World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise

Schooling is not the same as learning. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, when grade 3 students were asked recently to read a sentence such as “The name of the dog is Puppy,” three-quarters did not understand what it said. In rural India, just under three-quarters of students in grade 3 could not solve a two-digit subtraction such as 46 – 17, and by grade 5 half could still not do so. Although the skills of Brazilian 15-year-olds have improved, at their current rate of improvement they won’t reach the richcountry average score in math for 75 years. In reading, it will take more than 260 years. Within countries, learning outcomes are almost always much worse for the disadvantaged. In Uruguay, poor children in grade 6 are assessed as “not competent” in math at five times the rate of wealthy children. Moreover, such data are for children and youth lucky enough to be in school. Some 260 million aren’t even enrolled in primary or secondary school.

These countries are not unique in the challenges they face. (In fact, they deserve credit for measuring student learning and making the results public.) Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic life skills. Even if they attend school, many leave without the skills for calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or interpreting a campaign promise—let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children.

This learning crisis is a moral crisis. When delivered well, education cures a host of societal ills. For individuals, it promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. For societies, it spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion. But these benefits depend largely on learning. Schooling without learning is a wasted opportunity. More than that, it is a great injustice: the children whom society is failing most are the ones who most need a good education to succeed in life.

Any country can do better if it acts as though learning really matters. That may sound obvious—after all, what else is education for? Yet even as learning goals are receiving greater rhetorical support, in practice many features of education systems conspire against learning. This Report argues that countries can improve by advancing on three fronts:

• Assess learning—to make it a serious goal. This means using well-designed student assessments to gauge the health of education systems (not primarily as tools for administering rewards and punishments). It also means using the resulting learning measures to spotlight hidden exclusions, make choices, and evaluate progress. • Act on evidence—to make schools work for all learners. Evidence on how people learn has exploded in recent decades, along with an increase in educational innovation. Countries can make much better use of this evidence to set priorities for their own practice and innovations. • Align actors—to make the whole system work for learning. Countries must recognize that all the classroom innovation in the world is unlikely to have much impact if, because of technical and political barriers, the system as a whole does not support learning. By taking into account these real-world barriers and mobilizing everyone who has a stake in learning, countries can support innovative educators on the front lines.

When improving learning becomes a priority, great progress is possible. In the early 1950s, the Republic of Korea was a war-torn society held back by very low literacy levels. By 1995 it had achieved universal enrollment in high-quality education through secondary school. Today, its young people perform at the highest levels on international learning assessments. Vietnam surprised the world when the 2012 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that its 15-year-olds were performing at the same level as those in Germany— even though Vietnam was a lower-middle-income country. Between 2009 and 2015, Peru achieved some of the fastest growth in overall learning outcomes—an improvement attributable to concerted policy action. In Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga, early grade reading improved substantially within a very short time thanks to focused efforts based on evidence. And recently, Malaysia and Tanzania launched promising societywide collaborative approaches to systematically improving learning.

Progress like this requires a clear-eyed diagnosis, followed by concerted action. Before showing what can be done to fulfill education’s promise, this overview first shines a light on the learning crisis: how and why many countries are not yet achieving “learning for all.” This may make for disheartening reading, but it should not be interpreted as saying that all is lost—only that too many young people are not getting the education they need. The rest of the overview shows how change is possible if systems commit to “all for learning,” drawing on examples of families, educators, communities, and systems that have made real progress.

The three dimensions of the learning crisis

Education should equip students with the skills they need to lead healthy, productive, meaningful lives. Different countries define skills differently, but all share some core aspirations, embodied in their curriculums. Students everywhere must learn how to interpret many types of written passages—from medication labels to job offers, from bank statements to great literature. They have to understand how numbers work so that they can buy and sell in markets, set family budgets, interpret loan agreements, or write engineering software. They require the higher-order reasoning and creativity that builds on these foundational skills. And they need the socioemotional skills—such as perseverance and the ability to work on teams—that help them acquire and apply the foundational and other skills.

Many countries are not yet achieving these goals. First, the learning that one would expect to happen in schools—whether expectations are based on formal curriculums, the needs of employers, or just common sense—is often not occurring. Of even greater concern, many countries are failing to provide learning for all. Individuals already disadvantaged in society— whether because of poverty, location, ethnicity, gender, or disability—learn the least. Thus education systems can widen social gaps instead of narrowing them. What drives the learning shortfalls is becoming clearer thanks to new analyses spotlighting both the immediate cause—poor service delivery that amplifies the effects of poverty—and the deeper system-level problems, both technical and political, that allow poor-quality schooling to persist.

