## What the Pandemic Taught

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### Pandemic impact on schooling and learning
- More than 1.6 billion children across 180 countries were out of school at the height of the pandemic.
- The COVID-19 pandemic further arrested learning progress in many low- and middle-income countries.
- Historical disruptions illustrate long-term effects: an earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 disrupted schooling for 14 weeks; four years later, young children most affected performed significantly worse on learning assessments.
- Some countries closed schools for similar durations during COVID-19 (Sierra Leone: 14 weeks); in other cases closures were much longer (Uganda and the Philippines: school disruptions lasted nearly a full two years).

### Pre-pandemic context: enrollment vs learning
- Enrollment has risen to record highs: the average adult had completed 7.6 years of school in 2010, more than double the average of 3.2 years in 1950, based on data from 164 countries.
- Primary school enrollment rates in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 80 percent to 92.3 percent in the past decade.
- Despite rising enrollment, learning levels have improved little in many parts of the world.

### Evidence on remote learning effectiveness
- Many remote-learning efforts during the pandemic (radio, TV) yielded limited learning gains; research in Brazil, India, The Netherlands, and South Africa revealed learning losses so large that very little was learned during school closures.
- A few randomized evaluations in Kenya and Sierra Leone found limited effects of various remote learning interventions.
- Some low-tech remote approaches were effective:
  - Botswana experiment: weekly text messages coupled with phone call tutorials to parents and primary school children improved learning.
  - Program details: covered foundational numeracy concepts; comprised weekly 20-minute tutorials over the course of eight weeks.
  - Cost-effectiveness: yielded the equivalent of over one year of high-quality instruction for every $100 spent.
  - Text messages alone were not effective; some level of live, direct instruction via the phone was essential.
- Chart 2 (experimental results from Botswana) reports student performance gains in solving math problems involving place value and fractions in terms of standard deviation gains with values including: 0.024, 0.009, 0.047, 0.121, 0.114, 0.075, 0.070, 0.026, 0.029, 0.076, 0.098, 0.093, and a baseline range shown from -0.10 to 0.20 in the figure note.

### Why the low-tech targeted approach worked
- Access considerations:
  - In low- and middle-income countries, 70 to 90 percent of households own at least one mobile phone.
  - Only 15 to 60 percent of households have internet access.
  - Reliance on internet-dependent technology may not reach many households; mobile-phone-based, low-tech approaches can reach the most marginalized and do so at scale.
- Pedagogical considerations:
  - Targeted instruction to each child’s learning level (assess, regroup by level, teach at the right level) is highly cost-effective.
  - Example diagnostic targeting: pose a weekly problem (e.g., single-digit addition 4+5); if mastered, move to harder topics (e.g., subtraction 7–3); if not, continue with prior level.
  - In Botswana fewer than 10 percent of grade 5 students have mastered two-digit division; yet teachers often teach grade-level curricula regardless of student mastery and students are promoted automatically—creating persistent mismatches between curriculum and competence.
- Delivery innovations:
  - One-on-one phone tutorials enabled highly targeted instruction beyond group settings.
  - Tutoring evidence supports effectiveness, though traditional tutoring has been expensive; the Botswana model demonstrates inexpensive tutoring at scale in low- and middle-income contexts.
  - Similar approaches have shown effectiveness in Bangladesh and Nepal.
  - An ongoing randomized trial across five countries (India, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, Uganda) is testing adaptability and scalability; delivery modes in the multicountry study include NGOs and government teachers.

### Scalable models and prior evidence
- “Teaching at the right level” (TaRL) model pioneered by Pratham and evaluated by J-PAL has been adapted for over 60 million children with structures such as frequent diagnostic testing and menus of activities for each level.
- In Botswana, a coalition including the Ministry of Basic Education, the Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture Development, the US Agency for International Development, UNICEF, TaRL Africa, and Youth Impact had delivered TaRL to more than 20 percent of primary schools before the pandemic.
- Newer low-cost tutoring models emerged during COVID-19 in high-income settings (Italy: university student volunteers providing online tutoring; Spain: math teachers offering online after-school tutoring).

### Policy recommendations and lessons learned
- The most important priority: keep schools fully open.
- Other effective reforms include:
  - Assessing student learning to guide and track progress and to enable teaching at the right level.
  - Implementing structured pedagogy.
  - Providing additional instructional support such as tutors.
- Lessons from pandemic-era innovations:
  - Leverage existing technology where infrastructure exists (for example, adaptive software).
  - Where internet infrastructure is limited, leverage high-access mobile-phone-based instruction.
  - Engage parents directly as instructional partners—especially effective when interventions focus on foundational skills and are designed to be brief to enable high engagement and avoid crowding out employment.

### Concluding assessment
- COVID-19 devastated education systems worldwide, but recovery of learning losses is still possible if action is taken now.
- Returning to “business as usual” risks perpetuating the prior learning crisis; the moment calls for reforming education systems to prioritize and enable learning for all.

*Source: Noam Angrist, “What the Pandemic Taught,” Finance & Development, June 2022.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2022/june/angrist.pdf_