Education

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a 9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling. For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the 2018 World Development Report (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to Learning Poverty, and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world.

However, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the lives of young children, students, and youth. The disruption of societies and economies caused by the pandemic has aggravated the already existing global education crisis and impacting education in unprecedented ways.

Among its many dramatic disruptions, the pandemic has led to the worst crisis in education of the last century.  Globally, between February 2020 and February 2022, education systems were fully closed for in-person learning for 141 days on average. In South Asia and Latin America & the Caribbean, closures lasted 273 and 225 days, respectively.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, this global learning crisis was stark. The learning poverty indicator, created by the World Bank and UNESCO Institute of Statistics and launched in 2019, gives a simple but sobering measure of the magnitude of this learning crisis: the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text. 

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in Learning Poverty – already 57% before the pandemic – could potentially reach 70% given the long school closures and the wide digital divide that hindered the effectiveness of remote learning during school closures, putting the SDG 4  targets in jeopardy. One billion children saw their in-person education interrupted for more than a year.  For many, the interruption was for 2 years.  

Children and youth in most countries suffered major learning losses during the pandemic. Rigorous empirical evidence from various countries, including low-, middle-, and high-income contexts across regions, reveals very steep losses. School closures and ineffective remote learning caused students to miss out on learning and to also forget what they had learned: on average, for every 30 days of school closures, students lost about 32 days of learning.

The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss. 

COVID-19 created an inequality catastrophe. Almost all countries provided some form of remote education during school closures, but there was high inequality in access and uptake between and within countries. Children from disadvantaged households were less likely to benefit from remote learning than their peers, often due to a lack of electricity, connectivity, devices, and caregiver support. Girls, students with disabilities, and the youngest children also faced significant barriers to engaging in remote learning. Overall, at least a third of the world’s schoolchildren – 463 million globally – were unable to access remote learning during school closures.

Additionally, children’s mental health has been negatively affected, while risks of violence, child marriage and child labor are also increasing.  The situation is more dire for girls, who are more vulnerable to violence, child marriage, and becoming pregnant. Vulnerable groups such as children with disabilities, ethnic minorities, refugees, and displaced populations are also less likely to return to school post-crisis.

School disruptions particularly affected the youngest children. Early childhood education was closed the longest in many countries, with limited or no support for remote learning. 

In addition to learning losses, schooling disruptions have also exacerbated disparities in nutrition, health and stimulation, and access to essential social protection and psychosocial services. Millions more children have been put at risk of being pushed into child labor, early marriage, and of leaving school altogether.

Adding to these challenges is the negative impact of the unprecedented global economic contraction on family incomes, which increases the risk of school dropouts, and results in the contraction of government budgets and strains on public education spending.

Youth have also suffered a loss in human capital in terms of both skills and jobs. In many countries, these declines in youth employment were more than twice as large as the declines in adult employment. As a result, this generation of students, and especially the more disadvantaged, may never achieve their full education and earnings potential.

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Recovery Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and accelerate progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2023

The World Bank’s global education strategy is focused on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. We envision a world in which all countries prepare all their children and youth to succeed as citizens and have the tools to participate in their country’s development.

By 2030, our target is to halve Learning Poverty – the share of 10-year-old children around the world who cannot read and understand a simple text. We are working toward the target by helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. Throughout all education levels – from early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

We work directly with governments, providing technical assistance, loans, and grants. We help countries share and apply innovative solutions to education challenges, focusing on systemic reform throughout the education cycle.

World Bank support to countries covers the entire learning cycle to support resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $24 billion in 95 countries, including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise about 60% of the education portfolio. In the last three fiscal years (FY 20-22), our lending for education has doubled compared to the preceding 10 years.

Our portfolio encompasses the whole learning cycle.  The investment in early childhood education has increased dramatically and now accounts for 11% of our portfolio.  About 25% of our portfolio is in FCV settings.

