We’re in the process of updating our website (which we’re excited to share with you soon!). In reviewing the existing site and the 40+ blogs we’ve written, I realized there is an issue we have yet to feature—global education.
Within the broad field of education, our grantmaking alongside the Gates Foundation is focused on two essential skills—ensuring every child can read and understand math.
Why? Because children who can read and work with numbers are far more likely to complete school, find work, and break cycles of poverty. Yet today, an estimated nine in 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read and understand a simple story by age 10. Similarly, children are not developmentally on track in numeracy. This is a solvable crisis, but it will take political will matched with the best evidence-based interventions. Education quality must be rooted in change in the classroom with better evidence and tools to supporting teachers to improve their quality of teaching to improve students’ learning.
The Gates Foundation launched its first Global Education strategy in 2016—with a focus on increasing literacy and numeracy skills in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Since its launch, the Global Education team has invested in raising awareness of the interconnected benefits of education with improved lifelong outcomes—including health, digital literacy, vocational opportunities and thriving economies by investing in the conditions for growth and opportunity—foundational skills. That advocacy is informed by studies and data gathering to understand what works in the classroom and what's needed to make learning these essential skills more effective.
While both reading and math skills need to be improved, much more funding—and therefore research—has focused on literacy.
That’s why Gates Philanthropy Partners chose to focus on filling a gap in numeracy research. Alongside the Gates Foundation, we are investing in partners like Genesis Analytics who are managing a cohort of organizations focused exclusively on numeracy issues in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Together, these organizations are digging into research on how to effectively teach kids math. They are exploring how number recognition is taught successfully, how teachers can be trained, and how to address challenges faced in under-resourced settings—from class size to lack of materials for each child.
The goal of our multi-year grant is to identify new, practical solutions for improving how children understand and work with numbers that are grounded in evidence—and that can be implemented at scale. Given how many kids are impacted by this educational crisis, solutions can no longer be isolated to one classroom or even school district. They need to reach regional or national levels.
These large-scale solutions are needed now more than ever as foreign aid budgets decline globally, and many countries face an urgent need to reprioritize spending. Strengthening their education systems is a proven way countries can chart a path to self-sustaining economic growth. The World Bank found that low learning levels cost low- and middle-income countries as much as 10% of their GDP. There is too much at risk for countries not to invest in their young people.
When kids are denied the chance to learn, nations lose future workers, leaders, and change-makers and taxpayers. But when they gain the power of reading and math, opportunities abound.
Curious about how GPP facilitates partnerships with donors looking to make an impact on global education? Get in touch with us at: [email protected].
