were 0.24 standard deviations behind unaffected children and the average annual gain is only .15. The study also finds that, due to government and international relief efforts, affected households were no worse off economically than unaffected households (in terms of wealth, consumption, or infrastructure), so the learning affects are not consequences of economic hardships.

In this Insight Note, we present a set of principles shared by varied approaches that have all succeeded in improving foundational learning in developing countries. These approaches were not explicitly designed with this list of principles in mind; rather, the principles emerged through analysis and synthesis of successful approaches. We call such efforts ALIGNS approaches, which stands for Aligning Levels of Instruction with Goals and the Needs of Students. ALIGNS approaches take many forms, ranging from large-scale policy and curricular reforms to in-school or after-school remedial programmes. In this note, we describe the principles that ALIGNS approaches have in common (Section I); review interdisciplinary evidence on why aligning instruction with children’s learning levels improves learning (Section II); present three cases from across the spectrum of approaches and illustrate how each embodies the ALIGNS principles (Section III); and provide a longer (though not exhaustive) table of programmes that illustrates the range of possible approaches to implementing ALIGNS principles and describes the design features across which they vary (Table 1).

Global education goals have many aims, among them universal basic schooling, universal literacy and numeracy, and gender equality. We use unique, nationally representative data on adult learning outcomes to examine the link between schooling and literacy in ten low- and middle-income countries. We simulate scenarios of increasing school grade attainment, increasing learning per year, and achieving gender equality, and examine learning outcomes in each. In six of the ten countries only about half or less of younger adults (aged 18-37) with primary completion as their highest schooling can read a few sentences without help. Simulations show that achieving universal primary completion would still leave many adults functionally illiterate: in India nearly a third of adults would still be unable to read. Our simulations further show that, while achieving equality of schooling attainment would produce improvements in women’s literacy, in many countries this would still leave a third of women still unable to read. Gender equality of learning per year produces very little gain as, once in school, girls’ learning nearly matches that of boys. In nearly all countries steepening the learning profiles for all students to the best-performing of the ten countries would lead to greater gains in literacy for women than achieving gender equality in both schooling and learning. Achieving learning for all will require both eliminating gender gaps but also improving how much is learned while in school.

In many low- and middle-income countries that have achieved significant gains in learning outcomes, higher income and resources and greater knowledge of what to do to achieve learning cannot explain the differences in outcomes relative to lower performing countries. Such cases yield complex questions of “how” and “why” success was achieved. In this paper, I propose a conceptual framework for understanding drivers of education system performance and use it to argue that consensus-based commitment to the purpose of learning is a critical missing link to addressing the learning crisis. I then apply the conceptual framework to examples of successful system improvements. Finally, I propose efforts that can foster commitment to the purpose of learning in education systems.

In recent decades, education systems in most low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) have rapidly expanded access to schooling, but learning has lagged behind. There are many reasons for low learning in LMICs. Proximate determinants (such as insufficient financing or poor school management) receive much attention, but focus on these often ignores underlying system drivers. In this paper, we use a systems approach to describe underlying system dynamics that drive learning outcomes. To do so, we first describe the RISE education systems framework and then apply it to two cases. In the case of Sobral, Brazil, the systems framework illustrates how a coherent package of reforms, improving upon multiple system components, produced positive outcomes. In the case of Indonesia, a reform that increased teacher pay, but did not change underlying system dynamics, had no impact on learning. The paper shows how a systems approach can help to understand success, diagnose failure, and inform action to bring about improvements to children's learning.