World Bank projects reach at least 432 million students and 18 million teachers – one-third of students and nearly a quarter of teachers in low- and middle-income countries.

We are also the largest implementing agency of the Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) grants for low-income countries, managing 55% of GPE’s portfolio at the country level ($1.9 billion).

Strategic Approach to Education

Our vision for the future is that learning should happen with joy, purpose, and rigor for everyone, everywhere. This vision should guide today’s investments and policy reforms so that countries can lay the foundations for effective, equitable, and resilient education systems.

To guide our policy advisory and operational support to countries, we focus on policy actions that are needed to accelerate learning and that characterize the way many successful systems operate. These are presented within five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system that underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach: learners, teachers, learning resources, schools, and system management.

1. Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
2. Teachers at all levels are effective and valued;
3. Classrooms are equipped for learning;
4. Schools are safe and inclusive spaces; and
5. Education systems are well managed.

Our Principles

• We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children. Education services from preschool to primary, secondary education, and beyond to university and other tertiary education, need to be aligned and consistent. Thus, we take an integrated approach to the education system to ensure learning throughout the life cycle.
• We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education. Realizing true universal access requires equality of opportunity. We must meet the educational needs of children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas, those in marginalized and rural communities, girls and women, displaced populations, students with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups. Our approach is inclusive and focused. We understand the needs of governments and work with them to ensure that education works for everyone.
• We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements. Metrics are critical to identifying regions and schools that are achieving results, recognizing good practices, and learning what works. We invest in developing global public goods such as the Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) to measure the key drivers of learning outcomes in basic education in a cost-effective manner (building on SABER, SDI, and TEACH) and work with countries to improve their data systems.  
• We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all. As in the case of all other public resources, money allocated to education must be adequate and spent efficiently. We want to strengthen financing tied to results.  Funds need to be appropriately directed and spent smartly across regions and schools, using data and evidence of how processes are being followed and the impact of interventions to guide improvements. Nearly 40% of our operations use some results-based financing schemes.
• We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives. The use of EdTech should be guided by five principles: a clear purpose and focus on educational objectives; reaching all learners; empowering teachers; engaging an ecosystem of partners; and rigorously and routinely using data to learn what strategies, policies, and programs are effective to maximize student learning.   

Tackling the Global Learning Crisis and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Even before COVID-19, the world was facing a learning and skills crisis. COVID-19 deepened this crisis. School closures have led to huge learning losses, and without urgent policy action, today’s students could lose 10% of their future average annual earnings. Beyond reduced incomes, learning losses will lead to lower productivity, greater inequality, and increased risks of social unrest for decades to come. These trends can be reversed if countries act quickly, decisively, and with adequate resources, guided by evidence on what works.

The World Bank responded to the pandemic immediately, ramping up its support to countries through a variety of different channels and on different priority interventions.  

Our operational and policy support is not just responding to the crisis, but is building forward better so that systems use this window of opportunity to shape more resilient systems that are better prepared to cope with future shocks, as well as more equitable systems that ensure opportunities for all. Our operations are helping countries re-enroll and retain students in school, measure learning losses, and implement evidence-based pedagogical approaches for accelerating learning, including targeted instruction and self-guided learning.

Laying the groundwork for the future, now

The predicted increase in Learning Poverty is a simulation, not a forecast. Learning losses can be minimized if urgent action is taken now.

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, confronting the emergency and supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms.  Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic, and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning. In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact.

Evidence-based policy responses at scale are crucial to recover and accelerate learning.  The RAPID framework for learning recovery can provide this approach. Its five elements are focused on ensuring that all children and youth are in school and building the foundational skills that they will need for success in school and beyond:

• Reach every child and keep them in school
• Assess learning levels regularly
• Prioritize teaching the fundamentals
• Increase the efficiency of instruction including through catch-up learning
• Develop psychosocial health and well-being

Without prompt action, there is a serious risk that the learning losses suffered during the pandemic could become permanent.  But countries that adopt these five elements – tailored to their own contexts – can quickly make up the losses.