The recent expansion in education is impressive by historical standards. In many developing countries over the last few decades, net enrollment in education has greatly outpaced the historic performance of today’s industrial countries. For example, it took the United States 40 years—from 1870 to 1910—to increase girls’ enrollments from 57 percent to 88 percent. By contrast, Morocco achieved a similar increase in just 11 years. The number of years of schooling completed by the average adult in the developing world more than tripled from 1950 to

2010, from 2.0 to 7.2 years. By 2010 the average worker of grade 6 students in Southern and East Africa were in Bangladesh had completed more years of school-able to go beyond the level of simply deciphering ing than the typical worker in France in 1975. This words, and less than 40 percent got beyond basic progress means that most enrollment gaps in basic numeracy. Among grade 6 students in West and education are closing between high- and low-income

Central Africa in 2014, less than 45 percent reached countries. By 2008 the average low-income country the “sufficient” competency level for continuing studwas enrolling students in primary school at nearly ies in reading or mathematics—for example, the rest the same rate as the average high-income country.

could not answer a math problem that required them

But schooling is not the same as learning. Chil- to divide 130 by 26. In rural India in 2016, only half of dren learn very little in many education systems grade 5 students could fluently read text at the level around the world: even after several years in school, of the grade 2 curriculum, which included sentences millions of students lack basic literacy and numeracy (in the local language) such as “It was the month skills. In recent assessments in Ghana and Malawi, of rains” and “There were black clouds in the sky.”

more than four-fifths of students at the end of grade 2

These severe shortfalls constitute a learning crisis.

were unable to read a single familiar word such

Although not all developing countries suffer from as the or cat (figure O.1). Even in Peru, a middle-such extreme shortfalls, many are far short of the levincome country, that share was half before the recent els they aspire to. According to leading international reforms. When grade 3 students in Nicaragua were assessments of literacy and numeracy—Progress in tested in 2011, only half could correctly solve 5 + 6.

International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and

In urban Pakistan in 2015, only three-fifths of grade 3

Trends in International Mathematics and Science students could correctly perform a subtraction such

Study (TIMSS)—the average student in low-income as 54 – 25, and in rural areas only just over two-fifths countries performs worse than 95 percent of the stucould.

dents in high-income countries, meaning that student

This slow start to learning means that even stuwould be singled out for remedial attention in a class dents who make it to the end of primary school do not in high-income countries. Many high-performing master basic competencies. In 2007, the most recent students in middle-income countries—young men year for which data are available, less than 50 percent and women who have risen to the top quarter of their cohorts—would rank in the bottom quarter in a income countries as well, with disadvantaged stuwealthier country. In Algeria, the Dominican Republic, dents greatly overrepresented among the low scorers.

and Kosovo, the test scores of students at the cutoff

Costa Rica and Qatar have the same average score on for the top quarter of students (the 75th percentile of one internationally benchmarked assessment (TIMSS the distribution of PISA test takers) are well below the

2015)—but the gap between the top and bottom quarcutofffor the bottom quarter of students (25th perters of students is 138 points in Qatar, compared with centile) of Organisation for Economic Co-operation

92 points in Costa Rica. The gap between the top and and Development (OECD) countries (figure O.2). Even bottom quarters in the United States is larger than in Costa Rica, a relatively strong performer in educathe gap in the median scores between Algeria and the tion, performance at the cutofffor the top quarter of

United States.

students is equal to performance at the cutofffor the

Students often learn little from year to year, but bottom quarter in Germany.

early learning deficits are magnified over time. StuThe learning crisis amplifies inequality: it severely dents who stay in school should be rewarded with hobbles the disadvantaged youth who most need the steady progress in learning, whatever disadvantages boost that a good education can offer. For students in they have in the beginning. And yet in Andhra Pradesh, many African countries, the differences by income

India, in 2010, low-performing students in grade 5 level are stark (figure O.3). In a recent assessment were no more likely to answer a grade 1 question cor- (Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Éducatifs de la rectly than those in grade 2. Even the average student

Confemen, PASEC, 2014) administered at the end of in grade 5 had about a 50 percent chance of answering the primary cycle, only 5 percent of girls in Camera grade 1 question correctly—compared with about 40 oon from the poorest quintile of households had percent in grade 2. In South Africa in the late 2000s, learned enough to continue school, compared with 76 the vast majority of students in grade 4 had mastered percent of girls from the richest quintile. Learning only the mathematics curriculum from grade 1; most gaps in several other countries—Benin, the Republic of those in grade 9 had mastered only the mathematof Congo, and Senegal—were nearly as wide. Large ics items from grade 5. In New Delhi, India, in 2015, gaps among learners afflict many high- and middle-the average grade 6 student performed at a grade 3 level in math. Even by grade 9, the average student had reached less than a grade 5 level, and the gap between the better and worse performers grew over time (figure O.4). In Peru and Vietnam—one of the lowest and one of the highest performers, respectively, on the PISA assessment of 15-year-old students—5-year-olds start out with similar math skills, but students in Vietnam learn much more for each year of schooling at the primary and lower secondary levels.

