Primary

This book focuses on how school facilities can affect children’s learning outcomes, identifying parameters that can inform the design, implementation, and supervision of future educational infrastructure projects. It reflects on aspects for which the evidence could be strengthened, and identifies areas for further exploratory work. 

The Malawi Economic Monitor (MEM) provides an analysis of economic and structural development issues in Malawi. This edition was published in November 2018. It follows seven previous editions of the MEM and is part of an ongoing series, with future editions to follow twice each year. The aim of the publication is to foster better-informed policy analysis and debate regarding the key challenges that Malawi faces in its endeavor to achieve high rates of stable, inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

Teach is an observation tool that captures: (i) the time teachers spend on learning and the extent to which students are on task, and (ii) the quality of teaching practices that help develop students’ socio-emotional and cognitive skills.

Teach is an open source classroom observation tool that provides a window into one of the less explored and more important aspects of a student’s education: what goes on in the classroom. The tool is intended to be used in primary classrooms (grades 1-6) and was designed to help low- and middle-income countries track and improve teaching quality.

Teach differs from other classroom observation tools in that it captures (i) the time teachers spend on learning and the extent to which students are on task, and (ii) the quality of teaching practices that help develop students’ socio-emotional and cognitive skills. As part of the Time on Task component, 3 “snapshots” of 1–10 seconds are used to record both the teacher’s actions and the number of students who are on task throughout the observation.

What goes on inside the classroom is central to student learning. Despite its importance, low- and middle-income countries rarely measure teaching practices, in part due to a lack of access to adequate classroom observation tools and the high transaction costs associated with administering them. Teach, a new, open-source classroom observation tool for primary classrooms, was developed to capture the quantity and quality of teaching practices in these settings with a simple, easy-to-administer tool.

Even after spending five to six years sitting in a classroom almost every day for anywhere between four to seven hours, a significant share of students in low- and middle-income countries are still not able to read, write, or do basic arithmetic. What explains this "learning crisis?" A growing body of evidence suggests that poor teaching practices and little to no learning inside the classroom are the main culprits. As such, the learning crisis reflects a teaching crisis. So what can teachers do inside the classroom to tackle these joint crises?

This report documents the challenge of achieving inclusive education in Africa. Primary school completion rates are 10 percentage points lower for girls with disabilities than for girls without disabilities. For boys, the disability gap in primary completion rates is 13 points. Gaps are also large for secondary education completion and children with disabilities are much more likely to never enroll in school at all. Across the board disability gaps have been steadily increasing over the last 20 years.

Sri Lanka is a lower-middle income country with an impressive record of achievements in economic and human development. Despite 26 years of conflict, Sri Lanka, an island country with a population of 20.6 million has stood out from its regional counterparts with high levels of human development. Sri Lanka’s score in the Human Development Index (HDI) is 0.766—which put the country in the high human development category (UNDP 2016).

This paper evaluates the learning impact of different teacher training methods using a random controlled trial implemented in 70 state schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A control group receiving standard teacher training was compared with two alternative treatment arms: providing a structured curriculum unit or receiving both the unit and weekly coaching.