Improving children’s reading and math at large scale in Côte d’Ivoire
Even before COVID-19 left as many as 1.6 billion students out of school in early 2020, millions of children and youth around the world did not have access to the quality education they needed to lead healthy, safe, and productive lives. Even worse, the poorest and most marginalized children continue to be most affected by this learning crisis, losing out on their right to education. This situation has far-reaching consequences for generations to come, including on poverty, inequality, climate change, and public health. Urgent action must be taken to rapidly and sustainably expand access to high-quality learning opportunities for all children. Of course, the question is “how?” While there exist many innovations that improve children’s learning, the vast majority only reach a small fraction of children in need. As a result, there is growing demand for more evidence and guidance on how to identify, adapt, and scale cost-effective policy and practice that lead to millions more children learning.
In response, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has been investigating efforts to scale and sustain evidence-based initiatives leading to large-scale improvements in children’s learning. CUE has been implementing a series of Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSL), in partnership with local institutions in several countries, to generate evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in global education—encouraging a stronger link between research and practice.
This report focuses on one of the scaling labs in Côte d’Ivoire—launched in 2019 in collaboration with Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC) and the Ministry of National Education and Literacy (MENA). It centers around the government-led process of implementing, adapting, and scaling the Programme d’Enseignement Ciblé (PEC), a remedial education approach to improving early grade reading and math adapted from Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL). While the lab has focused on the experience of PEC to date, it serves as a case study into larger questions of how an evidence-based initiative can achieve progress toward national sustainable scale, with lessons that are transferable beyond PEC and Côte d’Ivoire.
PEC’s scaling journey: A confluence of advantageous factors
In many ways, PEC represents the “ideal scenario” for scaling and sustaining an initiative within a formal education system. PEC benefitted from a confluence of factors in its favor—some of which have been strategically and systematically orchestrated, others which have serendipitously emerged. TRECC’s problem-driven approach supported the development of government buy-in for PEC from the beginning and contributed to strong government ownership. The simplicity of the approach, the fact that it resonates with theoretical principles that teachers learn during initial training, its pilot through direct government delivery, its convincing results, and its clear pathway for scaling in the education system also fostered government engagement and facilitated PEC’s expansion.
The story of PEC has highlighted the tireless and inspiring efforts of so many education stakeholders in Côte d’Ivoire striving to improve learning outcomes for children, especially the most vulnerable.
The partnerships forged in the TRECC model were other important factors in generating support for PEC, including the opportunity to experiment with different potential solutions before settling on one, the role of a neutral third-party assessing pilot results, technical support from organizations that originally developed and studied the TaRL approach, and the existence of a scaling lab bringing together diverse stakeholders for reflection and peer-learning. PEC has also had success in gaining senior-level support within MENA, with key influential individuals championing it. This critical support has been maintained despite political turnover and shifts in the broader education environment, including a global pandemic. Finally, the availability of financing for PEC beyond an initial pilot phase—including funding for additional adaptation and expansion and potential access to five years of financing through the creation of a public-private pooled fund—has been essential for moving PEC beyond a short-lived project to an approach that the government intends to scale within the system.
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Nonetheless, despite the many factors in its favor, scaling and sustaining PEC in Côte d’Ivoire is not guaranteed and critical challenges remain, including limited government capacity to incorporate and deliver the model in existing systems with quality, the persistence of a project mentality among some key actors involved, and insufficient attention to the engagement of education stakeholders at local levels (including teachers and communities). Other potential constraints to future expansion and sustaining of PEC include delays encumbering the launch of the new pooled fund and challenges around identifying and securing sustainable national financing.
Lessons to strengthen PEC’s expansion and inform future scaling efforts
Through accompanying the scaling journey of PEC, lessons emerged from the case centered around four key themes that were consequential to PEC’s scaling success to date, and which will continue to play a critical role in future efforts. These themes are: 1) institutionalization as a pathway to sustainable scale; 2) partnerships and champions; 3) costs and financing; and 4) adaptation and continuous learning. Each of these themes offers lessons from the case of PEC and targeted recommendations not only to support ongoing progress to expand and deepen the impact of PEC but also to inform scaling efforts of other evidence-based education initiatives. Below is a brief overview of each of the lessons with targeted recommendations for implementers, policymakers, funders, and researchers that are further detailed in the full report.
1. Institutionalization as a path to scaling in education
Ensure a relentless focus on who will deliver at large-scale from the start: Piloting an initiative with government takes more time and capacity up front, but also fosters buy-in, determines what is feasible, and demonstrates potential for a solution to work in the system.
Focus on the scalability of an innovation in the local context: While it is tempting to seek innovations that significantly disrupt existing ways of working or test cutting-edge technology, it is critical to focus on the practicality of scaling an innovation in a particular context, including how best to infuse it sustainably and equitably into existing systems. Often, the innovations with the most potential for large-scale impact are those that are most feasible for the system to bear.
Create coordinating structures with sufficient capacity and a strong government mandate: Scaling through institutionalization requires a coordinating structure with a high-level mandate to make decisions, harmonize efforts, and ensure the work of scaling moves forward—particularly once institutionalization progresses beyond any individual’s or department’s job description.
Maintain one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brakes: Even with significant government buy-in for scaling, it is important that all stakeholders understand the need for a longer-term, phased approach to scaling, with a laser focus on quality and equity issues, balancing inevitable trade-offs during the scaling process.
2. Partnerships and collaboration for scaling in education
Catalyze collective action, as well as recognize the point of diminishing returns: Government engagement in the scaling process may be critical for expanding and sustaining an education initiative, but collective action is nonetheless required to bring different perspectives, resources, expertise, and roles. At the same time, sufficient attention must be given to clarify each partner’s motivation and incentives, value addition, vision of scaling and success, and risk tolerance.
Support intermediaries to foster partnerships and align incentives: Intermediary or third-party organizations—including funders—can play a critical bridging role in scaling to align disparate incentives, develop innovative approaches to leverage the unique strengths and perspectives of each actor, and gather stakeholders together behind a shared goal.
Cultivate an alliance of scaling champions: Creating conditions for effective solutions to spread requires scaling champions at all levels within and outside government, classrooms, and communities, and deliberately creating space to work together differently—disrupting existing patterns of collaboration and decisionmaking. Leveraging a collaborative learning approach, such as the RTSL, can help to “bring the system into the room” and build a new way of working.
Support a mindset shift and behavior change for scaling: Identifying and building a cadre of scaling leaders and change agents requires more than getting these stakeholders to support scaling a particular initiative—it requires raising awareness of key scaling principles, encouraging application of these principles through concrete action and behavior change, and strengthening the competencies and skills needed to scale impact.
3. Costs and financing for scale
Shed light on long-term government financing: For many innovators and implementers, government budgetary processes and pipelines remain opaque, and more clarity is needed on how to align with or integrate into these processes to mobilize long-term resources for sustainable scale.
Increase support to make sound cost projections at scale: There is significant need to build local expertise and capacity to collect, analyze, and use cost data to inform scaling projections. Incentives are needed to support its collection, analysis, and sharing, and encourage greater transparency and opportunities for learning.
Leverage the potential of pooled financing to cross the “valley of death:” Donor collaboration and pooled funding can provide important bridge financing for scale, helping initiatives make the challenging transition from pilot to large-scale implementation, but more learning is needed on the benefits and challenges of these mechanisms.
4. Adaptation and collaborative learning in the process of scaling
Integrate a continuous learning process within government systems: There are tangible benefits to infusing a continuous learning approach, such as the RTSL, into government systems to support implementation, adaptation, and scaling, with quick feedback loops and opportunities for reflection and course corrections. Government leadership of a lab-like process can confer the necessary authority to develop, test, and refine a scaling strategy with relevant decisionmakers.
Strengthen adaptive capacity to respond to rapidly changing environments: Too often adaptations being tested in the scaling process are not systematically planned for or well documented, and the learning is lost; more systematic approaches to planning for and learning from anticipated and spontaneous changes are needed.
Invest time and resources in peer learning and exchange: Many initiatives in the process of scaling are working in isolation, and in spite of contextual differences, can benefit from greater collaboration to share experiences, reflect on common challenges and opportunities, and problem-solve collectively. Peer learning must go beyond one-off occasions and should be supported as an intrinsic aspect of the work that receives sufficient time, capacity, and resources.
