living that has been almost drowned out in a climate bursting with hate and loneliness, some of which is prompted by hours and hours in front of screens.

Our children are feeling the emotional burden of these times. In Philadelphia, a teacher in-service day at a local district focused on how to properly tie a tourniquet should your student be shot. The children participated in mandatory shooting drills. And principles reported this year that their number 1 concern was the emotional health of their students! Little wonder why.

Fred could not have known this, but in many ways, he is the torch bearer for the proliferation of social emotional programs that now dot the educational landscape. These programs support what educators and parents know intuitively—that children who can regulate their emotions (think rather than hit), make good decisions, and cooperate with others will do better in school, at work, and in life. And research clearly demonstrates that social emotional skills can be taught in a classroom setting and have a positive impact on the lives of young adults. For example, a 20-year retrospective study examined whether teacher-rated positive social skills in kindergarten predicted key adolescent and early adult outcomes across a wide range of domains including education, employment, criminal activity, substance use, and mental health. The researchers found statistically significant associations between early childhood social competence and outcomes measured up to two decades later across all five domains. And a recent article by Adele Diamond and colleagues finds that training in social emotional skills and the ability to temper your impulse reduces bullying and peer ostracism all while bringing more joy to the classroom.

Mr. Rogers was the model for these programs. First appearing in living rooms across the U.S. in 1968, his show aired for more than 30 years. Now 15 years after his death, we have seen a resurgence in the popularity of this TV legend. A poignant biographical documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and a biography were released last year. Maybe we need Mr. Rogers now more than ever.

The holiday season is upon us. This is the time to rediscover family, to learn how to talk to people who bring divergent opinions, to put the digital gadgets down, and to reconnect with people. Perhaps the new Mr. Rogers movie can be the spark that reminds us about the power of being human. If we ever intend to break through the flow of darkness and to outsmart the robot, practicing our human to human connection will surely be a bedrock skill to master. Perhaps Voldemort can give way to Mr. Rogers.

       

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By Helyn Kim, Vishal Talreja, Sreehari Ravindranath

“Take a deep breath. Release. Take a deep breath. Release. Concentrate on the noises coming from the environment. What do you hear? Slowly, focus on your own breathing.” A grade 7 teacher at Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya in Delhi, walks her students through a breathing exercise. After three minutes, she says, “When you are ready, starts moving your toes; start moving your fingers; now, slowly, open your eyes.” This is a typical morning in happiness class.

Education systems around the world are facing challenges in preparing students to deal with the demands of unpredictable environments. Specific to India, children growing up in adverse circumstances and come into the school system as first-generation learners don’t have the foundational capacities to learn and engage in the classroom. Moreover, depression is a serious issue among youth, with increasing number of suicides each year. In addition, the World Happiness Report, 2019 ranked India 140 out of 156 countries. In response, the Delhi Government launched the happiness curriculum in all 1,030 government schools from kindergarten through grade 8 in July 2018. In line with the vision for India’s education system as well as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-4), the implementation of the curriculum is a landmark first step in expanding a formal, public education system to focus on the holistic development of all learners, invest in their well-being, and improve the overall quality of education.

The development of the curriculum began with one question: What makes a good life? Traditionally, education has been oriented toward making a living, but it does not teach students how to make a good life and contribute to society. The Delhi government set out to solve this problem, and approximately 40 total teachers, in partnership with four NGOs, were chosen to write a curriculum that would develop “emotionally sound students.” Before writing the curriculum, the 4016 teachers were trained in what is known as “Madhyasth Darshan” or “coexistential thought,” which is based on understanding all aspects of life, including spiritual, intellectual, behavioral, and material. According to this philosophy, life satisfaction and happiness can be achieved by being aware of the self, body, family, society, nature, and universe in order to live in harmony. However, while the Madhyasth Darshan program is designed for adults, the nonprofit Dream a Dream trained the mentor teachers to work with children using a contextualized empathy-based pedagogies and life skills approach for children. This philosophy permeates the happiness curriculum to address the learners’ emotional and mental needs by creating a stimulating environment through mindfulness, critical thinking, storytelling and experiential, play-based activities. In the happiness classes, it is not about being right or wrong; it is about allowing students to express themselves, without judgement. Teachers are not required to finish the syllabus, but rather, to ensure that all children internalize and understand the concepts taught and have the opportunity to participate.

