Publications

‘Known from Birth: Generating and using evidence to strengthen birth registration systems in low- and middle-income countries’ is the evidence component of Strengthening Birth Registration Systems to Protect Every Child from Child Labour, a UNICEF project supported by the Government of Norway. The project focuses on implementing comprehensive programmes in Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Nigeria to accelerate birth registration (BR) for all children – especially children from the most vulnerable communities – starting from birth.

This brief is an evidence gap map created as part of the Known from Birth project, which is producing a series of products developed collaboratively by UNICEF Innocenti and South Africa Centre for Evidence (SACE). These products examine birth registration and its critical importance for child protection. The project is supported by the Government of Norway and focuses on implementing comprehensive programmes in Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Nigeria to accelerate birth registration for all children – especially children from the most vulnerable communities – starting from birth.

In 2021, Mexico introduced Pasaporte al Aprendizaje, a localized version of the Learning Passport digital learning platform, to mitigate learning loss after widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between October 2021 and February 2023, almost 100,000 students utilized it for upper-secondary courses.

The research explores the key design and implementation steps undertaken for the successful deployment and use of the Pasaporte al Aprendizaje. In addition, analysis of data from the digital learning platform shows that students assessment scores improved as they progressed through courses, in subjects such as mathematics, Spanish, chemistry and physics. The overall goal of this research is to inform improvements in the Pasaporte al Aprendizaje and provide key lessons learned for other countries implementing national digital learning programmes.

Social contracts around the world are fraying, reflecting a profound disconnect between institutions and the people they are meant to serve, and a corresponding sense of distrust and disillusionment as growing swathes of society feel that they are being left behind.

Social Contracts: Towards more child and future-centred framings explores the value of social contract policy framings that have emerged in recent years. It examines why children need to feature more prominently in social contracts and how these framings might take on a more child- and future-centric form.

While the Lao People’s Democratic Republic has made steady progress in expanding access to quality education, many children still leave primary school with difficulties in reading and writing for their age. Despite this, there are ‘positive deviant’ schools that outperform other schools located in similar contexts and with an equivalent level of resources.

This policy brief – about school climate in Lao schools – is part of a series that presents important insights from both quantitative and qualitative data on behaviours and practices of a variety of education actors in positive deviant schools in Lao PDR. It also explores existing local solutions and broader evidence emerging from all schools on various education-related challenges.

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 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.

While the Lao People’s Democratic Republic has made steady progress in expanding access to quality education, many children still leave primary school with difficulties in reading and writing for their age. Despite this, there are ‘positive deviant’ schools that outperform other schools located in similar contexts and with an equivalent level of resources.

This policy brief – about practices aligned with formative assessment in Lao schools – is part of a series that presents important insights from both quantitative and qualitative data on behaviors and practices of a variety of education actors in positive deviant schools in Lao PDR. It also explores existing local solutions and broader evidence emerging from all schools on various education-related challenges.

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 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.

The war in Ukraine triggered an economic shock in countries in Eastern and Central Asia, a region that has been visited by multiple economic shocks in the past decades. For the children and families The shock featured a spike in the prices of commodities including food and fuel. As a result, poor families who spend a greater proportion of their incomes on necessities – such as food and fuel – were the hardest hit. The result was greater risk of poverty, weakened school attachment and increased infant mortality, among others.

This UNICEF Innocenti Research Brief shares projections about the fallout of this crisis on poverty, schooling, infant mortality and the purchasing power of families. It also reviews the social protections put in place in response to the crisis and makes recommendation for future social protection responses.

The Avaliação Longitudinal da Desistência Escolar (ALDE, Longitudinal Assessment of School Dropout) is the first nationally representative mixed-method longitudinal survey in Mozambique.

Since 2018, the ALDE survey has annually collected longitudinal, nationally representative data from around 5,400 primary school students (from grades 1 to 7) in 60 schools across all eleven provinces in the country.

This report examines teacher and director absenteeism in Mozambique’s schools, using data from the ALDE. It seeks to understand factors related to the attendance of teachers and school directors in order to inform policies and practices to strengthen the primary education system in Mozambique.

In Mozambique, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread school closures, significantly impacting students and schools across the country.

An analysis of pre- and post-pandemic reading skills, using data from the nationally-representative Avaliação Longitudinal da Desistência Escolar (ALDE, Longitudinal Assessment of School Dropout) survey reveals significant learning losses in basic literacy skills. Specifically, students in Grades 3-4 exhibited reduced proficiency in letter identification in 2021 compared to their counterparts in 2019.

These findings underscore the negative consequences of COVID-19-related school closures on foundational literacy in Mozambique.