Understanding the global education crisis & ways governments can address it by spending more efficiently

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Fixing The Global Education Crisis — Here’s What We Can Do Understanding the global education crisis & ways governments can address it by spending more efficiently Gaurav Krishnan Feb 8   READ IN APP   Welcome to Light Years by Gaurav Krishnan! Gaurav Krishnan recently moved you from another platform to Light Years by Gaurav Krishnan, hosted on Substack. New posts will be automatically delivered to you via email or via the Substack app. To set up your profile and find more to read, click here. If you do not want to receive emails from Light Years by Gaurav Krishnan, you can unsubscribe here. When it comes to global development, governments usually spend a sizeable chunk of their budgets on education, but we’re not seeing it translate into results. Child mortality is lower and school enrollment is much higher today than at any point of time in human history, as represented in the graph below. Child Mortality & Basic Education Over The Centuries In an old article (linked below), I explored the economic factors that answered the question: Is the world getting better or worse? Is The World Getting Better Or Worse? — Ten Global Trends That Reveal The Picture Gaurav Krishnan · Jan 16 Being an informed individual in today’s day & age might lead you to the cynical conclusion that the world is getting far worse than it is getting better — blame social media & doomscrolling. Read full story However, despite the points mentioned in that article, according to economist Karthik Muralidharan, we’re seeing a global education crisis. “The bad news is that though many more children are surviving, large numbers are not thriving. As of 2022, we had nearly 150 million stunted children, or around 22 percent of the world’s children. Similarly, 70 percent of children aged 10 in low and middle-income countries could not read a simple passage. Put together, the world is behind schedule on over 85 percent of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.” “As with all other areas, the good news is that school enrollment is higher today than it ever had been before. The bad news is that this increase in enrollment has not translated into learning outcomes. So with 70 percent of 10-year-olds in low and middle-income countries not able to read a simple passage, we have a global learning crisis,” says economist Karthik Muralidharan This disparity between the number of enrolled children & the lack of learning proficiency is further impacting the global economy, especially for developing nations in the long run, argues Muralidharan. “This is both a moral tragedy for the individual children whose lifelong capabilities and opportunities are constrained by weak education, but it’s also a tragedy for their countries, because it limits long-term productivity and economic growth,” suggests Muralidharan. The Data & Insights The common solution most governments use to address this issue is to spend more money on education. However, Muralidharan argues that governments should spend more efficiently rather than just substationally. “Now, the normal approach to dealing with this problem is to say we need to spend more, either through more foreign aid or through higher government budgets. But what the research also shows is that most of the business-as-usual spending that we do is not very effective. In particular, we have studies showing that upgrading school infrastructure, hiring more credentialed teachers, increasing teacher pay, or even giving students free textbooks and laptops don’t seem to be having much of an impact,” says Muralidharan. The figure below shows the learning outcomes of students based on a study Muralidharan & his team conducted in India. The sample size comprised over 6000 students. The x-axis represents the grade in which the student is enrolled while the y-axis represents the level of learning. Each dot comprises a group of ten students. As per the study, students aren’t performing as expected. The red line represents the median of how students should be ideally performing according to their respective grades. But in actuality, the average learning level, represented by the blue line, is half of the ideal rate. What this means is that your average eighth-grade kid in a public school in India has about a fourth-grade level of understanding of mathematics. How do teachers react to this disparity currently? “And so what does the teacher do? Even a sincere, motivated teacher will focus on completing the curriculum and the textbook. But the problem is that does not translate into much learning, because it is so far ahead of the level of where the kids are,” says Muralidharan Muralidharan interrupts his speech and switches to speaking in Hindi, giving the predominantly English-speaking audience a glimpse of what it’s like for children in developing countries who are unable to comprehend what they are being taught. “I have given you 25 seconds in the shoes of a typical kid in a typical classroom, in millions of schools around the world.” “And so what that helps you understand is I could be highly motivated, highly qualified, highly sincere, but that instruction is not going to result in learning, because it’s way above your level of understanding, and it will only reach a small fraction of the kids in the class,” adds Muralidharan And so hiring more proficient teachers or increasing their wages isn’t the answer. “That also helps make sense of why default things like upgrading school infrastructure, increasing teacher pay, giving free textbooks or even free laptops, often don’t seem to have much of an impact. And that’s because they’re not addressing the binding constraint to learning, which is the mismatch between instruction and comprehension,” he adds. Using Technology To Create Tailor-Made & Focussed Learning Technology can be a pivotal & game-changing tool to improve students’ learning outcomes. But this isn’t just about dishing out laptops. In their study, Muralidharan & his team used hyper-focussed software to create personalised learning experiences for students & the