A new solution to address the global education crisis: harnessing the power of data

Einstein’s famous statement that Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results should guide us in these times of unprecedented global crisis. The end of 2021 and the start of 2022 seems like a replay of the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 when the world became aware of a virus that spread everywhere at incredible speed, suddenly exposing the reality of our interconnected world. Over these past two years we have become used to seeing scientists standing next to politicians, presenting the data behind governments’ tough decisions affecting people’s lives and livelihoods. We have become aware of the importance and power of data that inform governments’ decision making and support collective acceptance of these decisions without which they could not be implemented. Isn’t it time to consider a similar approach to address the education crisis?  

At the peak of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 around 90% of schools in the world were closed, affecting more than 1.6 billion learners. Almost 2 years on, schools remain closed for millions of children, with millions more at risk of never returning to education in the wake of another wave of the pandemic. The recent report The State of the Global Education Crisis: a Path to Recovery from World Bank, Unicef and Unesco provides comprehensive evidence of the scale and depth of this crisis. It shows how the pandemic has revealed and exacerbated the stark inequalities in access to education with a massive impact on children’s learning, stating that:

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in Learning Poverty – already 50% before the pandemic – will rise sharply, potentially up to 70 %, given the long school closures and the varying quality and effectiveness of remote learning. 

The prolonged school closures in so many countries have provided a unique global experiment in the use of technology in education as most countries have offered remote learning opportunities for learners as an immediate response to the crisis. While this approach was a response to an unprecedented crisis for which governments were not prepared, it has also shown the limits of remote learning: the report also highlights that the quality and reach of such initiatives varied greatly, and they were at best partial substitutes for in-person learning. 

Whereas there is still a lack of evidence around the best use of technology for learning, we could learn from one of the key insights from the Education in Emergency literature reviewed as part of the Learning Passport, a partnership between the University of Cambridge, Unicef and Microsoft: the most powerful uses of digital technology centre around education management, coordination and communication, rather than delivery of learning materials. It therefore comes as no surprise that the report puts addressing the learning data crisis as the first step into learning recovery: data provides the evidence needed to define and understand a problem which is always the first step to design an effective solution, even if it sometimes feels like a waste of precious time, particularly in period of crisis.

At Cambridge Partnership for Education we strongly advocate the importance of data to inform an evidence-based approach to education reform, including recently at the Education World Forum in January 2020 when our Managing Director Jane Mann addressed the largest gathering of education ministers in the world in a speech entitled: The Price of Light. In her speech Jane made a strong case on the crucial role of data in answering the questions so many education ministers are trying to answer:

How do we know where we should be investing?  How do we know who is learning and what is working? And most importantly, how do we know if we're on track and making progress?

The speech provided examples of how data can support evidence-based decisions; help identify where to target interventions to effect the most impactful investments and provide the means to demonstrate progress. It made a strong case for the importance of data while recognising the challenges of implementing such an approach:

Of course, there’s a price to pay for something so valuable, and it’s the price of gathering, analysing and openly sharing that data. But it’s a price worth paying because the price of light truly is far less than the cost of darkness. 

A 2017 article in the Economist argued that The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, it is data and that this new commodity needs to be regulated. The ability to collect, process and store large amounts of data is one of the main characteristics of our digital age. It can provide an incredibly powerful tool for governments, but it comes at the same time with complex challenges that shouldn’t be underestimated: who, what, where, when, how, why etc data is collected, stored, analysed and used are questions as difficult to answer as the actual process of collecting and storing the data. These questions are complex because they cover interconnected disciplines, from technology to ethics to education and reflect the need to bring together a very wide range of stakeholders at the point of developing national data system aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of education management and effect sustainable change. 

As we are entering a third year in the continued context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must look at new ways to address the global education crisis: this crisis existed before the pandemic and despite sustained efforts and some success in achieving wider access over the past twenty years, real improvement in the quality of learning has been limited. One lesson we should learn from this pandemic is the power of data to inform policy, and while acknowledging the challenges and potential dangers that come with it, we should harness its power for the benefits of education.

Author:

Dominique Slade, Head of Content & Solutions at Cambridge Partnership for Education