Foundational Learning Compact (FLC)

Provides support for a cohort of countries that demonstrate strong political commitment to tackling Learning Poverty. The model based on sound evidence includes three elements: i) developing the country’s own learning targets; ii) costed investment case for achieving those targets; and iii) support to implementation capacity. It was launched in late 2020 by the World Bank and UNICEF, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics, and USAID. The initial cohort launched with 10 governments that include Brazil (state of Ceará), Ecuador, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria (Edo State), Pakistan, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to address the massive lack of learning data that exist around the world that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems or assessing if their students are learning. 
The Learning Data Compact (LDC) is organized around three main pillars. 

Pillar 1- measure learning progress- encompasses COVID-19 learning losses and recovery analysis, Policy Linking, Assessments for Minimum Proficiency Levels, Cross-National Learning Assessments, and National Learning Assessment Systems. 

Pillar 2- measure the drivers of learning- includes the Global Education Policy Dashboard 

Pillar 3- measure what happens in the classroom- encompasses Global Coach and Coach Mozambique and Teach-Coach SUNSET Grants. 

The World Bank works closely with partners in the LDC effort to advocate for and coordinate around learning data and uses policy dialogue and World Bank projects to encourage the development and use of learningn data with additional technical support from the FLC. 

The Global Coalition for Foundational Learning has also seen the value in learning measurement and has made it a core pillar of its agenda. 

The GEPD collects data in a multi-dimensional dashboard that measures, tracks, and links progress of the key drivers of learning outcomes in basic education around the world at the service delivery, policy, and politics level, with specific attention to their impact on policy dialogue and policy decision making. The dashboard offers timely, cost-effective, comprehensive, and contextualized current information on the main determinants of learning outcomes throughout an education system.

Teach is a classroom observation tool developed by the World Bank that provides a window into one of the less explored and more important aspects of a student’s education: what goes on in the classroom. The tool is intended to be used in primary classrooms (grades 1-6) and was designed to help low- and middle-income countries track and improve teaching quality. Coach is an initiative that aims to improve in-service teacher professional development systems by leveraging data on teaching classroom practices to design and implement individualized and/or group coaching and training sessions and workshops, and other approaches, either through in-person, remote, or hybrid modalities.

• Coach Mozambique: In Mozambique, the Coach program is working with the government to support the development of the Aprender+ initiative, focused on improving early-grade reading outcomes through a three-pronged approach focused on the alignment between curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, and leveraging a robust teacher training and support system informed by the Coach model.  
• Scaling Up National Support for Effective Teaching (SUNSET) grants: The SUNSET grants in 23 countries have focused on implementation and supporting cross-country learning opportunities for grantees. Overall, some of the analytical work of FLC activities is helping identify policy findings as well as gap areas for further research- for example, the rapid evidence review of Teach and Coach on how to support teachers and effective teaching in FCV contexts. 

The EdTech Hub is a global non-profit research partnership sponsored by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank to distill and facilitate access to the evidence needed to make decisions about effective uses of technology in education. It provides rigorous research and policy advice on the effective use of digital technologies for developing countries. The  Helpdesk is currently supporting 142 countries and regions. 

Building on the rich lessons from the EdTech Policy Academy, the World Bank is expanding and developing more offerings under the Education Policy Academy. The goal of the Education Policy Academy is to provide World Bank staff and clients with learning opportunities to deepen knowledge and skills for education policy design, program implementation, and policy dialogue in priority thematic areas. Education Policy Academy activities are partially supported by the FLC, and this year they focused on three thematic areas: literacy policy, teachers, and inclusive education. 

The Inclusion Support Program for Refugee Education (INSPIRE) is a global knowledge and technical assistance initiative launched in February 2024. This program aims to strengthen the capabilities of host governments to incorporate refugee children into national education systems. It supports host countries to act on the “Mega Pledge” commitments made at the 2023 Global Refugee Forum to improve formal school access rates for refugees by 2027. The program provides a unifying framework, as well as accompanying technical assistance to enable governments to include refugee children in national education systems wherever they may be along the inclusion spectrum.
The INSPIRE program has two main pillars: (1) Global Knowledge, Monitoring, and Capacity Development; and (2) Country grants.

The Implementation Science for Education (ISE) Program is a new initiative under the FLC launched in April 2024 in partnership with the What Works Hub for Global Education (WWHGE)14 at Oxford University that aims to address this gap. This program embeds implementation science research in World Bankfinanced operations and deploys insights from implementation science to help World Bank projects deliver reforms and programs to improve foundational learning at scale, while contributing to global education by developing knowledge on implementation science. The ISE program leverages the World Bank’s unique position, including its on-the-ground teams, policy dialogue, financing, and operational support to the national education systems.

The Bangladesh Secondary Education Program is to build back better secondary education system to protect and boost learning post-COVID. The program identifies core focus areas to address COVID-related disruptions and learning losses and improve the overall secondary system. The identification of areas is based on their potential for high-impact in a short period of time, their emergence as urgent areas for support due to COVID-19. Four areas identified for inclusion under FLC include: (i) Protecting and boosting key skills; (ii) Enhancing teacher performance; (iii) Protecting and promoting student retention, especially for girls; and (iv) Supporting evidence and data.