plan4learning

Top picks in news, views, and research

2016 marked the public launch of the IIEP Learning Portal, our site dedicated to assisting education planners and other stakeholders in their efforts to improve learning outcomes around the world. Read on to discover the IIEP Learning Portal’s highlights from the news, controversies, blogs, and research covered in 2016.

Over the past twelve months, the IIEP Learning Portal team has been watching the news and scouring the internet for new research on quality education, adding almost 250 new resources to the Learning Portal library, along with debates, an international e-forum, and new content on a wide range of topics. We also invited some two dozen contributors to share their experiences and views via the Learning Portal blog.

While we cannot do justice to the wide range of interesting information published on quality education and learning outcomes in 2016, here are some of the highlights from the past year.
 

Top Blogs

The IIEP Learning Portal blog accomplished something truly unusual this year—publishing a matching pair of blog posts raising youth concerns, as well as the government’s direct response, on issues of quality education in Sierra Leone. Among other things, the government promised to address issues of classroom overcrowding, low teacher qualifications and absenteeism, and extortion of students. Also demonstrating the power of young people to contribute to the debate on education quality is a post on Chile’s Education Quality Assurance Agency, which was created in response to student protests. Take a look at the Learning Portal blog for more posts on a range of topics and places, from Kenya to Kazakhstan!

Top Controversy

The issue of private schooling was explosive in 2016, with particular focus on Uganda’s struggles to ensure quality education from private providers. The Learning Portal featured contrasting interviews with two leaders of thought on the issue of education privatization in developing countries, through the debate Private or Public: Does the proliferation of low-fee/low-cost private schools improve or impede learning for all?, which sparked discussions over email and on social media.

Top Reports and Research

In case you somehow missed it, the biggest news in international education research in 2016 was the release of the first Global Education Monitoring report, with the mission of tracking progress towards the ten SDG global education targets. We also summarized recent research to tell you about what works best to improve learning outcomes.

Here are some other reports and research publications from 2016 that you won’t want to miss:

• How Shanghai Does It: Insights and Lessons from the Highest Ranking Education System in the World showcases many of the strengths of Shanghai’s system but leaves some questions unanswered.
• Literacy Boost in Rwanda: Impact Evaluation of a Two-Year Randomized Control Trial gives compelling evidence for the benefits of a “life-wide” approach to education.
• Miradas sobre la Educación en Iberoamérica demonstrates the continued importance of regional initiatives even in an era of global education targets.
• Millions learning: scaling up quality education in developing countries analyses 14 learning interventions that have been successfully scaled up in diverse contexts around the world.
• The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a changing world sets out a funding plan for eliminating the skills gap between lower-income and high-income countries.

Top News and Views

How to measure learning, who should measure it, and how to use the resulting data was the focus of a great deal of discussion in 2016, including debates around finalizing the SDG4 indicators. PISA and TIMSS released data from the latest round of their large-scale learning assessments, while regional and citizen-led assessment efforts continued in many countries. National news coverage from around the world also showed increased attention to quality education from high-level leaders and ongoing debates around how to fund the SDG4 targets, including some innovative ideas.

Keep an eye out on the Learning Portal for more interesting news and research to come in 2017! To receive free weekly e-mail updates from the IIEP Learning Portal, subscribe at this link. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter. Happy New Year!