Improving early-grade performance for 2030: measurement and estimation options for innovative policy dialogue

Governments and donors are faced with the challenge of attaining the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of the challenges for education is to measure and set benchmarks that indicate whether people have developed sufficient core literacy and numeracy skills to function in the complex literate environments of the 21st century.

Benchmark setting has proved difficult in education because stakeholders find it hard to define which variables really matter and how they can be measured. Measurement of skills particularly in grades 1‐3 is highly relevant for policy dialogue, because this is when many students fall behind. Donors use existing national, regional, and international assessments, for which longitudinal data are available. However, assessments require reading fluency and do not focus on the lowest literacy and numeracy levels, so they may overestimate or underestimate learners’ skills in grades 1‐3.

Governments need specific feedback as soon as possible of likely student performance by 2030 so that they can take measures to improve performance by then. This monograph aims to publicize options for measuring early literacy and numeracy skills, using neuroscientific insights. These may help develop interventions that could accelerate early learning, facilitate monitoring and promote policy interventions to accelerate the achievement of the SDG 4.1 goals in various countries by 2030. The research evidence presented indicates that:

• Performance benchmarks can be set using reading and math fluency research;
• The performance of lower grades worldwide could be monitored through brief tests, measuring concepts that have high predictive validity, derived from cognitive science;
• If these test results were linked to international and national assessments, statistical models could be developing to estimate roughly how populations of various countries are likely to score in 2030;
• Clear feedback, along with recommendations for appropriate interventions, would allow countries and donors to engage in targeted policy dialogue to close the gap;
• Improved performance in grade 1 would improve performance in subsequent grades;
• With sufficient emphasis, funding, and space logistics, illiteracy among low‐income students could be eliminated in about 7 years and near‐universal and sustainable literacy could be attained by 2030.