Sound too good to be true? Are the students happier because of the happiness curriculum? That’s the question that is on the minds of the Delhi government, curriculum developers, happiness coordinators, teachers, and parents.

The happiness project

Over a nine-month period, the Brookings Institution is partnering with Dream a Dream, to develop measures that can assess the happiness curriculum by looking at whether there are changes in teacher and student behaviors attributable to the curriculum—a first step to evaluating its effectiveness.

The goals of the project are:

1. to understand and identify the factors that contribute to happiness;

2. to develop measures that capture teacher and student behaviors associated with the factors that contribute to happiness; and

3. to analyze the curriculum to identify the expected standards regarding teacher and student behaviors.

Recently, the Brookings and Dream a Dream teams were in Delhi to get a more complete picture of the curriculum. They spent five days visiting schools, observing happiness classes, talking with developers of the curriculum, and meeting with the Minister of Education, as well as engaging in focus group discussions with mentor and classroom teachers, happiness coordinators, and students.

So far, teachers and students are noticing changes, not only in happiness classes, but also in other classes. According to one teacher, he feels that “students are becoming more inquisitive and are asking questions…the happiness class removes the hesitation of the students. The happiness class has improved the student-teacher relationship, so when it comes to other subjects, students are more comfortable opening up in class.” Students are also recognizing a change, especially when it comes to mindfulness activities, similar to the one described above—“it makes me feel different…my mind gets refreshed, and it helps me concentrate on the particular subject even if I am not interested.”

Despite the positive anecdotes, the happiness curriculum raises many more questions than answers for the government: “What kind of questions should we be asking? What can we expect to achieve with the curriculum, and can the approach achieve it? How effectively is the curriculum being followed? Are there differences between students who learn this curriculum and who don’t? Are there changes happening in the happiness classes compared to the other classes? Is that behavior transferring to other aspects of students’ lives?” Although we may not learn the answers to all of these questions, everyone involved views it is a long-term approach that will take much longer than a year or two to see changes. This project is an opportunity to learn about what works well and what does not, so that improvements can be made along the way.

Note: Vishal Talreja is co-founder and Sreehari Ravindranath is associate director – research and impact of Dream A Dream Foundation, which provides financial support for Brookings.

       

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By Colette Chabbott

At first glance, the NISSEM global briefs may seem impossibly broad: They range from global analyses to village-level interventions. Written from the perspectives of more than 60 contributors, each piece describes a somewhat different approach to fulfilling the promise of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, the education goal, in countries with scant resources upended by conflict. True to NISSEM’s fundamental principles, the unifying theme is the common focus on integrating SDG Target 4.7 and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) into educational materials in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet, the briefs do more than report, inspire, and analyze—collectively, they propose a relatively narrow, selective strategy focused on educational materials, including school textbooks. This raises two questions. First, in the face of the extremely broad scope of the SDGs, why such a narrow approach? Second, why textbooks?

In response to the first question, I draw on long-term research on innovation in the health and education sectors. I argue in Brief 39 (Institutionalizing children’s right to education: Getting organized) that since the international community began formulating broad, comprehensive global goals over 70 years ago, the main way of moving them forward has been through ‘divide and conquer.’ The non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1945) was divided into two covenants (1966), which were subsequently divided and reformulated into sector-specific global declarations. In health, the comprehensive Declaration of Primary Health Care for All (1978) was overtaken by a selective initiative (1980-1995) focused on a much narrower, photogenic target group—under-five-year-olds; with a handful of low-cost interventions, the initiative promised the dramatic results of halving the under-five mortality rate in less than a decade. While the so-called “child survival” selective approach scandalized much of the international health community, its highly visible (and highly publicized) results have inspired a steady stream of new selective health initiatives in the last 25 years.

In response to the second question, I draw a parallel to selective health initiatives when considering ways of promoting SEL and Target 4.7 themes in LMICs and countries affected by conflict. Reworking textbooks and other learning materials may have some key characteristics that various scholars have identified with successful selective global initiatives from the last 50 years. These include a clear price tag, being relatively low cost, ability to piggy-back on a pre-existing delivery mechanism, resonance with various stakeholders, and being “do-able” within a project or political cycle. Scientific backing helps, and for SEL, neuroscience is adding to the findings of traditional forms of education research.