Although some countries are making progress on learning, their progress is typically slow. Even the middle-income countries that are catching up to the top performers are doing so very slowly. Indonesia has registered significant gains on PISA over the last 10–15 years. And yet, even assuming it can sustain its 2003–15 rate of improvement, Indonesia won’t reach the OECD average score in mathematics for another 48 years; in reading, for 73. For other countries, the wait could be even longer: based on current trends, it would take Tunisia over 180 years to reach the OECD average for math and Brazil over 260 years to reach the OECD average for reading. Moreover, these calculations are for countries where learning has improved. Across all countries participating in multiple rounds of PISA since 2003, the median gain in the national average score from one round to the next was zero.

Because of this slow progress, more than 60 perschool. In 2016, 61 million children of primary school cent of primary school children in developing counage—10 percent of all children in low- and lowertries still fail to achieve minimum proficiency in learnmiddle-income countries—were not in school, along ing, according to one benchmark. No single learning with 202 million children of secondary school age.

assessment has been administered in all countries, Children in fragile and conflict-affected countries but combining data from learning assessments in 95 accounted for just over a third of these, a disproporcountries makes it possible to establish a globally comtionate share. In the Syrian Arab Republic, which parable “minimum proficiency” threshold in math.

achieved universal primary enrollment in 2000, the

Below this threshold, students have not mastered even civil war had driven 1.8 million children out of school basic mathematical skills, whether making simple by 2013. Almost all developing countries still have computations with whole numbers, using fractions pockets of children from excluded social groups who or measurements, or interpreting simple bar graphs.

do not attend school. Poverty most consistently pre-In high-income countries, nearly all students—99 perdicts failing to complete schooling, but other characcent in Japan, 98 percent in Norway, 91 percent in Austeristics such as gender, disability, caste, and ethnicity tralia—achieve this level in primary school. But in also frequently contribute to school participation other parts of the world the share is much lower: just shortfalls (figure O.6).

7 percent in Mali, 30 percent in Nicaragua, 34 percent

But it’s not just poverty and conflict that keep in the Philippines, and 76 percent in Mexico. In low-children out of school; the learning crisis does, too.

income countries, 14 percent of students reach this

When poor parents perceive education to be of low level near the end of primary school, and in lower-quality, they are less willing to sacrifice to keep their middle-income countries 37 percent do (figure O.5).

children in school—a rational response, given the

Even in upper-middle-income countries only 61 perconstraints they face. Although parental perceptions cent reach this minimum proficiency.

of school quality depend on various factors, from the

The ultimate barrier to learning is no schooling at physical condition of schools to teacher punctuality, all—yet hundreds of millions of youth remain out of parents consistently cite student learning outcomes as a critical component. These outcomes can affect the foundational cognitive skills are essential, and behavior: holding student ability constant, students systems cannot bypass the challenges of developing in the Arab Republic of Egypt who attended poorerthem as they target higher-order skills.

performing schools were more likely to drop out.

Tackling the learning crisis and skills gaps requires

Learning shortfalls during the school years evendiagnosing their causes—both their immediate causes tually show up as weak skills in the workforce. Thus at the school level and their deeper systemic drivers.

the job skills debate reflects the learning crisis. Work

Given all the investments countries have made in skill shortages are often discussed in a way that is education, shortfalls in learning are discouraging. But disconnected from the debate on learning, but the one reason for them is that learning has not always two are parts of the same problem. Because education received the attention it should have. As a result, systems have not prepared workers adequately, many stakeholders lack actionable information about what enter the labor force with inadequate skills. Measuris going wrong in their schools and in the broader ing adult skills in the workplace is hard, but recent society, and so they cannot craft context-appropriate initiatives have assessed a range of skills in the adult responses to improve learning. Acting effectively populations of numerous countries. They found that requires first understanding how schools are failing even foundational skills such as literacy and numerlearners and how systems are failing schools.

acy are often low, let alone the more advanced skills. The problem isn’t just a lack of trained workers; it is a lack of readily trainable workers. Accordingly, many