Though still in its early chapters, PEC’s scaling story is instructive on many levels. More than anything, the story of PEC has highlighted the tireless and inspiring efforts of so many education stakeholders in Côte d’Ivoire striving to improve learning outcomes for children, especially the most vulnerable.
And yet the case of PEC also underscores that even with this almost “best case” scenario of scalability and opportunity, scaling impact in education remains a challenging and long-term endeavor that cannot be taken for granted. PEC is arguably now entering its most challenging chapter—navigating the tenuous middle phase of scaling—as it pushes beyond a small-scale pilot to become further embedded in government operations and reach significantly more children. This phase will require continued adaptation and experimentation, collecting data, and using them in rapid learning cycles to ensure PEC’s efficacy is sustained as it expands. Regardless of what the future holds, the Ivorian government’s efforts to scale and sustain PEC—in partnership with various actors—will continue to provide rich insights into scaling and system-wide change for Côte d’Ivoire and many countries around the world.
Read the full report or the summary findings (forthcoming).
Photo credit: TaRL Africa
Understanding child-friendly urban design
More than half of the world’s children are growing up in cities. By 2030, up to 60 percent of the world’s urban population will be under 18 years old. Yet, children and families are often invisible to urban planners, developers, and architects when creating city-wide policies that impact transportation, air and noise pollution, and health and well-being. “The truth is that the vast majority of urban planning decisions and projects take no account of their potential impact on children and make no effort to seek children’s views…All too often, this is down to a simple lack of respect for children’s rights or abilities,” writes Tim Gill in his recent book “Urban Playground.”
A critical component of child-friendly urban planning is prioritizing opportunities for learning and healthy development both in and out of school. This is especially important for children living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment. Deep inequalities plague the education systems in many countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic has widened existing educational equity in worrisome ways. In the U.S., persistent economic disparities among families lead to large differences in educational outcomes. Research shows that as early as age 3, children from lower-income households lag behind their more affluent peers in language and spatial skills.
To address both of these needs, cities around the world are beginning to invest in Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL)—installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. The climate for building on this momentum could not be more favorable, or the timing more urgent. In the wake of COVID-19, growing numbers of leaders understand the need to rethink neighborhood investments to enhance health, well-being, and economic opportunity—and to reexamine old views on how and where children develop the competencies and skills needed to thrive—and ask how to build on a community’s fund of knowledge to reduce inequities through culturally-informed spaces. In the U.S., these leaders have a once-in-a-generation chance to channel American Rescue Plan funds for innovations in child development and learning—while making cities more vibrant and inclusive.
As the PLL movement continues to grow, we need more expansive ways to measure its impacts, and to use that information both to improve PLL installations and to garner greater investment in them.
We know from existing installations that PLL is effective at enhancing STEM and literacy skills and increasing child-caregiver interaction in ways that build social and mental capitol. But as the PLL movement continues to grow, we need more expansive ways to measure its impacts, and to use that information both to improve PLL installations and to garner greater investment in them. This brief presents the first iteration of a new metrics framework city-level policymakers, community organizations, the private sector, and philanthropies can use to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes, as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces.
A new approach to child-friendly urban design: Playful Learning Landscapes
PLL is an emerging, interdisciplinary area of study and practice that reimagines the potential of cities as supportive ecosystems for children and families by marrying urban design and placemaking with the science of learning. The Brookings Institution, in collaboration with Temple University and the Playful Learning Landscapes Action Network (PLLAN), is building an interdisciplinary community of practice and responding to the growing interest of stakeholders and decisionmakers around the world to generate evidence and guidance for scaling the PLL approach.
PLL uses human-centered co-design to create learning opportunities in bus stops, parks, and supermarkets and other everyday places—transforming them into enriching, social spaces for children, families, and communities. What makes PLL unique is the critical element of playful learning—a spectrum of child-directed play methods that include free play (no direct adult involvement), guided play (supported by adults toward a learning goal), and games (rule-based activities with learning goals) informed by the latest findings in developmental science. Guided play—the focus of interactions in PLL—allows children to maintain agency during their play with the guidance of an adult to provide structure and focus the activity around a learning goal (e.g., a well-curated exhibit in a children’s museum).
Scaling playful learning in cities
A growing number of cities around the world—including Philadelphia, Chicago, Santa Ana, CA, London, Mumbai, and others—are embracing PLL to support children’s learning outcomes and promote urban renewal, but efforts to scale and sustain these interventions are nascent. To fully realize the potential benefits of PLL, cities need more than a handful of installations placed sporadically around the landscape. To get to scale, municipalities instead must start infusing playful learning principles and design elements into the mainstream practices of government, businesses, and other organizations.
To this end, last year we outlined the steps city-level decisionmakers and stakeholders must take to create rich playful learning environments. These include fostering better coordination among city agencies to support the integration of playful learning efforts into new and existing programs and projects, streamlining regulatory and other processes to make it easier for nonprofits and other groups to implement PLL installations and activities, and collaborating with national organizations that are supporting local efforts. Scaling also requires engaging with neighborhood residents as equal partners in all phases of a project to ensure that designs meet their needs and preferences and communicating the why and how of playful learning to expand its reach and impact.
Brookings now seeks to address key gaps in cities’ knowledge, networks, and capacity and inform strategies that integrate PLL into mainstream urban planning and placemaking—bringing it to scale.
For city leaders, community organizations, the private sector, and philanthropy to put time and resources into expanding PLL, they need hard evidence that it works. This requires a framework that outlines the desired outcomes of PLL and a set of metrics for measuring whether or not those outcomes are achieved.
Measuring Playful Learning Landscapes outcomes
For city leaders, community organizations, the private sector, and philanthropy to put time and resources into expanding PLL, they need hard evidence that it works. This requires a framework that outlines the desired outcomes of PLL and a set of metrics for measuring whether or not those outcomes are achieved. As Senior Fellow Jenny Perlman-Robinson wrote in a Brookings report on PLL in Philadelphia, “Without clarity about definitions of success or without clearly defined metrics for measuring outcomes, it will be challenging to motivate and inform change at large scale.” Moreover, more robust evaluation will help communities know if individual PLL sites are working as intended, which will inform improvements to current as well as future sites.
There is now ample evidence that PLL supports several learning goals. For example, existing research shows that PLL promotes the kinds of caregiver-child behaviors and interactions directly related to later progress in social, STEM and literacy skills. Aside from these learning outcomes, we also must build on what we know about the benefits of public space investments to better understand how PLL installations can help improve the public realm, provide new opportunities for social interaction, and contribute to community cohesion (Box 1).
To advance this knowledge, Brookings and its partners have developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both learning science and placemaking perspectives to define success criteria. Our “Playful Learning Landscapes metrics framework” will help evaluate the impact of pilot projects and guide iteration, scaling, and adaptation of PLL to future sites.
Box 1. Community engagement is critical for fostering PLL outcomes
The PLL metrics framework focuses on potential outcomes of playful learning spaces in the public realm. Philadelphia, Chicago, Santa Ana and other cities demonstrate that co-designing PLL prototypes with the community is required to reach these outcomes. For example, researchers worked closely with community members in Philadelphia to design and place the installations in Urban Thinkscape. Researchers also recruited and trained neighborhood members to be data collectors in response to requests from community members for more employment opportunities for neighborhood residents, and more ways to be involved in—and have greater ownership of—the process. In Santa Ana, researchers worked with mothers in the community to co-design signage that promotes caregiver-child interactions in the supermarket. Signs in the produce section with questions like, “How do you find the best fruit or vegetable?” and “What senses do you use to find the best one?” reflect stories that the mothers told about passed-down techniques for picking a ripe avocado or papaya. These signs promote sharing cultural traditions passed down from one generation to the next and encourage children to make observations and test hypotheses—both important skills for learning science later.
Playful Learning Landscapes metrics framework
Our work to create a PLL metrics framework began with a landscape analysis to survey existing frameworks and tools around measurement and evaluation of playful learning in cities. To create goals and metrics from the child development perspective, we turned to the rich and growing body of research that demonstrates PLL increases caregivers’ attitudes about the connection between play and learning, promotes the kinds of caregiver-child communication that support relationship building and language learning, and encourages talk about numbers, letters, and spatial relations.
