The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4: A Symposium A Collection of Essays Center for Global Development. 2021. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Center for Global Development 2055 L Street, NW Fifth Floor Washington, DC 20036 www.cgdev.org Contents Introduction . 1 Susannah Hares and Justin Sandefur, Co-Directors, CGD Global Education Program The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4 Requires the Global Education Architecture to Focus on Foundational Learning and to Hold Ourselves Accountable For Achieving It . 2 Girin Beeharry, Global Education Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Postscript . 17 Girin Beeharry, Global Education Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Back to Basics . 21 Manos Antoninis, Director, Global Education Monitoring Report Playing Catch Up: The Role of Foundational Literacy in Achieving SDG 4 . 26 Caitlin Baron, Chief Executive Officer, Luminos Fund The (Mis)Alignment of Global and National Priorities for Education . 33 Lee Crawfurd and Susannah Hares Finding Room for Optimism on Foundational Learning . 38 Luis A. Crouch, Senior Economist, RTI International Every Global Certainty Can Be Disproven by a Local Reality . 42 Anton De Grauwe, Head of Technical Cooperation, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning Achieving SDG 4 Requires Prioritising Foundational Learning, Globally and Nationally . 48 Ashish Dhawan, Founder and Chairman, Central Square Foundation The Three-Legged Stool Approach to Advancing Basic Learning in East Africa . 51 Youdi Schipper, Risha Chande and Aidan Eyakuze, Twaweza East Africa The Ground Beneath Our Feet . 56 Hugh McLean, Senior Advisor, Education Program, Open Society Foundations (writing in his personal capacity) Why Haven’t We Prioritised Early Grade Literacy and Numeracy? . 71 Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, Deputy Director, Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, Department of Basic Education, South Africa, and Non-resident Fellow, Center for Global Development iii Start with the Right Foot: Recognizing the Power of Foundational Learning Data . 75 Silvia Montoya, Director, UNESCO Institute for Statistics Why Do We Keep Failing to Universalize Literacy? . 81 Karen Mundy, Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy, OISE and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto Make Inclusive FLN a Signature Issue for Education Systems . 85 Moses Ngware, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of Education and Youth Empowerment, African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya The Missing Middle: What the Emphasis on National Education Results Ignores . 90 Dr. Benjamin Piper, Senior Director, Africa Education, RTI International; Non-Resident Fellow, Center for Global Development Sleeping Soundly in the Procrustean Bed of Accounting-Based Accountability . 96 Lant Pritchett, RISE Research Director, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University Taking Education Seriously . 103 Jaime Saavedra, Global Director for Education, World Bank The Paradox Burden: Lessons for Global Education from the Transformation of Health . 108 Oliver Sabot, Director, Nova Pioneer Should Foreign Aid for Education Focus Exclusively on Raising Second-Grade Test Scores? . 113 Justin Sandefur, Senior fellow, Center for Global Development How the Global Education Aid Architecture Can Work in Harmony on Foundational Learning . 118 Laura Savage, Non-resident fellow, Center for Global Development iv Introduction Susannah Hares and Justin Sandefur, Co-Direc- international organizations function and malfunc- tors, CGD Global Education Program tion. His essay embodies what we know about Girin. It is thoughtful but refreshingly direct. It is evi- Earlier this year, Girin Beeharry stepped down as the dence-driven but marries deep analysis with a feverish inaugural director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun- focus on impact. Girin’s passion for change is palpable dation’s global education program. He’s not going qui- and his relentless challenge to the sector to do better etly though. “The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4,” first for the children we purport to serve shines through. published in the International Journal of Educational Development, is—in essence—Girin’s manifesto for inter- In March, CGD and Rise hosted a private roundtable national actors in the education sector. The essay has to hear reactions from the education sector leaders to little patience for what Girin perceives as our collective whom Girin’s essay is directed. Now, we are delighted failure to address alarmingly poor learning outcomes, to present a symposium of reactions and commentar- and it lays out a clear (and sometimes controversial) ies on “The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4.” In this col- vision for what needs to change to get back on track lection, sector leaders, researchers, and practitioners toward SDG 4. The heart of this manifesto is that we provide their reflections and counter proposals to must reorient global aid for education around pro- Girin’s essay. Taken collectively, the range of contrib- moting foundational literacy and numeracy, unflinch- utors and the insights their essays provide reflect the ingly monitor progress on that core goal, and hold all impact that Girin’s perspective has had on so many of development institutions accountable for measurable us and remind us quite how much he has contributed results in this domain. to the education sector. The essay has made waves, not least because Girin We offer thanks to Girin for stimulating this timely has worked closely with his target audience for years, debate, and we are grateful to all our contributors for and he draws on detailed knowledge of how various their thoughtful responses. The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4: A Symposium 1 The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4 Requires the Global Education Architecture to Focus on Foundational Learning and to Hold Ourselves Accountable For Achieving It Girin Beeharry, Global Education Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation This essay was first published in theInternational Jour- 1. Introduction nal of Education Development in April 2021. Today, nine in ten children in Low Income Countries But surpassing all stupendous inventions, what (LICs) cannot read with comprehension by their tenth 1 sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding means birthday (World Bank, 2019a). In other words, they to communicate his deepest thoughts to any other are functionally illiterate, this after decades of decla- person, though distant by mighty intervals of place and rations and initiatives by the global education com- time! Of talking with those who are in India; of speaking munity to improve the quality of basic education. This to those who are not yet born and will not be born for a being the degree zero of our collective aspirations, thousand or ten thousand years; and with what facility, there is understandably a sense of malaise about the by the different arrangements of twenty characters effectiveness of the global education architecture in upon a page! [] Let this be the seal of all the admirable helping countries address what has been termed the inventions of mankind […]. “learning crisis.” In the last many years, the education — Galileo Galilei (1632, pp. 120–121) community has sought to respond to the perceived 1. Learning poverty indicator developed by the World Bank in coordination with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2 The Pathway to Progress on SDG 4: A Symposium deficiencies in the architecture in the form of well-in- 2. A short and incomplete history of tentioned partnerships, specialized financing facilities, tall and unfulfilled aspirations commissions, committees, platforms, initiatives, and forums.2 But these attempts to “fix” the architecture 1990s: The Jomtien Declaration of Education for All have yet to demonstrate meaningful success: learning emphasizes the need to improve literacy because “lit- levels are persistently low (Le Nestour and Sandefur, eracy is a necessary skill in itself and the foundation of other forthcoming), and positive deviants hard to find.3 life skills” (UNESCO, 1990, p. 6). It sets out the need for precise floor metrics: “such that an agreed percentage of As a committed partner to the global education agenda, an appropriate age cohort […] attains or surpasses a defined I believe the opportunity is ripe to re-energize the level of necessary learning achievement” (p. 5). education community by showing meaningful results in the next few years. To do that we should focus on 2000s: The Dakar Framework for Action includes a a few objectives, work in countries that share those commitment to improving quality in education and objectives, go at them with all that the global commu- ensuring the achievement of learning outcomes by all nity has to offer, monitor progress regularly, and hold in literacy and numeracy (UNESCO, 2000). The semi- ourselves collectively accountable for progress. My nal 2002 Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) submission is that one priority objective ought to be report already acknowledges the difficulty in mon- addressing Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) itoring learning (UNESCO, 2002). GPE’s precursor, in LICs, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). the Education For All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI) is established in 2002. The 2010 evaluation of EFA FTI I propose FLN as a priority because it is critical for any concludes: “the FTI has remained a weak partnership, with meaningful progress on the wider Sustainable Devel- weak accountability, and has not delivered the “compact” opment