Management of the World Bank thanks the Independent Evaluation Group for the report Confronting the Learning Crisis: Lessons from World Bank Support for Basic Education, 2012–22. The evaluation assesses the World Bank’s contribution to improving learning outcomes in basic education between 2012 and 2022 and offers numerous insights into the effectiveness of the World Bank approach. The learning crisis poses a challenge to countries’ efforts to build human capital and reach the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing the learning crisis is central to achieving the World Bank’s mission. Management thanks the Independent Evaluation Group team for the timely and relevant analysis and continued collaboration.

World Bank Management Response

Overall

Management welcomes the overall conclusion that the World Bank has helped convene global stakeholders to address the learning crisis and remains well placed to advance this agenda. Management welcomes the evaluation’s recognition of the World Bank’s leading role in building awareness, sharing knowledge, and making foundational learning a global priority. The report finds that the World Bank has worked strategically and synergistically with partners to build global buy-in for the concept and measurement of learning poverty and to unify global messaging on the learning crisis. Management also welcomes the conclusions that the World Bank has contributed to improving learning outcomes between 2012 and 2022 through financing, knowledge, data, and partnership, and that it continues to be well positioned to carry this agenda forward, given its role as the largest external funder of education and the strong relationships country teams have forged with governments.

Management is also pleased with the recognition of how World Bank advisory services and analytics, including the 2018 World Development Report, have drawn attention to the learning crisis and how to address it. The report highlights that the World Bank has produced a wealth of relevant, high-quality knowledge products, including the 2018 World Development Report and the subsequent development of the learning poverty metric, which have both shone a spotlight on the learning crisis. The report notes that the World Bank has provided substantial advisory and analytic work, including global public goods, on education-system strengthening, capacity development, learning measurement, and use of data to inform education policy and teaching practices. It also notes the increase in advisory services and analytics that focus on issues related to equity during the evaluation period. Management appreciates the acknowledgment of impactful publications tailored to the regional context, such as Facing Forward: Schooling for Learning in Africa and Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Management acknowledges that more could be done to strengthen capacity building at the lower levels of the education system. Management welcomes the report’s finding that 69 percent of projects focus on the challenge of “weak education system: governance, accountability, and institutional oversight” (table 3.1), meaning they are aimed at strengthening system capacity. Capacity building is part and parcel of World Bank operations and is a central part of the technical assistance that World Bank teams provide alongside lending. The report notes that the World Bank has put less emphasis on supporting lower levels of basic education systems, such as at the provincial and the district levels. While most projects include efforts to strengthen capacity at the school level by providing on-the-job support to teachers (80 percent of projects), management notes that additional efforts to build capacity at all levels of the system are needed.

Management notes the report’s assertion that World Bank operations focused on outputs rather than outcomes and is taking steps toward a more strategic and results-oriented approach. The World Bank has taken steps toward larger and more results-based operations, with a higher potential for systemic impact. Management takes note of the report’s finding that monitoring and evaluation of improved learning outcomes are specified in only one-third of project development objectives in the basic education portfolio. A new more outcome-oriented education indicator is included in the new World Bank Group Scorecard, which tracks students supported with better education, and this will be cascade to operations. The data from the Scorecard can help inform strategic discussions about the World Bank education approach, including how the World Bank can do more to support clients to reduce learning poverty in places where it is high, and for those who need it most. Management welcomes the finding that while the share of country engagement products referencing marginalized groups increased during the period, monitoring and disaggregated reporting of results predominantly focused on gender. There is scope to enhance disaggregation of results to be able to track and improve outcomes for marginalized groups along other dimensions, such as disability inclusion.

Recommendations

Management agrees with the first recommendation to develop country-specific education engagement plans with system-based improvements to the teaching framework to improve learning outcomes. Management agrees that diagnosing and addressing country-specific barriers to learning for all, including political economy barriers, is critical to build systems that better serve all its students, in line with 2018 World Development Report’s call to identify and address system failures that inhibit learning. Management agrees that the performance of the teacher career framework could be anchored in and tracked through Country Partnership Frameworks, where the lack of such a framework is a binding constraint on learning. Management agrees with the need for a more holistic, system-based approach to improving teaching, rather than one that focuses primarily on on-the-job training for teachers. The recent World Bank report Making Teacher Policy Work takes such an approach, and the World Bank is now expanding its work on other areas concerning teachers, such as support for preservice teacher education, and will produce a global report on the topic. Management also agrees that operations that support teacher training should systematically track the effectiveness of that training.

Management agrees with the second recommendation to close the data gaps on learning outcomes and to track progress in ending learning poverty with its partners. Improving availability and use of learning data is a workstream where the World Bank has made progress with partners, including through the Learning Data Compact, a coalition to end the learning data crisis. The World Bank has developed a range of analytic tools and guides to support countries in the development of their national assessment systems, as noted in the report. The World Bank’s new Accelerating Learning Measurement for Action program, launched together with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, builds on this progress in coordination with Learning Data Compact partners to provide technical and financial support to priority countries. Management notes that institutionalizing high-quality measurement requires sustained long-term engagement and that countries are not always willing to participate in international assessments or link their national assessments to the Global Proficiency Framework to allow for Sustainable Development Goal monitoring. Management is expanding its in-house capacity to support the goal of more extensive learning measurement and action, by improving staff learning and deepening its expertise on foundational learning and learning measurement through recruitment of additional staff. On learning measurement in early primary, the World Bank recently released a joint statement with partners advocating for better reporting on Sustainable Development Goal 4.1.1a, and it continues to work at the country level to increase data availability and use. Management will also work to ensure that more projects with learning-focused project development objectives track learning outcome data, noting that the report shows that 48 of the 77 projects with project development objectives that address improving learning track learning outcome data. Because a lack of baseline learning data is what constrains many projects from tracking learning outcomes, Accelerating Learning Measurement for Action and other World Bank efforts to expand data availability will help with this goal. Overall, the new Scorecard is revitalizing the measurement agenda across the Bank Group.