Student Achievement What the Research Says

Accelerate Learning: Takeaways From Other Countries

By Sarah D. Sparks — January 31, 2023 3 min read
Earth turning into pixels.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Students worldwide remain more than a third of a typical school year behind their pre-pandemic academic pace, according to a new global research analysis, and experts say countries should do more to learn from each other on ways to speed students’ academic recovery.

“We need to do something beyond just going back to normal,” said Bastian Betthäuser, an assistant sociology professor at the Sciences Po Center for Research on Social Inequalities in France and an associate researcher in public policy at the University of Oxford, England. He is the lead author of a study released earlier this week that found overall, countries have stopped learning deficits from increasing, but have not yet recovered the ground students lost in the first year of the pandemic.

“It’s very hard to recover learning deficits once they’re there. It really takes a huge amount of investment, from a policy perspective, the necessary manpower in terms of qualified teacher personnel, and opportunities for kids to learn outside of the normal school year,” he said.

Related

Young children lined up, some are faded into the background
Vanessa Solis/Education Week and GlobalStock/E+

“There’s a tricky balance to strike here because, of course, kids only have so much capacity to take in new material to learn new skills,” Betthäuser said.

A broad group of international organizations, including UNESCO, the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have launched what they call a RAPID framework for recovery efforts, for reach, assess, prioritize, increase, and develop:

Reach every child to keep them in school

More than a year after schools have reopened in person, absenteeism in many areas remains higher than it was pre-COVID. The OECD found only 60 percent of counties have consistently collected data on student absences in all three years of the pandemic.

Experts called for education system leaders to expand outreach campaigns for parents both before and during the school year, highlighting information about both the importance of attendance in academic recovery and the health and safety measures being taken in the schools to prevent outbreaks.

Ghana, for example, trained more than 260,000 staff in more than 160 districts to make a push to reenroll girls, who showed lower rates of return to school than boys after the pandemic and higher rates of teen pregnancy after the pandemic.

Assess learning levels regularly

District leaders should analyze systemwide test data not just for overall achievement levels, but to identify specific content areas that have gaps for different grades and students, and tailor professional development and other supports for teachers in those areas.

“I think part of the problem with the policy interventions we’ve seen is that they haven’t been targeted enough at the most disadvantaged kids who were also the ones who lost out the most,” Betthäuser said.

Prioritize teaching foundational skills

Experts called for school leaders to focus on boosting key foundational skills that students may have missed, by updating teacher guides and curricular materials for quick interventions, rather than trying to overhaul curriculums wholesale.

For example, Chile has started to distribute “curricular prioritization updates” that include standards, webinars, and professional development tools for teachers in topic areas where students have fallen short.

Increase instructional efficiency

Teachers now cope with students of more varied achievement levels and special education or language needs, and schools need ways to scale up models for extended learning, tutoring, and student-paced interventions.

For example, Brazil has started to scale up a program in which students who need help with particular skills or content areas receive targeted instruction during four periods of each school day, over two-week cycles.

Develop psychological health and well-being

Studies worldwide find worsening mental health and psychological development for children and adolescents during the pandemic, including higher rates of depression and anxiety, behavioral problems, and substance abuse. Research suggests schools are still struggling to increase capacity for student mental health services.

India has launched a national helpline for students in need of mental health services and counseling. In Liberia, the government partnered with the nonprofit group Read Liberia to make a series of 30-min radio lessons, which both covered early literacy skills and provided prompts for children to reflect on their emotions and identify healthy ways to cope with stress.

More than 80 percent of countries also have implemented contact tracing, and more than 60 percent now have protocols to assess the risk of COVID-19 or other outbreaks to reduce the need for full-scale school closures.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
How to Leverage Virtual Learning: Preparing Students for the Future
Hear from an expert panel how best to leverage virtual learning in your district to achieve your goals.
Content provided by Class
English-Language Learners Webinar AI and English Learners: What Teachers Need to Know
Explore the role of AI in multilingual education and its potential limitations.
Education Webinar The K-12 Leader: Data and Insights Every Marketer Needs to Know
Which topics are capturing the attention of district and school leaders? Discover how to align your content with the topics your target audience cares about most. 

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Achievement What the Research Says One Way to Accelerate Student Learning? Set More Challenging Goals
A learning acceleration model helped students perform on grade level after being years behind, study finds
4 min read
Black woman watering and growing a flower in which sits a happy white girl.
iStock/Getty Images Plus
Student Achievement What Two New Studies Reveal About Learning Recovery
Effective programs require putting "a lot of effort into implementation," said one researcher.
5 min read
Third-grade teaching assistant Keione Vance leads a reading session with a small group of students at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2022. To address learning loss caused by the pandemic, Atlanta has been one of the only cities in the country to add class time – 30 minutes a day for three years.
Third-grade teaching assistant Keione Vance leads a reading session with a small group of students at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2022. Atlanta has been one of the only cities in the country to add class time—30 minutes a day—to help students catch up post-pandemic.
Sharon Johnson/AP
Student Achievement The Sibling Effect: How Retaining Struggling Readers Impacts Brothers and Sisters
A 2002 Florida law that requires struggling readers to repeat a grade also affected their siblings, a study finds.
3 min read
Photo from behind of a mother with her arms around her son and daughter who are both wearing school bookbags.
E+
Student Achievement Opinion Here's Why You Should Stop Using the Term 'Learning Acceleration'
Among other reasons, it puts a renewed emphasis on standardized-test scores.
Paul Emerich France
8 min read
Illustration of a speech bubble broken into puzzle pieces
Getty