Admittedly, the focus on educational materials is not intuitive, particularly for those unfamiliar with conditions in LMICs. Most educators, for example, are likely to argue that teachers are a much more important determinant of educational quality than textbooks. Nonetheless, as explained in the first two blogs in this series, textbooks play an outsized role in determining what gets taught as well as how it gets taught, particularly in parts of the world where teachers have minimal professional development and few resources in the classroom. I suggest that moving selective initiatives ahead does not demand a comprehensive strategy. As shown in Figure 1, several types of activities, some relatively independent of each other, can get and keep the ball rolling at the international, national, or local level. And champions—prominent, well-known public figures with an outspoken role promoting education initiatives—may be able to move this process faster than professionals trying to push it along from the outside. Many of the contributions in the NISSEM global briefs focus on one or more of these activities.

Figure 1: Using champions to move selective education initiatives forward

As an example, in Brief 40 (Narrating our violent pasts in curricula and textbooks), Atif Rizvi and Ayla Bonfiglio describe the work of the Conflict and Education Learning Laboratory (CELL) aimed at reducing divisive stereotypes in primary and secondary textbooks. This is an issue that resonates with UNESCO, as well as with humanitarian donors interested in reducing and preventing school-level bullying and ethnic conflict, along with many others. CELL strives to champion and publish scholarly analysis to raise awareness of the widespread presence of divisive stereotypes in educational materials (evidence), form alliances among key stakeholders who can develop minimum standards for educational content (standards), and work toward international agreements to discourage inclusion of divisive stereotypes in educational materials (policies).

In Brief 41, “The global to local impact of networks for social and emotional learning, peace, and conflict resolution,” Jennifer Batton showcases the efforts of two networks—one international and one domestic—to promote coordinated action around SEL, and education for peace, conflict resolution, and related topics such as bullying prevention. Again, these networks see textbooks and curriculum as especially strategic areas to move their agenda forward, though in countries with better developed teacher education systems, options for working with teachers are broader. Alternatively, various groups with very limited resources can use studies like the one summarized by Tina Robiolle in Brief 42 (Promotion and implementation of Global Citizenship Education in crisis situations) to keep one or more global education commitments alive.

So, what does NISSEM suggest for a materials-focused, selective strategy in support of SEL and SDG 4.7 themes in LMICs and post-conflict areas? Collectively, NISSEM global brief authors describe dozens of innovations, pilot programs, research, standards, and policy already underway in many such contexts, including in some of the world’s poorest countries and those ravaged by ongoing conflict. As readers will notice, many of these grassroots innovations are locally managed and implemented in a sustainable way at relatively low cost. In addition, many of the authors themselves are champions for these activities at the international or national level. At the national level, the process to influence SEL and SDG 4.7 themes is illustrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: A materials-focused, selective strategy to support SEL at the national level

International commitments are already strong, whether through the holistic Convention on the Rights of the Child, the narrower SDG Target 4.7 themes, or the even narrower UN Girls’ Education Initiative. At the national level, most countries have laws and policies that essentially require education to contribute to the well-being of society by developing responsible citizens. Moreover, SEL and themes relating to SDG 4.7 goals are typically included in broad terms in curricula and syllabi. However, to what extent have both youth and teachers been engaged in developing those broad themes into engaging, culturally relevant, age-appropriate examples and exercises? To what extent have writers of educational materials and textbooks been trained in the new themes and examples and learned techniques for embedding pedagogy? Finally, to what extent has the effectiveness of the new textbooks and materials been tested in terms of improvements in student cognitive, behavioral, and social outcomes?

The final chapter of the NISSEM global briefs incorporates nine recommendations from the 2018 NISSEM position paper, as well as considerations for ministries of education, examination boards, donors, NGOs, and academics and graduate students, for collaborative activities to advance SEL and SDG Target 4.7 themes in educational materials in the next five years. These recommendations highlight the importance of engaging the imagination, energy, and idealism of youth—those who struggle to enter the 21st century workforce in the face of globalization, automation, and nationalism—in this selective but powerful strategy.

       

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By Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Izzy Boggild-Jones

India faces considerable education challenges: More than half of children are unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10, and disparities in learning levels persist between states and between the poorest and wealthiest children.

But, with a flourishing social enterprise ecosystem and an appetite among NGOs and policymakers for testing new solutions, India is playing a leading role in its use of innovative financing for development. One such innovative tool is an impact bond, a type of outcome-based financing structure where upfront capital is given to service providers by investors. While evidence on outcome-based financing in education—and impact bonds specifically—is still emerging, there are key lessons to be drawn for the application of such tools to education in India.