Education technology can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/TV/Online learning resources (which is here to stay); and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity to reimagine education in bold ways. The World Bank is committed to supporting countries during these challenging times.  Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth. We not only owe it to them – in their minds rest our future.

Global Initiatives

At the global level, the World Bank promotes cross-regional and cross-sectoral knowledge; fosters in-depth technical knowledge and teams of experts through Global Solutions Groups and Thematic Groups; and incubates ideas, programs, and partnerships – including with multilateral, bilateral, foundations and with civil society organizations (CSOs) – in strategic areas of knowledge, advisory, and operational support.

Accelerating Improvements:

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the Accelerator Program works with a set of ‘Accelerator’ countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation.

Universalizing Foundational Literacy:

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – the most fundamental of which is literacy – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The Literacy Policy Package (LPP) includes near-term interventions of the education approach that successful countries have followed to help all children in classrooms become literate today. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Strengthening Measurement Systems:

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) 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 by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics. GEPD:

1. Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system;
2. Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in seven education systems – Ethiopia, Jordan, Madagascar, Niger, Peru, Sierra Leone and Rwanda – and preparation is ongoing in eight more countries with expected completion by the end of 2024.

(2) Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP): a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to aid those working toward better assessment for better learning. LeAP is currently supported by the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) Trust Fund program.

Building & Synthesizing Evidence:

Filling gaps on what works to improve learning and drawing out lessons to inform policy and implementation.

Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP): The GEEAP, co-convened by the World Bank, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, brings together a diverse group of leading researchers and practitioners to provide guidance for policymakers. It is chaired by Professor Kwame Akyeampong of The Open University and Dr. Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham.

• The first GEEAP report focused on cost-effective policies to improve education access and foundational learning;
• The second report offers guidance on how to reverse the devastating learning losses caused by the pandemic.

Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF): In the past five years, the SIEF, a multi-donor trust fund focused on building evidence in the human development sectors, has supported 45 randomized control trials (with total funding of nearly US$20 million) that test out different approaches for improving education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. To ensure the findings make a difference, SIEF has also invested in disseminating this evidence and building capacity of government staff, local researchers, and local journalists to help them critically appraise education evidence.

Supporting Successful Teachers:

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

The Global Platform for Successful Teachers has two main instruments: global public goods that support the implementation of the key principles, and operations that accompany governments in implementing successful teacher policies. Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 100 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Two examples of Global Public Goods created as part of the Platform are: 

• Teach: A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries, which is available in 12 languages. Since Teach launched in 2019, it has been applied in 36 countries, reaching almost 200,000 students.
• Coach: The World Bank’s program focused on accelerating student learning by improving in-service teacher professional development (TPD) around the world. While Teach helps identify teachers’ professional development needs, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching.

Supporting Education Finance Systems:

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize more resources and improve the equity and efficiency of sector spending.

The Global Education Finance Platform (GEFP) aims to support the strengthening of country financing systems to mobilize more resources and improve the equity and efficiency of education spending, by bringing together various partners to work on the development of sustainable financing strategies, better public financial management and stronger data and monitoring systems for education financing.

Our Work in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts:

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio of US$23.6 billion.

As our support continues to grow to face the more numerous and longer-lasting crises (including those induced by climate emergencies), investments will be guided by our recent White Paper. The paper states that education is especially crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term. It outlines our proposed way forward for keeping children safe and learning in these most difficult contexts, following the pillars of the WBG Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence.

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2023

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. 

In March 2022, the World Bank approved its first Multiphase Programmatic Approach (MPA) in the education sector globally, in support of an eight-year program that addresses key education challenges in West Bank and Gaza. With the approved US$20 million from an expected overall envelope of US$60 million, the “Supporting an Education Reform Agenda for improving Teaching, Assessment and Career Pathways” Program (SERATAC, which means your life journey or pathway in Arabic) aims to improve education outcomes of primary and secondary students and increase student pathways leading to tertiary education.

