Achieving global consensus on learning metrics

The inspiring documentary film, Girl Rising, tells the personal experiences of nine young women in different countries who have overcome extraordinary challenges in their struggle to go to school. While each of these girls is an exceptional individual, their collective story is not uncommon. All over the world, countless families make great sacrifices to get their children in school. They understand that education has the power to transform their lives and lead to a better future.

But imagine the injustice if those sacrifices are all for naught. What if the children who do make it to school don’t end up learning while there? Tragically, this is the case for an estimated 130 million children around the world who are in school but failing to learn the basic skills they need to succeed in work and life. In Africa alone, there are about 37 million boys and girls in school who cannot read or write with fluency or complete basic numeracy tasks. For these children and their families, school represents not a path to prosperity, but an unfulfilled investment of time and resources.

Education is both a right and a bedrock of development. The divi­dends that should result from investments in education are immeasur­able: economic growth; improved public health; and safer, more stable societies.

However, for these benefits to accrue, all girls and boys have to be in school and learning. The data show that learning levels – not necessarily years spent in school – are what drive many eco­nomic and social returns on investments in education.

How do we measure children’s learning?

For the past 10 months, a group of 30 organizations has come together as the Learning Metrics Task Force to address just one part of the complex process to achieve education quality – how to measure whether children are learning at appropriate levels. Through a highly consultative process involving more than 1,000 people in 84 countries to date, the task force has developed a series of recommendations on what all children and youth need to learn and how learning should be measured.

Full summaries of these recommendations can be found in previous blog posts here and here as well as in the reports of the task force. As the task force enters its third and final phase looking at how best to implement its recommendations, it’s a good time to take stock and have a look at the progress made so far:

A collaboration between developed and developing countries

The Learning Metrics Task Force received significant contributions from hundreds of participants in the Global South who have been actively engaged since the project’s inception. Representation on the task force is balanced between developing and developed countries, as well as across sectors of society. Of the more than 1,000 people around the world who have submitted feedback, more than two-thirds are from developing countries. Teachers and other education professionals make up a significant proportion of consultation participants thus far, and plans for the project’s third phase include a series of in-person consultations with ministries of education, practitioners, and civil society actors in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East.

As chair of the Association for Education Development in Africa (ADEA), I recently had the opportunity to engage the Conference of Ministers of Education in Africa, which has fully embraced the project and will strongly recommend it to the Ministers Conference.

African ministers are concerned that quality has been sacrificed for access, and that this has exacerbated inequality. They know that children from the poorest households are often those who are being short-changed by receiving low-quality education.

Many hope that the post-2015 education agenda emphasizes access to education and learning. They also hope that the partners will provide funding to improve learning outcomes, instead of focusing strictly on access to schooling.

A broad view of learning

The Learning Metrics Task Force put forth a holistic framework of seven learning domains, outlining what all children and youth should have the opportunity to learn in order to succeed in a global society. However, there was concern that proposing just one or two of the domains for measurement at the global level would in turn cause a narrowing of national curricula or donor investments. To guard against this unintended consequence, the task force recommends six areas for tracking globally, three of which cut across multiple learning domains:

1. Early childhood experiences that lead to school readiness
2. An adaptable, flexible skill set to meet the demands of the 21st century
3. Exposure to learning opportunities in all seven domains

The task force is now exploring options for new tools to adequately track these areas.

All children have a right to learn

All children have the potential – and the right – to make progress in multiple domains of learning, no matter whether they live in Papua New Guinea, New Delhi, or New York. Still, there are social, economic, and political barriers that prevent millions of children around the world from reaching their full potential through education. The task force agreed that if its recommendations are really to spur improvements in learning for all children, it would need to look beyond aggregate reports of learning outcomes at the country level. It would also have to focus on disparities between subgroups of learners.

Good data on learning outcomes is the basis for policymakers, practitioners, and communities to identify disparities in learning achievement and design appropriate interventions.

Call for feedback

Now in the final phase of this 18-month-long process, the task force is working to make its recommendations relevant for implementation at the local level. To do this, the task force seeks broad input from country-level actors: How is learning currently assessed? Are assessment results used to inform improvements in education quality? What can the global education community do to support countries in improving learning outcomes? Based on the results of this exercise, the task force will develop a “roadmap,” with recommendations for building robust national systems of learning assessment. The task force is also working to ensure its recommendations feed into discussions on the post-2015 development framework.

We owe it to the girls and boys who sacrifice everything to go to school to ensure that learning is not just left to chance. Learning in schools must happen by design. If a child’s opportunity to learn is not to depend on their place of birth or socio-economic circumstances, we need the right tools and instruments which tell us whether that child is learning – or not. Measuring learning is not the whole answer, but it is an essential part of the solution.

To learn more about the LMTF project and contribute to the Phase III consultation process, visit http://www.brookings.edu/about/centers/universal-education/learning-metrics-task-force/consultation.

We hope you’ll get involved in helping children learn and grow, and join our conversation on Facebook and Twitter.