Impact bonds in India

Three impact bonds have been contracted in India to date, with two in the education sector. In the first—the Educate Girls Development Impact Bond (DIB)—the UBS Optimus Foundation provided upfront capital to Educate Girls to get out-of-school girls into the classroom and improve learning outcomes for boys and girls. After three years, the DIB had overachieved its enrollment and learning targets, and the investment was repaid by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). See Table 1 for more details.

Table 1: Educate Girls DIB

The second project in education, the Quality Education India (QEI) DIB brings together four service providers—Gyan Shala, Kaivalya Education Foundation, the Society for All Round Development, and Educational Initiatives (Mindspark)/Pratham Infotech Foundation—to implement a range of interventions with the goal of improving learning outcomes over a four-year period through 2022. UBS Optimus Foundation provided upfront capital for the interventions, and if metrics are successfully achieved, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, together with a group of outcome funders convened by the British Asian Trust, will pay for the outcomes. See Table 2 for more details.

Table 2: Quality Education India DIB

The potential of impact bonds

For stakeholders interested in using impact bonds to solve education challenges in India, the evidence suggests that the motivation for using the tool should be carefully considered. For instance, impact bonds seem to be most suitable to services that are preventative in nature, have a strong need for adaptation to individual needs, and result in easily measured but meaningful outcomes.

Thus far globally, impact bonds have focused on building quality in existing education systems and targeting services to specific groups, rather than being used broadly for the provision of basic education. This is partly a reflection of the early stage of the impact bond market: Many existing deals have focused on testing the model and building knowledge. However, it also suggests that the most appropriate programs for impact bond financing are not experimental programs without an evidence base (since these will likely be unappealing to investors) nor well-established programs with demonstrated outcomes (since outcome funders may just want to pay for these outright). Rather, they are something in between, where there is enough risk or capacity-building needed to justify the engagement and repayment of investors. Ensuring that interventions effectively target the population in need will be crucial in the design phase, and further research will be needed to understand the costs and benefits of the tool.

Three factors will play an important role in the growth of outcome-based financing for education in India. Already these factors have been important for the Educate Girls DIB and the QEI DIB. In terms of the first factor—ready and able education providers—a landscape analysis of the service provider market in India for the QEI DIB found that some organizations were not open to adapting existing program models—one of the key hypothesized advantages of outcome-based contracting. As a result of the scoping of service providers, one of the most interesting features about the QEI DIB is the selection of four service providers offering different interventions. With respect to the second factor—the potential for technology to facilitate data collection—the Educate Girls DIB used a digital data dashboard to provide performance insights; the QEI DIB will include the delivery of Mindspark, a computer-based adaptive learning software, which offers real-time performance data to teachers. Finally, considering the third factor—government engagement—while the government has not yet played the role of outcome funder, the government was engaged with both the Educate Girls and QEI DIBs, with MOUs signed to provide access to government schools. Further engagement of government could mean greater scale and sustainability of outcome-based financing in India.

The report

This study seeks to place the existing education impact bonds in the context of the Indian education landscape, and to investigate the overall potential and limitations of outcome-based financing for education in India. While there is unlikely to be one solution to India’s education challenges, impact bonds and outcome-based financing offer the opportunity to focus financing on impact, to promote the most effective education interventions and service providers, and to reinforce decisionmaking around data and evidence.

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By Camille May

       

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By Gabby Arenge, Jenny Perlman Robinson

It is no longer a secret that far too many children are not learning around the world. The learning crisis is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa where 40 percent of grade 2 students cannot do a one-digit addition problem. Botswana is a prime example. While access to education is at an all-time high, with a net enrollment of 91 percent, learning levels are far below grade-level expectations and stagnating. An analysis of learning levels among grade 5 students conducted in 2017 found that over 85 percent of students could not divide, and half of students could not read a simple story. Despite striking challenges in learning, Botswana has the resources and political will to invest in programs that can close the gap for students who have fallen behind. The current 2015 – 2020 Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) calls for education reform and commits to resourcing efforts to improve and support remedial learning.