In addition, three placemaking and urban design frameworks inspired and helped shape our approach and selected metrics.
The Place Diagram (Project for Public Spaces (PPS)): Through their work evaluating public spaces across the world, PPS identified four qualities of successful public spaces: (1) The spaces are accessible; (2) people engage in a range of activities there; (3) the space has a positive image and is comfortable; and (4) it is sociable and welcoming. The framework also prompts the user to ask key questions in assessing each of the qualities. For example, asking “Do sidewalks lead to and from the adjacent areas?” or “Does the space function for people with special needs” to address accessibility.
KaBOOM! Play Everywhere: Understanding Impact (Gehl): To examine the impact of KaBOOM!’s Play Everywhere initiative—implemented across 50 U.S. cities—Gehl used a multimethod approach including on-site observations, interviews with stakeholders, and intercept and neighborhood surveys to understand who visits the sites, what they do when visiting, and how they feel about the sites. Through this work, Gehl identified four key components of a successful Play Everywhere project: (1) proximity to existing kid “hubs” (where families live and spend time); (2) incorporation of kids’ perspectives into the design and implementation process early and often; (3) prioritization of interactive designs that spark curiosity and imagination; and (4) messaging that it’s okay to play in many different spaces (e.g., at the bus stop or on the sidewalk).
Measuring the Civic Commons (Reimagining the Civic Commons): Reimagining the Civic Commons designed a measurement system to examine the impact of investments in public spaces and the surrounding communities towards four key goals: civic engagement, socioeconomic mixing, environmental sustainability, and value creation. Within each goal are “signals”—indicators associated with a project’s objectives, and each of those signals has a set of metrics designed to understand changes such as average hourly visitorship of the site, number of trees in civic commons sites, and percent of respondents who say they feel safe in the neighborhood.
While the resources described above were all instrumental in shaping the development of our metrics framework, we adopted the approach of mapping metrics to signals and the signals in turn to goals (inspired by the Measuring the Civic Commons framework) because it allowed us to integrate both the child development and placemaking perspectives of PLL into one framework (Box 2). Our metrics framework has the following five goals:
Promote healthy child development and learning: Sparks playful and meaningful experiences that support child-caregiver interactions known to promote cognitive and social-emotional learning and positive development.
Support an accessible and welcoming public realm: Offers a physical space that is easy and convenient to access, feels safe and inviting to visitors, and reflects community cultures and values.
Foster a vibrant and inclusive social environment: Cultivates an engaging public realm that promotes social interaction among children and adults of all incomes and backgrounds.
Nurture civic engagement and strong sense of community: Builds neighborhood pride and community cohesion through the cocreation and ongoing oversight of PLL sites.
Strengthen the economic health and resiliency of neighborhoods: Has a positive impact on the surrounding community, including local businesses, property owners, and residents.
Box 2. PLL metrics framework at a glance
Note: The full framework can be found here.
Challenges and next steps
The “Playful Learning Landscapes metrics framework” is a key step toward generating data that are critical for scaling by helping to define the desired outcomes of playful learning in public and shared spaces, and importantly, how they are measured. But measuring the impact of public spaces isn’t easy—getting the metrics “right” is likely to be an ongoing effort, and data collection itself is often messy and time intensive. Our framework employs a range of qualitative methods including observation, intercept, and neighborhood surveys, each of which can be difficult to design and employ, especially in communities where trust in local government is low and residents may be wary of interacting with outsiders.
As the PLL movement gains momentum, generating evidence to demonstrate its impact will be key to strengthening the field and shifting mindsets among key stakeholders and city-level decisionmakers to weave playful learning into the fabric of city policies.
In the next phase of work, Brookings—together with its partners—will pilot the PLL metrics framework to explore research questions such as:
Are changes in caregiver and/or child attitudes and behaviors toward play and learning sustained after the initial exposure to PLL installations? In the future, we will want to measure the possible child development and learning effects that are prompted after visiting a PLL site (for example, at home or in other environments).
Do multiple PLL installations in the same neighborhood lead to broad-based impacts at various geographic scales? The current framework focuses on outcomes at the individual site level. As more installations are built across cities in the U.S. and globally, we hypothesize that PLL will yield more expansive neighborhood and community outcomes. Data from The Ultimate Block Party—the first PLL pilot—suggest that caregivers’ attitudes about the play-learning connection can be shaped in a community setting. These broader outcomes will be important to measure as a step toward sustainable uptake of PLL approaches.
What are the most effective methods for collecting data to maximize the quality of feedback? As described in Box 1, engaging community members to collect data can help in increasing response rates and improving the quality of feedback, but collecting survey data at PLL pilot sites will be challenging.
As the PLL movement gains momentum, generating evidence to demonstrate its impact will be key to strengthening the field and shifting mindsets among key stakeholders and city-level decisionmakers to weave playful learning into the fabric of city policies. The PLL metrics framework provides a roadmap to collect data that demonstrates PLL’s tremendous potential to narrow opportunity gaps while creating more livable and playful cities. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL on a neighborhood- and/or city-wide level. Rather than an end point, the framework provides a starting point for thinking about PLL’s goals and how to understand—and communicate—if and how sites are achieving them. This important work is just beginning.
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Leveraging the Biden-Harris climate agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals
In November, at the COP26 U.N. Climate Change Conference, the U.S. will join the community of nations keeping alive the promise to meet the agreed target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. The Biden administration will continue to work to reestablish U.S. leadership and increase global commitments for tackling climate change amid lingering skepticism from other countries. Its strategy for achieving its own ambitious target goes beyond a narrow focus on mitigation to include other important dimensions such as quality jobs, public health, and environmental justice. This offers an opportunity to leverage the areas of intersection and synergy between the U.S. climate agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to advance U.S. climate ambitions, both at home and abroad.
The US at COP26: The Importance of Rebuilding Credibility and Driving Ambition
President Biden has made climate change a key priority of his administration. He reversed President Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Accords on his first day in office, and hosted a global summit in April where he outlined a new, ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for the U.S.—a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels of economywide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.
At the U.N.-sanctioned COP, nations come together as peers to present both individual and collective climate commitments and progress toward their targets. This year, advocates and markets will be closely watching areas such as the phasing out of coal, commitments regarding hard-to-abate industries such as cement and aviation, and increased financing. While President Biden hosted some of the largest countries at the April 2021 Summit, for the wider global community, U.S. participation in COP26 constitutes an important next step in its reentry to the fold.
The Biden administration has already built a formidable team and rolled out ambitious plans, led by first-ever White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy to advance its priorities at home and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry to rally the international community. The COP presents a major opportunity for the U.S. to reassert its leadership on the global stage. The administration will be eager to raise the collective global ambition, and it is likely to build on its April commitments with new initiatives. It may even roll out a climate action plan that demonstrates how the U.S. will meet its new domestic target.
Notwithstanding these ambitions, the U.S. is still working to rebuild credibility and trust on these issues. The administration will face skepticism about both its ability to advance its plans at home and the extent to which the U.S. will remain dependable beyond its term in office.
The US Climate Action Plan: More than Mitigation
The administration’s climate change agenda is also a core pillar of the president’s comprehensive Build Back Better plan. This policy agenda also seeks to respond to the inequalities unveiled during the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning unleashed by the murder of George Floyd. Informed by these objectives, its strategy to reach the newly ambitious target reflects an integrated approach, one that accelerates mitigation of greenhouse gases to achieve the 50 percent reduction by 2030 while also spurring an economic transformation that results in a fairer, healthier, and more just economy.
President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad (EO 14008) clearly lays out this integrated approach. Published just a week after taking office, it establishes a governmentwide National Climate Task Force comprised of Cabinet secretaries, with a mandate to “facilitate planning and implementation of key Federal actions to reduce climate pollution; increase resilience to the impacts of climate change; protect public health; conserve our lands, waters, oceans, and biodiversity; deliver environmental justice; and spur well-paying union jobs and economic growth.”
The SDGs: A Potential Force Multiplier
Such an integrated strategy mirrors the interdependent objectives reflected in the SDGs, to which the U.S. and all other U.N. member states agreed in 2015. A central component of the SDGs is that they are universal, meaning they apply domestically to all countries regardless of income level.
