Research

This report is based on a rapid survey of recently published materials, guidance documents and media commentary. It summarises what we know and understand about the impacts of the prolonged school closures that followed the spread of Covid-19 and the context of school reopening and plans for learning recovery.

A growing concern for education policymakers is how to improve teaching and learning quality at scale, and how to strengthen delivery systems to achieve this. IIEP-UNESCO and Education Development Trust see the ‘middle tier’ of education systems as a potential solution to this challenge. In a new research collaboration, we are investigating the potential of middle tier professionals – district supervisors, pedagogical coaches and teacher mentors – to act as catalysts for change in local school reforms. This is a neglected area of research and the new work will look at six case studies of effective or promising practice from around the world, in which the middle tier is playing a key role in scaling effective teaching and learning reforms.

Over the past two years, we have conducted the first two stages of a research project looking at the effectiveness of an education assessment centre and its ability to predict teacher effectiveness. Following our first report published in 2020, we have now published an update report for 2021, which accounts for the additional data we have gathered on our Future Teaching Scholars’ later classroom performance.

Around the world, young people face considerable challenges. Even before the disruption of the Covid-19 crisis, policymakers were seeking to respond to rapid technological advances, climate change and – in some countries – an ageing population and workforce. While children and young people worldwide generally have high aspirations and ambitions for their futures, evidence shows that they often face problematic and protracted transitions into work. In this context, new pathways from school to employment are needed. In this paper, we review extensive evidence to provide guidance on how children and young people can be best prepared to succeed in their school-to-work transitions, both now and in the future.

Globally, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced persons. Among these are 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are children. Effective teacher management is key to ensuring inclusive, equitable, quality education for these young people, and teachers constitute the most important factor affecting student learning. In crisis and displacement situations, the role of teachers is particularly significant: they are sometimes the only resource available to students. This report investigates teacher management in refugee contexts in Ethiopia, and is the first in a series of country reports. It contributes to a burgeoning body of evidence about teachers in refugee contexts and aims to provide policy guidance to support ministries of education.

Our new report about systems thinking and its place in education transformation reflects on key published literature and on specific outputs from our own programme of research which has placed emphasis on system reform over the past five years. The work we do at Education Development Trust brings us into direct contact with education systems, and their governments. We are tasked with helping to solve intractable educational challenges. Systems thinking is a vital component part of what we do, how we understand the nature of the issues and how we support change.

Effective careers advice is impossible without good quality labour market information. Careers professionals and advisers, the people whose job it is to offer and support careers advice in the community or in schools, are key to success. Vital to their work is access and familiarity with a robust and sophisticated body of intelligence about the labour market.

This report examines four not-for-profit school chains, run by non-governmental organisations in low-income contexts. These are Fe y Alegría, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (better known by its acronym BRAC), Gyan Shala and Zambia Open Community Schools.

London schools continue to constitute an extraordinary ‘success story’. By common consent, the government school system in London achieves extremely good results compared to the rest of England, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds do particularly well.

This report captures what might be learnt from a selection of the world’s most interesting examples of technology-assisted in-service professional development in lower-income countries and from wider reflections about the potential of technology to enhance the professional learning of teachers.

Education Development Trust and IIEP UNESCO joined forces to conduct a much-needed review of the main aspects of management relating to teachers of refugees – from recruitment to certification and professional development as well as incentives and retention.

Vietnam’s government schools have attracted a great deal of international attention since the publication of the 2012 PISA student tests: Vietnamese students performed particularly well in science, ranking eighth globally out of 65 participating jurisdictions; Vietnam maintained this position in 2015. This report investigates what lies behind Vietnam's learning success.