Scaling quality education through Teaching at the Right Level

In an attempt to change the status quo, Young 1ove, an NGO founded to scale evidence-based programs for youth, is working with the Botswana government to adapt an approach called  “Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL).” TaRL uses learner-centered teaching methods to target students’ basic literacy and numeracy learning needs, grouping children by level rather than age or grade. This approach stands in stark contrast to typical schooling methods in which students are taught lecture-style and moved to the next grade automatically each year, regardless of learning gains.

Pratham—an NGO in India—developed this learner-centered approach and over the past 20 years has partnered with the global research center J-PAL to evaluate the program in multiple randomized trials across Kenya, India, and Ghana. Over time and across countries, TaRL has proven to be one of the most cost-effective ways to improve learning.

In 2018, Botswana’s Ministry of Basic Education (MoBE) signed a 4-year Memorandum of Understanding with Young 1ove to scale TaRL in three regions and develop a plan for national scale. Since then, Young 1ove, in partnership with MoBE, the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport, and Culture Development, and UNICEF, has piloted and implemented TaRL in 10 percent of schools across Botswana. Early results from these efforts are promising. The most recent results from the last round of implementation reveal that over 82 percent of participating students gained numeracy skills, the percentage of students who can do division jumped from 12 percent to 76 percent, and the percentage of innumerate students dropped from 13 percent to 1 percent after 30 hours of TaRL instruction.

Scaling in Botswana: A cross-sector coalition

To learn from and support scaling TaRL in Botswana, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has partnered with Young 1ove to launch a Real-time Scaling Lab, convened by the Ministry of Basic Education. The Real-time Scaling Lab is not a physical space but rather a multi-year process that brings together a small group of diverse stakeholders to systematically plan for scale from the start, periodically reflect on progress, and adjust plans based on data and ongoing learning. The lab also provides an opportunity to document the adaptation and expansion of TaRL in order to inform other scaling efforts in Botswana and globally.

The Ministry of Basic Education launched the Real-time Scaling Lab in Gaborone, Botswana in September 2019, bringing together over 30 stakeholders from government and civil society in a half-day workshop led by Director of Basic Education, Mr. Ndondo Koolese. This convening identified the underlying causes of low learning outcomes in Botswana and considered how TaRL can help address them. Discussions revealed that TaRL’s promise and potential may lie in its innovative, yet intuitive pedagogies and organic, demand-driven expansion.

Going back to the basics

In many ways, the TaRL approach taps into a ”back to basics” mindset, encouraging us to revisit teaching and learning methods that draw upon an intuitive understanding of how humans learn best: practically, with peers in an engaging and targeted learning environment. Not only do educators report that TaRL reminds them of how they were educated, but also that it is rooted in foundational methods that they received in pre-service training.

This familiarity may prove an important component in facilitating the sustainable expansion of TaRL nationwide. For innovation to spread, it may prove beneficial to energize and accelerate what is familiar and intuitive through a rejuvenated approach like TaRL. TaRL methods are not foreign or brand new. Rather they are a refresher on effective pedagogy and a reminder that learning can happen anywhere and everywhere, with simple materials and a continual focus on children’s learning needs. This may help contribute to teacher interest and more organic spread of the TaRL approach across schools in Botswana.

Seeing is believing: A demand-driven process

Reflections from the scaling lab launch further revealed that the government and Young 1ove’s intentional demand-driven approach—starting small with initial implementation in schools and regions that requested the program— coupled with TaRL’s visible impact on student learning may also prove important in the larger scaling strategy. By focusing on schools with the motivation and capacity to implement the approach, TaRL could demonstrate its genuine potential for change. Participating students, teachers, parents, and school heads see the program’s impact not just through student assessments, but also in real-time in classrooms where students who previously struggled can actively participate and excel. Witnessing this change has created grassroots-level TaRL ambassadors, who have advocated for the program and generated further momentum for its expansion at every level of education—from classrooms, to schools, to regions, to government ministries. This organic, demand-driven process should help support further expansion by ensuring that scaling is driven both from the top-down and from the bottom-up, responding directly to deeply felt needs identified by local communities.

Capturing the learning journey 

Despite initial promising results, this is just the beginning of the TaRL learning and scaling journey in Botswana. The Real-time Scaling Lab will help support and inform the process of scaling by providing a neutral space to discuss critical questions that should inform the scaling strategy, reflect on challenges faced and opportunities to address them, and collectively revise scaling plans informed by data and real-time learning. All with the ultimate shared goal of making learning for all a reality in Botswana.

       

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