While the Biden administration has taken some steps to position its international development investments through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) within the context of the SDGs, it has not yet signaled an embrace of the SDGs related to its domestic agenda. Yet the harmony between the U.S. climate plan and the SDGs provides the administration with an additional entry point to rebuild U.S. credibility and generate additional political momentum for its ambitious and comprehensive climate agenda at COP26.
Similar to the administration’s climate agenda, the SDGs provide a ready-made framework that connects the dots between health, jobs, resilience, and justice. It also importantly helps to set targets for assessing progress and ensuring accountability. Action on climate change has its own goal (SDG 13) and, amid today’s changing environment, stands as an essential requirement for successful sustainable development. This framework for accountability is already recognized and being used around the world, including in specific cities and sectors in the United States.
Given that the SDGs represent a collective global effort, with an imperative for every country to make progress on human, economic, and environmental targets simultaneously, drawing connections between the U.S. climate plan and the SDGs could provide another concrete example of the administration’s seriousness about reentering and respecting multilateral alliances—and stake out a potential leadership position with humility, as it acknowledges the progress necessary within our own borders.
Specific Synergies between US Climate Actions and the SDGs
A key emphasis of the SDGs is to “leave no one behind,” ensuring that governments focus their policy attention on those who have been most marginalized or are most vulnerable. The president’s executive order quickly establishes this as a clear priority for its proposed actions on climate change.
Economic opportunities and new jobs (SDG 8) stemming from a sustainable economy and the economic recovery must benefit left-behind communities—“places that have suffered as a result of economic shifts and places that have suffered the most from persistent pollution, including low-income rural and urban communities, communities of color, and Native communities.” It also calls for greater job opportunities for women (SDG 5). This commitment is reinforced by multiple Build Back Better proposals under negotiation in the budget reconciliation process.
The executive order also strongly emphasizes the importance of advancing environmental justice. It establishes a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council (WHEJAC) and calls for the creation of an environmental justice scorecard for federal agencies and initiatives. Its mandate of an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity and an interagency working group focused on reducing the risk of climate to vulnerable groups further advances this priority.
At the center of this effort, the Justice40 Initiative aims to ensure that 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy flow to disadvantaged communities. It also calls for a new Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to provide further guidance to federal departments and agencies.
These actions directly link to SDG targets related to public health, clean air, clean water, access to green space, gender equity, racial equity, and reductions in inequality. Presumably, both a scorecard and screening tool for environmental justice will depend upon disaggregation of demographic and geographic data, replicating the type of targets, indicators, and evidence base inherent in the SDGs. For example, Justice40 directly reflects the spirit of SDG target 10.1, which calls for progressively achieving sustained income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average.
The transition toward a sustainable economy will involve upgrading infrastructure, investing in clean energy, and supporting bold U.S. leadership on innovation while uplifting impacted mining and power plant communities. These objectives tie to targets under SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure), including target 9.4 (upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable). The Investment in Coal and Power Plant Communities plan aims to support small, medium, and rural manufacturers in the transition, to increase access to capital for domestic manufacturers, to guarantee union and bargaining rights for public service workers (PRO Act), and to ensure domestic workers receive the legal benefits and protections they deserve.
The administration seeks to produce clean and affordable energy that generates opportunities for job creation. The Initiative for Better Energy, Emissions, and Equity (E3) includes $30 million investment in the American workforce through technical assistance and funding awards by the Department of Energy (DOE), with the aim to save $750 per year in energy bills for nearly 12 million American households, and create nearly 700,000 quality jobs in every region in the country through the Clean Energy Accelerator. By aiming at energy efficiency and universal affordable access to clean, efficient energy, the initiative could be measured through the indicators of SDG 7 (Affordable & Clean Energy), including targets 7.1 (ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services) and 7.2 (increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix).
Beyond the Federal Government: Leveraging US Multistakeholder Leadership
The Biden administration would not be starting from a blank slate in more intentionally fusing the SDG and climate agendas domestically. Many U.S. cities, states, and corporations are already in the vanguard of combining climate action and the SDGs. City governments across the U.S. have begun to use the SDGs as an evidence-based framework for measuring progress and fostering policy coherence among different offices and levels of governance. They also embrace the SDGs as a valuable policy framework that is helping to mobilize progress on climate goals, integrating those ambitions with critical targets on inclusion, equity, and sustainability. Cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and Phoenix—leaders in the climate and environmental agenda—have pioneered approaches to adapting the SDGs to their local realities.
Over the past five years, U.S. local leadership has also had a decidedly global flavor. Through city-to-city cooperation, networks, and policy exchanges globally, U.S. cities and states are pushing ambition and policy among their counterparts across the world. They have established their leadership in networks such as C40 Cities (chaired last year by Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles), ICLEI, the U.S. Climate Alliance, the Urban 20 (an affiliate of the G-20), the Local2030 Islands Network, and the Brookings SDG Leadership Cities network.
This activity helped maintain U.S. global leadership and cooperation during a notable federal absence. While the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, U.S. stakeholders remained committed, and many of them have become global examples of combined action on climate and sustainable development.
Hawaii helps host a Local 2030 Hub, providing leadership, facilitating peer exchange, and offering technical assistance with a network of small island developing states in the Pacific. New York City launched the first-ever Voluntary Local Review (VLR), an innovative report on local SDG progress that has emerged as a global movement, one so widespread that it was recognized by United Nations member states this year in the Ministerial Declaration of the High-Level Political Forum for the first time. Los Angeles initiated a local Green New Deal and committed to 100 percent renewables on its grid by 2025 while launching a network of cities dedicated to advancing gender equity. The Biden administration can benefit from the experience of these leaders in integrating the two agendas and leverage the stature that many have earned globally.
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Stronger communication and interactions between the local and federal levels will also benefit the implementation of the administration’s domestic priorities. The effort to achieve 50 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2030 will necessitate a shared vision, alignment, and support among local, state, and national actors, as many of the policies and goals designed at the federal level will rely upon execution by local leaders. From land use decisions to infrastructure and shifts in policies and investments, execution to reach emission targets has a decidedly local flavor. The SDGs provide the platform that can enable local leaders to take on climate while meeting other concerns of their constituents, and provide a common language for local governments to cooperate with the national government as well as coordinate across the vast array of local jurisdictions.
To be successful domestically, the federal government will need to scale up local success and facilitate transfers of knowledge to lower the costs of a fair and equitable energy transition. Building holistic sustainable development plans locally requires practices such as decarbonization, energy transition, geo-explicit approaches, and data monitoring, which require staff, skills, and resources. Federal leadership could help scale up local action and successes by lowering the transaction costs of that exercise, using the SDGs as a universal toolbox so it doesn’t have to be done from scratch.
Recommendations
There are several recommendations that the Biden-Harris administration could embrace in both the short and long term:
1. Explicitly leverage and showcase local leadership and domestic SDG-climate models and innovations at COP26.
This could be done by including local leaders at planned events and forthcoming announcements and partnerships, and even including them on the official United States delegation. Ensuring partnership and regular, open communication between these stakeholders and the U.S. government delegation during the COP proceedings can help jointly reinforce mutually beneficial agendas. Finding ways at COP26 to lift up U.S. local leadership could be a powerful motivator for building additional global partnerships and ambition, and this approach has the added benefit of showcasing U.S. actions that are not beholden to current Congressional budget negotiations or the politics of federal elections. Another opportunity is showcasing the existing and multistakeholder political leadership and innovations already taking place at the local level, through mayors, governors, corporate leaders, and universities. It would demonstrate the global leadership of all segments of American society—after all, it is not just nation-states that will solve climate change.
2. Map and align any U.S. climate action plan to the SDGs.
Doing so would draw attention in the global community and is likely to be perceived as a signal of support for global cooperation that could enable increased international momentum for the U.S. climate agenda. It would also help integrate the interagency process domestically. The National Security Council (NSC) can take advantage of the interagency processes, particularly on Build Back Better, COP26, and climate finance, as an opportunity for using the SDGs to describe how U.S. climate commitments can lead to better economic and social outcomes. This would provide a powerful narrative to bolster its international leadership and engagements at COP26, pushing to accelerate the economic and other transitions needed to reach the targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, especially as many governments are grappling with making progress on climate change at the same time as achieving an equitable economic recovery from COVID-19.
