The Difference a Dollar a Day Can Make

Joint efforts by the Government of Nepal, development partners and key stakeholders to achieve SDG 4 by 2030 have improved education access, participation and retention. However, learning outcomes in Nepal remain stagnant. What resources and contextual factors are associated with good school performance in Nepal? By merging and analyzing existing administrative datasets in Nepal, this report helps to identify positive deviant schools – those that outperform other schools despite sharing similar contexts and resources. Data Must Speak – a global initiative implemented since 2014 – aims to address the evidence gaps to mitigate the learning crisis using existing data. The DMS Positive Deviance Research is co-created and co-implemented with Ministries of Education and key partners. DMS research relies on mixed methods and innovative approaches (i.e., positive deviance approach, behavioural sciences, implementation research and scaling science) to generate knowledge and practical lessons about ‘what works’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ to scale grassroots solutions for national policymakers and the broader international community of education stakeholders. DMS research is currently being implemented in 14 countries: Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Niger, the United Republic of Tanzania, Togo and Zambia.

Teachers are the most important drivers of students’ academic achievement and they are at the heart of learning recovery efforts. Finding out the bottlenecks and necessary conditions for ensuring teachers’ presence at school and in the classroom is essential. Time to Teach is a mixed methods research initiative that aims to find out the contextual, working conditions and policy factors impeding primary school teacher attendance in 11 West and Central African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, The Gambia, and Togo.

Funded by the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children, through its Safe Online initiative, ECPAT, INTERPOL, and UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti worked in partnership to design and implement Disrupting Harm – a research project on online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA). This unique partnership brings a multidisciplinary approach to a complex issue in order to see all sides of the problem. OCSEA refers to situations that involve digital or communication technologies at some point during the continuum of abuse or exploitation; it can occur fully online or through a mix of online and in-person interactions between offenders and children. The Disrupting Harm research was conducted in six Southeast Asian countries and seven Eastern and Southern African countries, including Namibia. Data were synthesised from nine different research activities to generate each national report which tells the story of the threat, and presents clear recommendations for action.

Les pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre ont mis en œuvre des mesures nationales pour poursuivre les activités d’apprentissage pendant la fermeture des écoles. Ces mesures reposaient sur une combinaison de modalités de diffusion : des plateformes en ligne, des médias audiovisuels, des téléphones portables et des supports imprimés. Cependant, plusieurs obstacles ont empêché de nombreux enfants et adolescents de la région de profiter de ces opportunités d’apprentissage, dans un contexte où, même avant la pandémie, près de 50 % d’entre eux n'atteignaient pas les compétences minimales en lecture à la fin du cycle primaire. En s’appuyant sur les données régionales disponibles, ce rapport met en évidence les principales leçons à tirer en matière d’apprentissage à distance et fournit des recommandations concrètes pour renforcer la résilience des systèmes éducatifs nationaux face aux fermetures des écoles.