Kenya's digital technology advancements--chief among them the mobile money transfer application referred to as Mpesa--has led to the country's status as an emerging digital economy. However, the long strides in the move toward a fully-fledged digital economy are not reflected in the digital technology workforce with regard to gender balance. While…

Access to education is directly connected to the general well-being, social and emotional learning, and mental health of adolescents. Many adolescent girls in Nepal, however, appear to be left out of this "virtuous" cycle, unable to find space in school to meaningfully develop a sense of relatedness, autonomy, and competency. This policy…

As is often the case with crises, the pandemic meant both an educational catastrophe but also an opportunity for transformation. The health and social emergencies, with their serious effects on students and their families (España, 2022; MINEDUC, 2020), prompted the search for new answers to tackle challenges that were not possible to address with…

Only a few innovations ever successfully scale throughout education systems. Previous research highlights two reasons for this scarcity of success stories: either the innovations are badly designed, or the environment is not conducive to accepting and absorbing the education innovations. Even the best innovations with the most strategic scaling…

To address the learning crisis and other challenges facing children and youth (those 15-24 years of age) it is critical for governments, multilateral and bilateral funders, other donors, and implementers to have a clear understanding of program costs and cost breakdowns to inform financing decisions. For nearly a decade, the Center for Universal…

Millions Learning, a project of the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, explores scaling and sustaining effective innovations leading to improved system-wide approaches. CUE is implementing a series of Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSLs), in partnership with local institutions in several countries, to generate evidence…

This brief focuses on Colombia which, like most countries globally, closed its schools in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As throughout most of Latin America, Colombian schools remained closed for over a year, and they only began to gradually reopen in July 2021. The brief explores the pandemic's impact on student learning by analyzing…

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-emphasized the need to develop innovative solutions to unprecedented problems in health, education, and other sectors. The learning crisis in education is reaching catastrophic levels, the consequences of which are disproportionately felt in populations that are already marginalized. School closures, together with…

The Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has been investigating efforts to scale and sustain evidence-based initiatives leading to large-scale improvements in children's learning. CUE has been implementing a series of collaborative action research initiatives called Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSL), in partnership with local institutions…

The United Nations has set forth an ambitious vision for education systems around the globe: cultivating life-long learning from early childhood through an individual's civic and work life. Schools must support children and youth in basic learning--including crucial socio-emotional, literacy, and numeracy competencies--to contribute to sustainable…

In anticipation of the United Nations Transforming Education Summit in September 2022, this report explores the work of building and (re)building education systems to support holistic student development. It focuses specifically on the journeys of seven education systems--situated in high-, middle-, and low-middle-income countries with democratic…

Computer science (CS) education helps students acquire skills such as computational thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. Since these skills take preeminence in the rapidly changing 21st century, CS education promises to significantly enhance student preparedness for the future of work and active citizenship. Based on prior analyses and…

School-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) refers to "acts of sexual, physical, or psychological violence inflicted on children in and around schools because of stereotypes and roles or norms attributed to or expected of them because of their sex or gendered identity. It also refers to the differences between girls' and boys' experience of…

This policy brief highlights ways that a gender-responsive perspective can be fully incorporated into planning, policy design, and implementation models for education in emergencies (EiE) in Nigeria, so that governments and education stakeholders can ensure that girls, like boys, can continue learning in times of crisis. The author explores how…

The purpose of this study is to identify gaps and challenges in the use of education technology (ed tech) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu during COVID-19. Specifically, the authors investigated how use of ed tech differed by type of school (government or private), household socioeconomic status, and student gender--and how it changed during the COVID-19…