3. Elevate the SDG-climate nexus in specific domestic initiatives, starting with Justice40.
Identifying specific pilot initiatives that advance climate action and the SDGs, including around measurements of equity and prosperity, would send an important signal that the Biden administration is committed to supporting action-oriented efforts in local communities. As Justice40 develops its approach, tools, and scorecards, it could act as a pilot by mapping to key SDG targets and disaggregating data by racial and other demographics to develop the evidence base and measure progress on justice and equity considerations. This initiative so clearly combines social and economic considerations with the administration’s climate ambitions, it provides a ready-made opportunity to explore and exploit the intersections between the two agendas. The increased accountability through the use of SDG data and targets would also provide additional basis for building trust with communities skeptical of these commitments, and could help institutionalize climate justice efforts beyond election cycles. It could also create a through-line for upcoming events on the political calendar that are priorities for the Biden Administration, moving from COP26 to the Summit for Democracy, for example.
4. Identify and develop processes and channels to align federal and local actions within the SDG-climate nexus.
Creating more regular and sustained policy channels among local, state, and national leaders would enable efficient local execution on the policy ambitions set forward by the U.S. national strategy and help identify best practices and innovations. Given the priority that local leaders are already giving to social and economic considerations, an alignment between climate action and the SDGs would be welcomed at the local level. This would also pay dividends in better connecting influential local leadership to diplomacy being done in global networks. Several coalitions could be leveraged, such as the U.S. Climate Alliance and WWF’s America is All In.
5. Announce an intention to conduct a U.S. Voluntary National Review (VNR) on the SDGs, to take advantage of the multiplier effect for U.S. commitments on equitable climate action both domestically and globally, and recognize the domestic applicability of the SDGs.
This offers additional reinforcement to the administration’s drive to build credibility and momentum for its global climate leadership. The United States is the only G-7 and G-20 country not to have submitted a VNR (nearly 170 countries have presented VNRs since 2016). A U.S. commitment to a VNR could create global momentum and attention that will add to its new commitments on climate action, connect its domestic action to its global leadership and investments, and provide another entry point for U.S. reengagement in the global multilateral community. Undertaking a VNR would also offer a “unified, measurable vision” that connects to the global development priorities that the U.S. government invests in and implements internationally through USAID, MCC, DFC, and the State Department.
Conclusion
The above ideas and recommendations would send important signals to domestic and foreign policy audiences that the Biden administration is committed to and is implementing policies and practices that ensure a more just, sustainable, and equitable recovery from the pandemic. Since the administration has not yet signaled its approach to the SDGs domestically, these ideas could also provide momentum for what it might do on the SDG framework in the United States as well. The Office of the Climate Advisor and the National Climate Task Force ought to have a major role as the administration determines its commitment to the SDGs overall. So too should regular channels of communication, learning, and policy exchange be established among the growing cohort of diverse American leaders committed to climate action and the SDGs that cities, states, corporations and investors, philanthropy, universities, and civil society are already carrying forward.
The COVID-19 pandemic, a quickly warming planet, and the murder of George Floyd have demonstrated just how connected these issues are to one another, blurring the lines and important connections between domestic and global leadership from the U.S. The SDGs provide an important vehicle for the Biden administration to rebuild credibility at home and abroad and to implement a comprehensive climate action agenda rooted in equity and sustainability.
Improving learning and life skills for marginalized children
Even before COVID-19 shuttered schools around the world, rapidly expanding access to high-quality learning opportunities for all children was critically needed. The pandemic has only exacerbated the magnitude, inequity, and urgency of this need. While many innovations exist—often emerging outside the formal education system—the question has increasingly become how to scale and sustain those that are most effective at improving learning for all.
Patrick Hannahan
Former Project Director, Millions Learning Project – The Brookings Institution
Jenny Perlman Robinson
Senior Fellow – Global Economy and Development, Center for Universal Education
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@JennyPerlman
Christina Kwauk
Nonresident Fellow – Global Economy and Development, Center for Universal Education
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CKwauk
In response, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has been investigating efforts to scale and sustain evidence-based initiatives leading to large-scale improvements in children’s learning. CUE is implementing a series of Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSL), in partnership with local institutions in several countries, to generate evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in global education—encouraging a stronger link between research and practice.
This report focuses on one of the scaling labs launched in Tanzania in 2018 in collaboration with the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED). It examines the process of implementing, adapting, and scaling the Learner Guide Program, which delivers life skills and mentorship provided by local female secondary school graduates (Learner Guides) to secondary school students as part of an 18-month volunteer program, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST) and the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG).
Learner Guide Program: Improving education outcomes and supporting young women’s transition to the workforce
Established in 2005, CAMFED Tanzania has worked in partnership with local communities and government to co-create locally sustainable solutions to address barriers to girls’ education, supporting more than 88,000 marginalized girls to attend primary school and 54,000 girls to attend secondary school. Central to these efforts has been the Learner Guide Program, designed to improve education outcomes among marginalized children while simultaneously opening pathways for young women to transition from school to the workforce.
Learner Guides are recent female secondary-school graduates who volunteer in their communities for several hours per week to provide life skills facilitation, one-on-one mentorship, and links to social services, which in turn improve girls’ and boys’ attendance and performance in school. In return for their service, these young women receive skills training, interest-free loans to start small-scale enterprises, and an internationally recognized Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) qualification, which serve as a stepping stone to formal teacher training and employment. These incentives are coupled with the increased respect, leadership, and social standing the Learner Guides receive in their communities.
The Learner Guide Program has effectively traversed three phases of scaling to date—pilot, adaptation, and expansion. Throughout these phases, independent evaluations have averred significant and positive impact in schools where Learner Guides are operational, including improvements in students’ learning, girls’ retention in school, and young women’s livelihoods. The program is now on the threshold of its fourth, most critical phase of transition to national scale. Lessons from the previous phases can inform efforts to further expand the program’s reach and impact to many more disadvantaged children.
Lessons learned and recommendations to strengthen the Learner Guide Program’s expansion and inform future scaling efforts
The Learner Guide Program scaling journey to date has revealed lessons and associated recommendations centered around three key themes, which will continue to play a critical role in future scaling efforts. These lessons and recommendations can help CAMFED and the Tanzanian government formulate plans to further expand the impact of the Learner Guide Program, but they also include transferable lessons relevant for a broad spectrum of stakeholders involved in designing, implementing, researching, or otherwise supporting the scaling of an evidence-based education intervention.
1. Embedding the Learner Guide Program into the formal education system
Focus on how the program contributes to government policies and priorities
Plan for the evolving roles of government and innovators
Utilize financial and nonfinancial local incentives
Support an interministerial coordinating structure with sufficient knowledge and authority
2. Securing flexible and long-term financing for Learner Guide implementation
Engage directly with government budget processes and timelines
Build upon costed scaling analysis to guide strategic decisionmaking
3. Implementing a continuous learning process in support of the Learner Guide Program’s expansion
Continue to test adaptations to the model as it scales and use iterative feedback loops to analyze the impact of adaptations
Adapt and apply a collaborative learning approach to support education systems change
The Learner Guide Program finds itself at a critical inflection point after eight years of ongoing adaptation, learning, and expansion. It can remain an effective NGO-led program—working in collaboration with government and community stakeholders—or it can transition to a government-led initiative—embedding in the national education system with the opportunity to impact many more lives. The Learner Guide Program’s scaling journey in Tanzania to date offers valuable lessons to support further expansion of its impact and reach. At the same time, it serves as a case study for the education community into larger questions of how an evidence-based initiative can achieve progress toward national sustainable scale, with insights that are transferable beyond Tanzania.
More information about the Learning Guide program’s scaling journey and these lessons and recommendations are further detailed in the full report and in the summary findings.
Photo credit: Eliza Powell
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Property tax compliance in Tanzania: Can nudges help?