The US$150 million Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes (GALOP) project is supporting a series of interventions to address the impacts of the pandemic on education and accelerate learning, including: (1) Scaling targeted instruction: The project is supporting a remedial program that provides instruction aligned to student learning needs by grouping students by proficiency. The operation helped to train 70,000 teachers and produced new teaching and learning materials. (2) Self-guided learning: The program supported the distribution of pre-loaded tablets for self-guided learning for students with special education needs. (3) E-learning: The EdModo Ghana learning management system serves as a platform for distance and hybrid learning, and ongoing communication between students, parents, and teachers.

The US$500 million Gujarat Outcomes for Accelerated Learning (GOAL) project is supporting efforts to improve education outcomes through decentralized planning and management, improved teacher capacity, and measures to address the impacts of the pandemic on learning. Improved classroom assessments: The project is supporting the use of tablet-enabled classroom assessments that allow for immediate access to learning gap data at a student- and school-level, and informing remedial programs. Teacher capacity: The project is strengthening needs-based teacher training, instituting teacher performance measures, and supporting DIKSHA, a platform that offers online training to more than 1.5 million registered teachers.

In Colombia, a loan for US$80 million, approved in March 2022, will help improve pedagogical practices and the management of Colombia’s education sector to improve learning achievements and strengthen socio-emotional learning. Coordination among teachers, principals, and local government representatives will be strengthened to improve the basic skills of the most vulnerable preschool and secondary-school students. Specifically, this loan will support programs that are key to guaranteeing a timely, effective post-pandemic response in education. These programs include actions for the effective use of learning assessments, improvements in pedagogical practices, optimization of school management practices, coordination between educational institutions and local governments, and the strengthening of the School Meal Program.

The US$510 million Transforming Secondary Education for Results (TSER) program has been supporting Bangladesh Ministry of Education provide quality education to 13 million students from grades 6-12 since December 2017. Between 2018 and 2019, the program helped improve access through targeted stipends and helped generate significant improvements in student learning across English, Math, and Bangla in Grades 6, 8, and 10 (for instance, Bangla reading proficiency increased by 10% among grade 8 students). It also helped deliver two rounds of National Assessments for tracking learning outcomes and supported system reforms in curriculum, grants management, and system monitoring.  When schools closed in March 2020 due to COVID-19, the TSER program helped the government of Bangladesh minimize irreversible loss of learning and retention. It provided two rounds of stipends and tuition fees to 2.5 million secondary students (900,000 boys and 1.6 million girls) aged 11-17 and generated timely evidence on the take-up of TV-based learning. It provided data on the constraints faced by adolescent girls and boys and undertook direct outreach to vulnerable students to encourage them to stay engaged in schooling. This has helped improve adolescent engagement in learning and aspirations, especially for girls. The program has also provided online training to more than 1,600 secondary teachers leading to improvements in their knowledge, skills, and reduction in burnout.

The Bank’s Euro 143.8 million (US Dollar 160 million equivalent) Safe Schooling and Distance Education Project loan to the Republic of Turkey is enhancing the capacity of the education system to provide e-learning equitably to school-age children during and following the COVID-19 pandemic and future shocks.  The project consists of three components: 1) Emergency Connectivity and IT Infrastructure for Education in Emergencies, which finances the expansion of the country’s e-learning platform; 2) Digital Content for Safety and Quality, which finances goods, services, consultants, training and small refurbishments to support the distance education content; and 3) Institutional Capacity for Education Technology Resilience, which will strengthen capacity for the coordination, management, monitoring and evaluation of the Project and for the continued delivery of safe and equitable digital education services.  The project includes equity interventions for students most vulnerable to learning loss due to COVID-19 school closures.  Activities to address gender-based distance education needs and risk mitigation are included, and its monitoring indicators are disaggregated by gender. In addition, it will increase the weekly use of the online distance education platform to almost 12 million K-12 students and provide certified on-line training to more than 900,000 teachers.

