Another look at how to improve student’s learning outcomes

So everyone has agreed that we must focus more on school quality, right?  The United Nation’s High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda recently confirmed concern for the actual learning outcomes achieved by pupils in developing countries.  The education sector has come to the table with a reasonably coherent set of proposals. Save the Children adopted the mantra ‘Learning and Equity’ almost a year ago and now many others have been thinking along similar lines.

How to define a quality education?

But let’s not get carried away.  While debate will continue, international forums like the Learning Metrics Taskforce have helped create some degree of agreement on what constitutes a good education.   But there remain important and significant differences of emphasis within the debate.   A key question for some time has been ‘what’ a “quality” education means.  Should it be mainly about learning outcomes (and – in primary school at least – core skills such as reading, writing and maths) or should it be much broader, including a wider set of’ life skills’ and the quality of the school environment.   And a related, but emerging question for the global policy community, is how exactly to achieve improvements on quality.

Most organizations involved with education have always faced both questions, but particularly the one about the ‘how’. In the case of Save the Children we have one well established and successful programme – Literacy Boost – which is very focused on improving learning, in large part by improving educational inputs such as teacher quality.  But we are also developing another approach which is measuring the ‘Quality of the Learning Environment’.  So how are these different approaches  related?  How can they best be understood to complement each other in the search for improved school quality?

The education ‘rocket’

One way of understanding the relationship between these two approaches is to think of education as a kind of ‘rocket’.  Bear with me on this: this is slightly speculative, but I’ll try and explain.  In the diagramme below the rocket represents the school system.   It is not the different phases of education, with pre-school at the bottom, then primary and so on (a common mistake people make about the education rocket!)  Instead it seeks to conceptualize a way of thinking about educational quality in schools.

At the base of the rocket is the basic fundamental need to have a decent environment within which children can learn.  This requires a school to be safe, an environment which works for girls as well as boys, the necessary basic infrastructure, good co-operation with local communities and, where necessary, psycho-social support for pupils.  But the critical point about the rocket is that having a quality learning environment is not on the whole an end in itself. Instead it provides the necessary foundation for children to achieve their potential and learn.  It is also the bedrock on which critical education ‘inputs’ can be provided – and this is what is covered in the two rocket ‘sections’ above it.  Some of these ‘inputs’ are at the school level  such as  well trained teachers who are  particularly critical. Others exist more at the ‘system’ level  providing  necessary inputs like teacher training systems, good accountability and inspection to ensure quality education.Critically, theses inputs are not ends in themselves. Instead they are all helping the rocket get to its ultimate destination, which is children learning and achieving.  That is why in the little capsule at the top we have the ultimate aim: the improvement of learning outcomes.

The global debate: moving from ‘what’ to ‘how’?

Admittedly,  the ‘education rocket’ is also a  fun way of thinking about learning quality, and should not be seen as a academic construct. It also raises far too many questions to list in full here: how do we know for sure what the ‘inputs’ are that matter most?  What relative importance should be attached to a ‘quality learning environment’ vis-à-vis school and system level ‘inputs’?  In many ways the rocket is merely at the test flight stage.  But the importance of grappling more seriously with exactly what will help improve the quality – and ultimately the learning outcomes – in school systems is set to become more important.This is because much of the global debate is likely to move on from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’. I expect we will move on from questions like:  What learning outcomes matter most?  What should the post-2015 development framework include? What should replace Education for All? The next set of pressing questions will be:  How do under- resourced school systems improve learning outcomes?Many organizations like Save the Children and countries around the globe have been struggling with these questions  for many years.  Save the Children’s Literacy Boost and Quality Learning Environment continue to be relevant and help with different parts of the rocket.But in the coming years a more rigorous focus on ‘how do we improve learning outcomes’ at the global and national level looks likely. The World Bank’s SABER – Systems Approach for Better Education Results – is focusing on it.  This year’s Global Monitoring Report will focus on teaching and learning.  If the framework which emerges in 2015 is anything close to that recommended by the High Level Panel, there will be a big focus on children learning and – forgive the pun – a lot more fuel for the education rocket.