Abstract
Low- and middle-income countries around the world struggle with low tax compliance together with limited capacity to enforce compliance. This paper reports the results of a randomly rolled out text-message campaign aimed at promoting compliance among landowners in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Landowners were effectively randomly assigned to one of four groups designed to test different aspects of tax morale. They either received a simple text-message reminder to pay their tax (a test of salience), a message highlighting the connection between taxes and public services (reciprocity), a message communicating that non-compliers were not contributing to local or national development (social pressure), or no message (control). Recipients of any message were 11 percent (or 1.2 percentage points) more likely to pay any property tax by the end of the study period. Across treatments, simple reminders and reciprocity messages delivered similar gains in payment rates, whereas social pressure messages delivered lower gains in payment rates. Actual payment amounts were highest for reciprocity messages. The average estimated benefit-cost ratio across treatments is 20:1 due to the low cost of the intervention, with higher cost-effectiveness for reciprocity messages.
Download the working paper
Addressing youth unemployment through industries without smokestacks: A Tunisia case study
Abstract
Although the manufacturing sector is known to have a unique role in structural transformation, the industries without smokestacks (IWOSS) that include tradable services, and that concern in Tunisia mainly IT, tourism, transport, trade, and financial services, can provide new opportunities for export development and in turn drive economic growth. As such, and for each of these sectors, Tunisia is particularly well positioned to exploit the opportunities in industries without smokestacks.
This study takes the case of Tunisia and examines the current state and contribution of the industries without smokestacks to the economy and exports with the aim of improving our understanding of the major bottlenecks and solutions to unlocking the potential of these industries. The study gives special attention to the main market service activities cited above, given their great importance in job creation especially for youth. It aims particularly to analyze how youth unemployment can be solved through job creation in these IWOSS industries, as well as the identification of the skills required for these young people to find work.
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How Arkansas implemented its computer science education program
Computer science (CS) education helps students acquire skills such as computational thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration, among others. It has been linked with higher rates of college enrollment (Brown & Brown, 2020; Salehi et al., 2020), and a recent randomized control trial study also showed that lessons in computational thinking improved student response inhibition, planning, and coding skills (Arfé et., 2020). As these skills take preeminence in the rapidly changing 21st century, CS education promises to significantly enhance student preparedness for the future of work and active citizenship. CS education can also reduce skills inequality if education systems make a concerted effort to ensure that all students have equitable access to curricula that provide them with the needed breadth of skills, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.
Based on prior analysis and expert consultation, we selected 11 country, state, and provincial CS-education case studies with lessons that can apply broadly to other education systems. These cases come from diverse global regions and circumstances and have implemented CS education programs for various periods and to different levels of success. As such, we have examined information to extract lessons that can lead to successful implementation. This study will focus on the development of CS education in Arkansas.
While this U.S. state is not typically known for technological advancement, the governor’s strong leadership has led to a rapid and inclusive expansion of CS education, drawing praise from media and advocacy groups alike (Nix, 2017). Code.org, the Computer Science Teachers’ Association (CSTA), and Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance even noted in their 2019 “State of Computer Science Education” report that Arkansas has the largest share of high schools that teach CS (89 percent) of any U.S. state (State of Computer Science Education, 2020). The state also received the Frank Newman Award for State Innovation from the Education Commission in 2020 for its CS education initiative (CS for All, 2020). Given this recognition, the state’s CS education programs deserve close examination as other education systems work toward similar outcomes.
An overview of CS education in Arkansas
With regular funding, bipartisan political support, and strong executive leadership, Arkansas has made considerable progress at improving CS education since the beginning of the Hutchinson gubernatorial administration in 2015. To help guide key policy decisions, Governor Hutchinson appointed task force groups that included representatives from teacher associations, businesses, and government agencies. These stakeholders gave policymakers influential advice on teacher recruitment and training, student engagement activities, and curriculum standards.
The state set up incentives for participation in CS education programs. Since the 2015-16 school year, students have been able to use CS courses to fulfill high school science and mathematics requirements, which has contributed to Arkansas’s growing enrollment and improving diversity of CS classes (State of Computer Science Education, 2019; Associated Press, 2021). Arkansas has also developed CS certification for in-service and preservice teachers that encourage educators to participate in training programs (Code.org, 2017; Lang, Galanos, Goode, Seehorn, Trees, Phillips, & Stephenson, 2013). This is one of the more important aspects of this case study, as research has shown teachers to be one of the most important school-side factors in student learning in core academic subjects (Chetty Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005). We posit that this applies to CS as well.
Lessons learned
Political leadership and stakeholder support are key to securing legislative approval and funding for activities that expand quality CS education.
Clear certification pathways, financial incentives, and professional advancement opportunities give teachers incentives to attend teacher training.
A full-time staff of administrators collaborating with a task force of industry representatives, teachers, and parents can enable decisionmakers to account for stakeholder needs and accelerate CS program improvement.
Offering CS in every school and allowing elective CS courses to satisfy high school graduation and university admission requirements can encourage students to explore their interest in CS.
By offering CS education to children at an early age, education systems can enable students to develop a strong interest in the subject and prepare them for advanced courses in high school. This progression throughout grades K-12 can inspire the most interested students to specialize in CS.
Read the full case study»
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This policy brief highlights various ways in which State Parties can strengthen the linkages between the AfCFTA and the environment, with a focus on concrete approaches and strategies. With respect to the AfCFTA protocols that have already been negotiated—including the Annexes on Technical Barriers to Trade, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, and various Annexes on trade facilitation—strategic implementation can enhance the link between the AfCFTA and the environment. With respect to ongoing negotiations, including on tariff schedules and services concessions, as well as future negotiations on the Protocols of Intellectual Property, Investment, Competition and E-commerce, State Parties have the option of more clearly emphasizing the link between the AfCFTA and the environment.
The policy brief also encourages the AfCFTA Secretariat to explore the possibility of adding a Protocol on the Environment and Sustainable Development.
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What can social media listening tell us about the desire for education change?
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted virtually every facet of life, including schooling for young people around the world. As students, teachers, and parents coped over the last year and a half with remote learning and the closing and reopening of schools, many took to social media to share their thoughts and perspectives. These discussions were often a window into the sentiments of arguably the three most important actors in any education system: the child, his or her educator, and the child’s primary caregiver. We have used innovative research methods to analyze these social media conversations both before COVID and once the pandemic hit the shores of England.
We were interested in what students, teachers, and parents were discussing but also if the conversations were aligned—in other words were these three groups talking about the same thing? We know from research on systems change that alignment among a range of actors in a system is a particularly important factor facilitating change. Recent research on education systems that have successfully reformed highlights how a lack of alignment among stakeholders, particularly as it relates to the values and beliefs around education, were barriers to change
As schools in England increasingly grapple with adjustments and improvisations due to the pandemic, a question remains if this disruption will lead to any lasting changes. We at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings have argued that this disruption, while painful and overwhelming, could offer a “leapfrog” moment to transform so education systems can become more equitable and relevant than before COVID-19. A high degree of alignment among students, parents, and teachers would indicate readiness to change in the direction around shared sentiments, whereas a siloed or disparate set of conversations with little alignment would indicate a need to invest in deeper dialogue to make big education changes. In the absence of a coherent narrative on key elements, it can be difficult for education leaders to make changes without feeling like they have the public’s support.
As four key insights in this analysis will later show, teacher, parent, and student conversations on social media have been largely siloed within their individual groups and focused on different aspects of the education system. However, the pandemic—and the far-reaching issues generated by it, such as an exam-grading controversy and students’ mental health—represent important moments when the three groups united in joint conversations around education, ripening the possibility for change.
Why focus on England?
This particular analysis is limited to England, which we chose because of its representation in CUE’s Family Engagement in Education Network. Two England-based project collaborators are the Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council in Northern England that provides schooling to 47,000 students from reception to year 13, and Parent Kind, the leading membership organization for parent-teacher associations across the U.K. We will do a “social listening” deep dive for a range of other jurisdictions represented in our network in the months to follow.
Why social listening?
Social listening is an innovative and relatively new research method for gathering and making sense of large amounts of social media data. We were particularly intrigued by the promise of social media data scraping for targeting the thoughts and sentiments of the millions of citizens whose voices simply cannot make it into even the most ambitious of surveys. Tracking large amounts of social media posts related to education can help illuminate public sentiment, as well as appetite for reform. We were specifically interested in alignment among different stakeholders: Are students, teachers, and parents saying the same things about education? Understanding types of conversations and sentiments around education conversations can help chart a new path for education as we emerge out of the pandemic.
How was the research done?