In Lao PDR, in 2011-12, only 6% of 3-5-year-olds from the poorest quintile were on track in literacy and numeracy. The IDA-funded Early Childhood Education (ECE) Project (2014-2020), covering 32,000 3-5-year-olds in 22 target districts in Lao PDR, is changing this. As a result of the project, nearly 70% of children have benefitted from access to ECE programs in target villages, and nearly 82% teachers have benefited from training and feedback based upon classroom observations. Evaluations suggest significant gains in student enrollment, nutritional outcomes and learning levels due to project interventions.

The US$450 million Improving Early Childhood Development Outcomes in Rural Morocco project, approved in 2021, is supporting critical interventions to boost access to quality early childhood development programs for rural populations, encompassing education, health, and nutrition services. The project is creating and equipping preschools in select rural areas, with a target to enroll an additional 100,000 children in 6,000 new preschool units; over 4,100 preschool educators have already been recruited and trained on appropriate pedagogical practices; to promote stimulation and early learning during COVID-19 closures, a new TV program was broadcast to promote home-based playful learning.

The Higher Education Quality Improvement Project in Peru supported the government’s National Education Project 2021, which adopted a strategy to increase the quality and relevance of tertiary education by creating a higher education quality assurance system (HEQAS) providing an assurance framework across basic and higher education levels. The project provided support to 135 higher education institutions, of which 20 were from among the country’s 50 universities and 115 were from among the country’s 370 public institutes.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in Uzbekistan had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project, by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

Since 2014, the Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence (ACE) Program has become synonymous with delivering quality and relevant post-graduate education that meets the demand for skills in priority fields. Between 2014 and 2020, the International Development Association (IDA) has invested over US$580 million to support more than 70 centers in 20 countries in West, Central, East, and Southern Africa. This supported over 14,000 Masters and PhD students in agriculture, health, and other sciences. The program continues to expand across Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on improving teaching and learning, expanding access, and ensuring sustainability.

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2023

The Power of Partnerships

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bi-laterals, and other multilateral organizations. These collaborations are funded by other strategic partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, and UNESCO. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the Coalition for Foundational Learning to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning.  The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning, a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

UNESCO & UNICEF:  Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a Learning Data Compact, a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS):  Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education. Together, UIS and the World Bank launched the Learning Poverty indicator.

FCDO and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

UNICEF, UNESCO, & GPE: Continuous and Accelerated Learning in Response to COVID-19

Through a consortium with UNICEF and UNESCO, supported by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the World Bank is providing greater support to teachers for accelerated instruction; using EdTech to support continuity of learning; and getting reading, learning, and play materials into homes. 

Bringing together global funding to maximize results

The World Bank has launched two Trust Funds to streamline partner investments that support operations and amplify impact. The two funds will be complementary – covering lifelong learning. Beyond these two trust funds, the World Bank receives support through partner-specific trust funds.

The Foundational Learning Compact (FLC):

A new umbrella trust fund designed to align partnerships, financing, and technical support around a few specific and measurable education outcome indicators, increasing Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS) (a metric which combines quantity and quality of schooling), and decreasing Learning Poverty. The FLC’s scope covers Early Childhood (including the Early Learning Partnership), Primary Education, and Secondary Education. It is designed around three pillars (measurement, policy, and knowledge and implementation capacity-building) with an emphasis on cross-cutting themes (financing; fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV); gender; inclusion; and technology).

Master Card Foundation: Tertiary Education and Skills (TES):

The Tertiary Education and Skills (TES) global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities.  TES will help to align support for development of global public goods and co-financing of implementation grants around tertiary education and skills training of the current or imminent workforce.

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2023