Even before COVID-19, the world was facing a learning crisis, with nearly 6 out of every 10 ten-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries suffering from learning poverty—meaning they were unable to read and understand a simple story. Now COVID-19 pandemic school closures and disruptions have deepened the crisis, sharply increasing learning poverty and exacerbating the inequalities in education. The latest simulations indicate that the pandemic has likely caused a sharp increase in global learning poverty, to an estimated 70 percent (from 57 percent), and exacerbated inequalities in education.
The Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD), developed by the World Bank's Education Global Practice, can help countries reduce Learning Poverty. This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context. It does so by (1) highlighting gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and (2) allowing governments to track progress as they take action to close those gaps.
The GEPD has been implemented in seven education systems and preparation is ongoing in eight more with expected completion by the end of 2024. Data is available for four education systems and will soon be released for three additional ones.
Learn more about the systems with existing data by clicking below.
What are the areas for action that the Dashboard should highlight? One way to answer this is to first identify the barriers to learning. The World Development Report 2018 argues that struggling education systems lack one or more of four key school-level ingredients for learning: prepared learners, quality teaching, learning-focused inputs, and the skilled management that pulls them together. But the problems are not just at school level; these deficiencies in service delivery are typically signs of deeper systemic problems. They are driven by policies that are not well designed or implemented to promote learning for all children and youth, and these misalignments in turn reflect problems caused by unhealthy politics or a lack of bureaucratic capacity.
To tackle the learning crisis, achieving and sustaining learning gains at scale, countries need to know where they stand on all three of these dimensions—practices (or service delivery), policies, and politics. The Dashboard starts by focusing attention on early-grade learning and school participation. The next set of indicators measure the quality of practices, focusing on the four key school-level ingredients of student learning: teaching, school management, inputs and infrastructure, and learner preparation. In addition, the dashboard measures deeper systemic drivers: the policies and politics that determine the quality of service delivery. The end goal is to have a set of indicators that is comprehensive but also focused so stakeholders can pay attention to what is really most important.
Please refer to the GEPD Reference Guide for all information you need regarding the initiative, the data collection process, the background behind each indicator, and the most frequently asked questions and answers.
