Learning recovery to acceleration: a global update on country efforts to improve learning and reduce inequalities

The report examines what countries are doing to recover and accelerate learning, and how they are doing it, studying over 60 education systems. While many countries largely returned to ‘business as usual’ after the COVID-19 pandemic, others jumped into action - implementing comprehensive, multi-year strategies for improving learning and reducing inequalities. The report follows the RAPID Framework for Learning Recovery and Acceleration, which we published with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), UNESCO, UNICEF and USAID in 2022 as a menu of policy actions based on past evidence and on policies that many countries were already implementing. The focus of the report is on primary and secondary education and on the responses employed once schools reopened after pandemic-related disruptions. The policy responses of 60 low- and middle-income countries are analyzed in the report, with 7 countries examined in further depth: Cambodia, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Mongolia, Romania and Zambia.