Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized ENDING LEARNINGPOVERTY: it take? will What 2 PHOTO BY: © THE WORLD BANK Contents Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... 4 Introduction .............................................................................................. 5 The challenge: End learning poverty ................................................................. 7 The vision: Learning for all children and youth ................................................................... 8 The magnitude of the problem—and the crisis at the foundations .................................................. 8 The importance of foundational skills .......................................................................... 9 Reading—A key foundational skill and a gateway to learning ..................................................... 9 Every child should be reading by age 10 ...................................................................... 10 Learning poverty: A new early-warning indicator to spotlight low learning levels ................................... 11 Measuring Learning Poverty: Achievements and remaining data gaps ....................................................................................13 Ending learning poverty will be hard: Three findings ............................................ 15 Where we are now: Half of the children in low- and middle-income countries are learning-poor ...................... 16 Rates by country group .................................................................................................................................................16 What we know about differences by gender...................................................................................................................... 16 Where the world is headed: At current rates of progress, eliminating learning poverty by 2030 is out of reach ......... 16 An early warning: Even at the fastest rates of progress seen in recent decades, learning poverty will not be eliminated by 2030 ......................................................................................... 19 The way forward ........................................................................................ 20 A new global learning-poverty target to drive action and sharpen our efforts ...................................... 21 Interventions focused on literacy can accelerate progress toward the Learning Target and raise overall education quality. 22 Component 1: Ensure political and technical commitment to clear goals, means, and measures for literacy .................................... 22 Component 2: Ensure effective teaching for literacy............................................................................................................ 23 Component 3: Ensure timely access to more and better age- and skill-appropriate texts.............................................................. 25 Component 4: First teach children in the language they speak and understand ........................................................................ 27 Adapting the Literacy Policy Package across diverse country conditions ................................................................................. 28 Interventions reflect country capacities and circumstances ..................................................................................................30 Interventions targeted at literacy require a broader agenda for improving education quality ........................ 33 Five pillars of system improvement .................................................................................................................................. 33 Using technology to support literacy efforts....................................................................................................................... 36 Accompanying this country-level support is an ambitious measurement and research agenda ....................... 37 A call to action ........................................................................................... 39 Annex A ................................................................................................... 41 References ................................................................................................ 44 Ending Learning Poverty: What will it take? | 3 Acknowledgments This report was produced by a core team consisting of João Pedro Azevedo, Michael Crawford, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Maria Rebeca Barron Rodriguez, Elaine Ding, and Marcela Gutierrez Bernal, under the overall guidance of Annette Dixon, Jaime Saavedra, and Omar Arias. The report draws heavily on joint work with Silvia Montoya, Adolfo Imhof, and Friederich Huebler of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, whom the team thanks for their excellent collabo- ration in building the harmonized data set and for their comments on the analysis. Substantial inputs were provided by Kristoffer Gustav Bjarkefur, Marguerite Clarke, Natasha De Andrade Falcao, Ning Fu, Tihtina Zenebe Gebre, Koen Martijn Geven, Diana Goldemberg, Laura Gregory, Syedah Aroob Iqbal, Maria Jose Vargas Mancera, Sergio Venegas Marin, Harry Anthony Patrinos, Shwetlena Sabarwal, Brian William Stacy, Jason Allen Weaver, Ryoko Tomita Wilcox, and Hongxi Zhao. The team thanks Husein Abdul-Hamid, Dina Abu-Ghaida, Melissa Ann Adelman, Hanna Alasuutari, Rita Almeida, Samer Al-Samarrai, Nina Arnhold, Juan Baron, Roberta Malee Bassett, Tara Beteille, Andreas Blom, Luis Crouch, Amanda Dever- celli, Emanuela Di Gropello, Simeon Djankov, Halil Dundar, Safaa El Tayeb El-Kogali, David Evans, Mourad Ezzine, Amber Gove, Amer Hasan, Robert J. Hawkins, Linda Heibert, Rafael de Hoyos, Victoria Levin, Julia Liberman, Toby Linden, Mes- kerem Mulatu, Ambar Narayan, Elizabeth Ninan, Benjamin Piper, Adelle Pushparatnam, Alfonso Sanchez, Christopher J. Thomas, Michael Trucano, Waly Wane, and Nobuo Yoshida for their inputs and comments. We are also grateful to those whose dedicated work produced all the learning data used in this paper—the national governments and the teams at the IEA (PIRLS and TIMSS), UNESCO (LLECE), Confemen (PASEC), and SACMEQ, as well as the OECD. Finally, we thank the many government counterparts and other partners who have provided feedback and support during the development of this work. We apologize for any omissions and express our sincerest thanks to everyone, whether or not they are named here, who graciously gave their time and expertise. Acknowledgments | Ending Learning Poverty: What will it take? 4 PHOTO BY: © BART VERWEIJ / WORLD BANK WORLD / VERWEIJ BART © BY: PHOTO Introduction All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses through school—and conversely, an inability to read slams that gate shut. Beyond this, when children cannot read, it’s usually a clear indication that school systems aren’t well enough organized to help children learn in other areas such as math, science, and the human- ities either. And although it is possible to learn later in life with enough effort, children who don’t read by age 10—or at the latest, by the end of primary school—usually fail to master reading later in their schooling career. Ending Learning Poverty: What will it take? 5 In recent years, it has become clear that many children it in the foreseeable future requires far more rapid prog- around the world are not learning to read proficiently. ress at scale than we have yet seen. Even though the majority of children are in school, a large proportion are not acquiring fundamental skills. Moreover, To galvanize this progress and strengthen its own 260 million children are not even in school. This is the lead- efforts, the World Bank is: ing edge of a learning crisis that threatens countries’ efforts to build human capital and achievement of the Sustainable 1. Launching a new operational global learning Development Goals (SDGs).1 Without foundational learn- target to cut the Learning Poverty rate by at ing, students often fail to thrive later in school or when they least half before 2030 join the workforce.They don’t acquire the human capital • Simulations show that this target is ambitious they need to power their careers and economies once they yet achievable if all countries manage to im- leave school, or the skills that will help them become en- prove learning as well as the top performers of gaged citizens and nurture healthy, prosperous families. the 2000–15 period did—which means on av- erage nearly tripling the global rate of progress. As a major contributor to human capital deficits, the learning crisis undermines sustainable growth and pov- 2. Using three key pillars of work to support coun- erty reduction. The Human Capital Project is raising aware- tries to improve the human capital outcomes of ness of the costs of inaction. The average Human Capital their people Index (HCI) score across countries is 0.56; this means that • A literacy policy package consisting of inter- by the age of 18, a child born today will be only 56 percent ventions focused specifically on promoting ac- as productive as a child would be under the benchmark of quisition of reading proficiency in primary school a complete education and full health.2 Shortcomings in the quality and quantity of schooling, which have been sum- • A refreshed education approach to strengthen marized as a learning crisis, are a leading