This project relied on Talkwalker, a social media data analytics platform. Talkwalker acts as a living archive of internet artifacts, pulling in every publicly available item from sources ranging from local news sites to social media platforms. For each item published, Talkwalker includes data on the text’s content, author, source, and engagement—including, for example, how many times a tweet was shared or an article’s view count. Talkwalker provides powerful analytical functions to complement its archival capabilities, and using its proprietary artificial intelligence software, we trained an algorithm to capture items related to our topic of interest. The resulting model pulled in online artifacts originating in England that in some way discussed education or schooling.
Our analysis was based on a random sample of 25 percent of all public, online conversations among average users related to education in England. Since we were interested in better understanding the insights of everyday people—rather than celebrities or politicians—we focused on “average users” and excluded “influencers” from our dataset. We segmented the data by actor to determine trends by user group, concentrating on students, teachers, and parents—though schools, businesses and expert professionals were also present in our dataset. We also filtered by distinct time periods between April 29, 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and June 1, 2021.
While social listening provides unique insight into people’s conversations and sentiments, it has various limitations. It can only capture conversations and glean insights from people who are online and participating in the conversation. Therefore, there are likely some groups whose voices are not heard using this method, including people who do not have access to the internet or smart phones or computers, who are illiterate, or who may have access to the internet and devices but are unable or unwilling to participate. Additionally, we only conducted our analysis in English, so our study excluded any conversations taking place in other languages. Our findings also reveal that younger and male voices are overly represented in the conversation. Many social media platforms restrict access to users below a certain age and parents are more likely to control young children’s access, leading to better representation among older teenagers in social media participation than young children. It should be noted that there are many online conversations that are not public, and therefore due to privacy laws, were not included in our analysis; these include online conversations in various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Who is talking?
Many people in England have talked about education during the last two years. Our analysis found robust education conversations among everyday people, with approximately 16 million results during the more than two-year period of analysis. We analyzed a subset of this conversation—4 million results—representing 25 percent of the full volume of conversations on education among average users (Figure 1). The volume of conversation on education increased markedly in March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and remained higher than pre-pandemic levels throughout the year. However, this did not last into 2021, with a drop-off in conversations in January 2021. The volume of education conversation in May 2021 was similar to that in May 2019.
Figure 1. Changes in volume of education conversations between May 2019 and May 2021
Source: Talkwalker and authors’ analysis.
Young adults between the ages of 18-35 were the most active voices, making up over 76 percent of all conversations with 25-35-year-olds making up almost half the users in our study. There was very limited participation from anyone 45 years or older (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Age of participants in education conversation
Source: Talkwalker and authors’ analysis.
There were more male than female voices in the education conversation over the past two years (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Gender of participants in education conversations
Source: Talkwalker and authors’ calculations.
The education conversation among average users took place across a range of media types—from social media platforms like Twitter to online forums for particular actors (such as parents or students) to blogs and news stories. The greatest share of education conversations took place on Twitter (85 percent), followed by forums, and then blogs (Figure 4). This breakdown does not necessarily correspond to the depth of content or discussion, however, as one tweet that is limited to 280 characters is counted the same as one blog post, which could be 2,000 words. Both are counted as one result in their respective category when calculating the share of media types.
Figure 4. The types of media where the education conversation took place
Source: Talkwalker.
What is the nature of the conversation?
There are a wide range of motivations and objectives driving the different conversations around education. At any one time, some people want to solicit information from their networks, others want to vent their frustrations, some seek to share accomplishments, and others seek to convert people to their causes. We found that the conversations on education fell largely into four main types of discussions:
Resourcing. Conversations motivated by sharing information, resources, tools, advice, and tips.
Community building and connecting. Conversations motivated by connecting to others and building networks and a shared sense of community largely through seeking and offering news, sharing frustrations, and voicing appreciation.
Movements and advocacy. Conversations motivated by causes on particular topics, including on cultural moments such as Black Lives Matter or on specific interests such as outdoor education or educational practices for children with autism.
Sales and persuasion. Conversations motivated by convincing people to take a specific action, such as buying a product or using a certain practice.
In terms of what people were discussing across these types of conversations, we analyzed the most popular hashtags before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to get a picture of the nature of the national education conversation. We conducted a sentiment analysis on the top topics—thus, those topics in dark green are very positive, light green is trending toward positive, yellow is neutral, and red is negative (Figure 5). The more frequently a hashtag is used, the bigger it appears in the word cloud below.
Unsurprisingly, the national education conversation was more positive before COVID-19. Looking at the top hashtags from our education query as generated by Talkwalker’s algorithm, there were 25 hashtags with very positive sentiments in 2019 but only 13 such hashtags in 2021, with a much larger number of conversations reflecting a neutral sentiment during the pandemic. There were very few explicitly negative conversations, with only one—#Brexit—standing out in 2019 and only three—#BorisJohnson, #ClosetheSchools, and #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar—strongly negative conversations in 2021.
The topics of conversation also changed over time. Perhaps the most obvious and expected changes were the rise in new topics in 2020 that did not exist in 2019, such as #COVID-19, #BlackLivesMatter, #Lockdown, #homelearning, and #SchoolsReopening. As these topics entered the conversation, other topics such as #fun, #business, and #community became less popular. As we will discuss below, one topic that gained significant participants was #edutwitter—driven largely by teachers reaching out to share information and resources and to support each other.
Figure 5. Topics of conversation related to education pre-COVID-19 and during it
Source: Talkwalker.
Source: Talkwalker.
What are people talking about?
There is a large appetite to connect about education issues, but conversations are siloed and unaligned across students, teachers, and parents. The exception is key moments related to COVID-19 that united conversations across these three groups.
When we analyzed the conversations of students, teachers, and parents, we found a large appetite for connecting about education issues among these average social media users. However, there is not a common narrative across these conversations. Ultimately, we learned that stakeholders are not saying the same thing about education, but the exception to this is COVID-19. The pandemic became a unifying moment for students, teachers, and parents who all expressed frustrations with the difficult situation and sought and gave advice to and from others about how to cope. In other words, except for particular COVID-related moments such as the approach to exams, we did not find strong alignment across students, teachers, and parents in relation to what they expressed via social media.
While all stakeholders turned to social media to ask for help and share resources, students were especially preoccupied by exams, teachers were particularly vocal about student well-being and mental health, and parents were most concerned about numerous discrete interests, especially special needs education (“SEND”). Students were the most critical of the existing education system, sharing their in-the-moment frustrations around exams but also questioning the wisdom, utility, and relevance of how exams are currently structured and used. Teachers also expressed frustration at different elements of the education system, but they were most focused on finding ways to help solve the problems they or their peers faced day to day. Likewise, some parents posted their critiques of how the school system operates, but most were focused on how to support the particular needs of their children and their corresponding views about particular education approaches, programs, or practices that were important to them.
Across these conversations, there were particular moments where students, teachers, and parents were aligned in their discussion. England’s approach to grading exams in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic was an example of this, specifically as it relates to equity and fairness. Students were very vocal on this topic, and many teachers and parents chimed into the conversation. Another example is the concern about student mental health and well-being, a major concern for teachers, and, with the difficulties of COVID-19, parents also joined in the discussion expressing concern for their children’s emotional welfare.
There are likely a number of factors for these findings. First, several considerations could make students more critical of the system writ large versus teachers and parents. Certainly students, as the central subjects of the school system and the actors whose lives are most impacted by their experience, are one factor. Students’ position in society vis-à-vis teachers and parents is also likely another factor. The professional responsibility of teachers and familial responsibility of parents are likely to play a role in their focus on trying to navigate the current system in which they operate versus looking to change the system altogether. Additionally, another factor could be the social media platform itself. We analyzed public data where students, teachers, and parents had to self-identify, such as in their post or in their social media bio, as one of these three categories to be captured in our analysis. Speaking out candidly could be harder for teachers and parents given the relationships they may wish to retain at their schools or community. Second, the severity of the pandemic and its impacts on the daily lives of students, teachers, and parents was the likely reason it broke through as a topic everyone was talking about. The usefulness of social media to connect and help each other solve specific problems may also be why, except for particular COVID-related topics, the conversations are siloed. The problems that are front of mind for teachers, such as their classroom practice, are not the same topics that are front of mind for parents or students on a daily basis.
Below we review the four main insights on what students, teachers, and parents have talked about over the last two years and where there were differences and similarities.