results were staggering. “Now, while free tablets or laptops don’t seem to have much impact by themselves, we found large positive effects of customized learning software, called MindSpark, in India, that was able to tailor instruction to every kid in the class. And so now, in that same eighth-grade class, you’ve got kids at completely different levels, but who are being taught at a level that’s right for them. And the results were stunning. We saw among the largest gains in any education study done in developing countries, and in four months of the program, they gained about a full year of learning.” Technology Isn’t Going To Replace Teachers A lot of scarecrows out there might suggest that technology & AI could replace teachers entirely. But that’s not true. Here’s why... In Muralidharan’s tests, they handed a sample size of students free laptops to use at home away from school even with Mindspark loaded. However, they found that the students barely used them, resulting in an almost zero use rate amongst the entire sample size. “Before we think that technology will replace the teacher, here’s another tale of caution. During COVID, we ran another randomized controlled trial that gave a large number of kids free tablets with MindSpark, that we know works, and we gave it to them to use at home when schools were shut down. And unfortunately, the impact was exactly zero. And we know why, because you can track the usage, and you see that, without the adult supporting the child, there is no engagement and no learning.” This calls for technology to be used alongside current teaching methods. Furthermore, it requires teachers and technology to work in tandem with each other & not separately. By using software that’s personalised according to each child’s aptitude aided by a teacher who knows the child & can monitor& oversee his/her progress, we can see a huge shift in learning outcomes improving. Low Tech & Local Using technology isn’t the only way to improve learning outcomes. Sometimes low tech can be the way forward as well. As Muralidharan suggests, hand-holding children in after-school classes can also help the students grasp & learn more efficiently. “In other cases, completely low-tech interventions can be highly effective, such as remedial after-school tutoring programs, often run by high school graduates with no formal teacher training... So in this program, the government hired about 200,000 young women with a high school degree to provide 60 to 90 minutes of remedial instruction after school. And it reached over three million students, and the program was highly effective, improved equity and was about 10 times more cost-effective than usual education spending,” says Muralidharan This calls for more innovation. Companies like the NGO Rocket Learning are using WhatsApp as a means of reaching students in remote parts of India. This can be further improved by using tech to create tailor-made specialised software that can teach students at their respective levels. Furthermore, teacher visits to the students’ houses & vice-versa, reward-based personalised learning, and software that can enable soft skill development away from the regular curriculum are just some other things that could be implemented. But the crux is that there’s room for innovation. The Free Lunch While cheekily referring to himself as a bad economist for suggesting that there’s a free lunch on the cards, Muralidharan reasserts that despite seeming otherwise, the free lunch is, in fact, true. Simply put, governments don’t have to spend extra away from their current budgets for education, they only need to spend it smarter & more efficiently, making it an evident free lunch. However, Muralidharan understands that working with governments is difficult. “But governments often don’t act on these ideas, due to a combination of inertia, risk aversion and lack of political and bureaucratic incentives to act…In contrast, governments can spend taxpayer money badly, and leave 100-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk for a really long time because they don’t face a market test for their actions, and don’t get the feedback on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of their spending. And that’s why research and evidence is especially important for guiding effective public spending,” Muralidharan adds. In the current uncertain global climate, Muralidharan urges that education development globally mustn't be stunted by economic shifts & uncertainties. Furthermore, governments need to realise that they need only to spend more effectively & efficiently instead of more. “In a world of slowing economic growth, climate change, wars and scarring from pandemics, there’s a very real risk that progress in global development slows down, or even reverses. But we have reason to be optimistic that there is a huge free lunch on the table that we can act on by using data and evidence to improve the effectiveness of public spending,” urges Muralidharan In his eye-opening TED Talk, economist Karthik Muralidharan explores the current global education crisis by highlighting case studies from India & raises awareness about the disparity between government spending & learning outcomes. Muralidharan argues that there’s a ‘free lunch’ on the table & governments should just spend their budgets with greater efficiency. Subsequently, he envisions that this can go a long way in solving the global learning crisis in developing countries all over the world. This article originally appeared on my LinkedIN newsletter ‘WithYourSound You Kill The Inc.’ Thank you for being a valuable subscriber to my newsletter Light Years! If you liked this post & found it informative, feel free to share this publication with your network by clicking the button below… Share Light Years by Gaurav Krishnan I hope you found this post informative & it helped you in some way. As always, feel free to subscribe to my publication Light Years & support it & also share it if you’d like. Get it in your inbox by filling up the space below! Enter your email address below to subscribe to Light Years! It’s a decision you’ll love in the long run! 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