African governments harness education data to reverse learning crisis

LONDON, May 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — African education leaders travelling to London to showcase NewGlobe-supported transformational public educational programs at the prestigious Education World Forum (EWF), May 8 – 10.

Harnessing education data to drive learning transformation will be a key takeaway for the global education community at EWF, the biggest gathering of education ministers in the world.

They face what World Bank Education Director, Jaime Saavedra, calls, “the most serious crisis in education in 100 years.”

Data from the World Bank shows global Learning Poverty – defined as the percentage of 10-year-olds unable to read a simple sentence – in low and middle-income countries has increased from 50% to 70% while in Sub-Saharan Africa it is 90%.

Despite such enormous challenges, NewGlobe-supported programs in Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, and Manipur (India) are leading the way in the use of education data-led solutions to Learning Poverty.

The success stories of the EKOEXCEL, EdoBEST, BayelsaPRIME, KwaraLEARN, Bridge Liberia, RwandaEQUIP, and STAR Education programs will be on display at EWF. All are seeing huge improvements in learning outcomes.

Underpinning their success is a data-driven structured pedagogy, independently assessed in Kenya in a study led by Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Michael Kremer. It confirmed learning gains among the “largest ever measured in international education.”

The EKOEXCEL program in Lagos State, Nigeria is an exemplary case of using data-driven solutions to reverse Learning Poverty. One of the program’s initiatives, the ‘Situation Room’ will be on display at EWF.

The Situation Room visualizes data from all 1012 primary schools in Lagos State, offering powerful insights. Using NewGlobe’s Spotlight software, gives education leaders access to key data in real time – empowering the government to make informed interventions.

Lagos State Education Commissioner, Folashade Adefisayo said:

“If there are any problems in schools, we are able to track them, so people going there to solve the problem have a lot of data in their hands; they would know how many children and teachers there are, whether the head teacher is at school and whether students are having learning difficulties in a subject.”

Within eight weeks of EKOEXCEL’s launch, literacy learning rates measured three times faster, and numeracy two times faster, than schools not in the program.

EWF promises to inspire governments to harness education data to reshape education and overcome Learning Poverty, with visionary African governments leading.

For additional information, contact: marek.pruszewicz@newglobe.education

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