Insight 1
Students, teachers, and parents are actively connecting with each other about education but largely in siloed conversations
Across many different topics and both prior to and during the pandemic, students, teachers, and parents are using social media to connect with each other, share information, and seek support. The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an increase in the volume of some of these conversations, especially among teachers. For example, the rise in #edutwitter, which saw a 104 percent increase in the first nine months after the pandemic began, is one indication of the growing appetite to connect with each other about education. One unintended but positive byproduct of coping with COVID-19 is that it has expanded the space for different stakeholders to participate in these resourcing and community-building conversations and practices. These types of conversations reflect a diversity of posts from students sharing jokes about exams, teachers offering useful resources, and parents asking for advice. Overall, conversations were largely within groups (students reaching out to students, teachers connecting with other teachers, and parents primarily interacting with other parents).
For example, many students took to social media to share exam tips or ask for help from other students on particular subjects or share study resources. A student on the popular U.K. forum, thestudentroom.co.uk, who asked for help solving a chemistry A-level problem is a typical example of this type of exchange:
“Hey guys! I attempted this question and got it wrong. I checked the mark scheme and can’t make any sense of it for the life of me!! Could anyone please help me and try to explain what’s going on? I’ve also attached the mark scheme. Thanks” (May 1, 2021)
Teachers are frequently reaching out to each other to share stories, resources, and advice. They are by far the most active participants—compared to students and parents—in the resourcing and community-building conversations online. Most are participating in #edutwitter, but there are also a number of other smaller communities where teachers share resources such as #teacher5oclockclub, #teacher5aday, #SLTchat, #ukedchat, #NQT, and #CPD. One online teacher community is built around helping teachers expand their networks: #FFBWednesday stands for “follow, follow back” where teachers follow back any new followers to their Twitter account every Wednesday. Like #edutwitter, the #FFBWednesday community also saw a surge in participation after the onset of the pandemic.
Typical posts before and during the pandemic include anecdotes reinforcing positive teacher identity and accomplishments like the one this primary-grade teacher shared:
I love meeting other teachers ‘in the wild’. Saw a man with a large family. Him to his children – ‘Line up so I can check you’re all here.’ I walked past & said, ‘Teacher?’Him – ‘Reception’.Me – ‘Year 6’. We then fist bumped. ???? #Edutwitter #primaryrocks #teachers #halfterm
— Emma Stanley ????????♀️ (@MissStanleyYr6) May 28, 2019
Teachers also frequently before and during the pandemic reached out to share useful resources. For example, this math teacher sharing a resource for helping students with multiplication tables:
Times table cards- a way for your children to practise times tables without just writing them out! Useful for warm ups, targeted individual work, interventions, etc. All come with answers! #edutwitter #maths https://t.co/WJXzrMYfeo pic.twitter.com/KeQqT4Wosd
— Sarah Farrell (@SarahFarrellKS2) September 22, 2019
In addition, teachers took to social media to help each other with a wide range of things, from new teachers asking for and receiving guidance, to finding connections on subjects or years, to supporting each other through the many difficulties they were encountering. This continued after the onset of COVID-19. For example, this teacher shared about helping a student with autism who has struggled amid COVID-19:
Today was my first day meeting my class (employed jan). A pupil with autism/anxiety has not managed a full day at school since lockdown 1. Today he came to class, I really tried my best to put him at ease and at lunch he asked me if I could go ring his mum to stay all day ????????
— Miss Smith (@Hannahmarie1402) March 8, 2021
This teacher is looking to expand her network of Year 5 teachers as she has recently been placed in that year:
I’ve just found out I’m in Year 5 next year! Looking for those KS2 (or any really) connections #FFBWednesday #educhat #TeacherFriends
— Georgia (@MissGSurtees) June 10, 2020
Or this new teacher who is looking for advice on how to get the attention of the class:
As a trainee teacher I’m interested to know what method you find most effective in getting the attention of the class: countdown, clap, hand in the air? Any contributions greatly appreciated #teamenglish #edutwitter #pgce
— Miss Fletcher (@missrfletcher) July 31, 2020
Parents also took to social media to connect, share, and seek advice. Many had warm words of gratitude for the teachers and schools who helped them through a difficult time, such as this parent:
I’ve taken my daughter out of school because I’m in an at-risk category. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but her school was great. They understand the gravity of this. They’re worried too #schoolclosure
— Maria (@itsasheactually) March 16, 2020
Others posted their frustrations, fears, and anger, such as this parent:
“Your child will experience a mild illness”. This is what I was told when school sent my child home following a case of covid in her class.
My child didn’t experience a thing, but I, her mother, ended up fighting for my life. Just admit schools aren’t safe @educationgovuk .
— Nutellandchill (@nutellandchill) November 24, 2020
While others reached out simply to get information, ask for advice, or share resources, including this parent:
“I am new to mumsnet and I need some advice. I was hoping you experienced parents with pre-teens/ teens could help. Our DS is currently in year 6 and has been offered secondary school places at Highgate Wood and Maria Fidelis FCJ…. We would like to know from your experience which school would best meet her needs. A good SEN department is imperative.” (March 5, 2020)
Insight 2
With students leading the way, collective outrage over England’s 2020 grading controversy created alignment across all stakeholders and potentially impacted the government’s response
The national exams at the end of secondary school and the exams to gain entrance into higher education are the focus of much of the conversation among students. We examined in depth students’ conversations about both of these exams, namely the GCSEs and the A-levels. While exams were a popular student topic of conversation on social media before COVID-19—especially using the #Alevels with the corresponding year (e.g. #Alevels2019)—it was a very hot topic during the exam grading controversy of 2020 (see Box 1). We found teachers and parents alike—alongside students—reacted strongly to the exam controversy.
We found an initial spike in reaction posts from average users, including students, during the May-June 2019 timeframe, which is when exams were being taken; this was followed by a large spike in August 2019, which reflects when results were received. A spike in March 2020 corresponds with the discussion around school closures and concerns or inquiries about exam results. The largest spike—from the usual several hundred posts a day to almost 8,000 posts—was in August 2020, which coincided with exam results and the controversy around exam grading amid COVID-19 (Figure 6).
Box 1. Exams in England: A brief overview of the system and the COVID-19 response
General Certificate of Secondary Education or GCSE qualifications evaluate students across a range of academic subject areas. Examinations typically take place at Year 11 (students ages 15 to 16), which is the last year of compulsory education in the U.K. Advanced Level (A-Level) qualifications are subject-based qualifications for students ages 16 and older and are recognized for entry into higher education.
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the United Kingdom cancelled all 2020 GCSE and A-level examinations. In place of these assessments, Ofqual, the exams regulator in England, implemented an algorithm based on schools’ previous exam results to determine students’ individual results. There was outrage in response to this change, as approximately 40 percent of results for the A-level exams were downgraded from predicted teacher-assessed grades, and students, parents, and academic professionals alike demanded governmental action. This downgrade caused many students—especially those in less affluent schools—to be marked two or three grades lower than what teachers had originally predicted, resulting in many students losing their places at universities.
Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, and Ofqual apologized for the grading issues and announced that all A-level and GCSE exam results would be changed to teacher-assessed grades. While this solution was largely preferred over the algorithm, it was a difficult request of teachers, as they only had the data that was available to them and unconscious biases may have impacted how they assessed some students.
Figure 6. Number of posts related to exams between April 2019 and May 2021
Source: Talkwalker and authors’ analysis.
Many students expressed outrage and frustration at what they saw as an unfair approach to delivering the GCSEs and A-levels amid the pandemic:
the year above and below me got their predicted grades with only missing 2 months and only 1000 cases. we are at 50,000 cases a day. they really expect us to sit a-level exams??? #schoolsreopeninguk pic.twitter.com/sYQKt7C3ao
— Katie ???? (@katie0773) December 30, 2020
Students also directed criticism at the government’s handling of the situation, while at the same time defending their teachers. For example, this student criticized the short time period for pushing back exams and responded to an announcement from Education Secretary Gavin Williamson that exams would be delayed three weeks:
@samhackney9: “If you’d have consulted with students and teachers you’d know that 3 weeks is nothing. Content needs to be cut, coursework needs to be used and teachers need to have a role in this. It should not be solely exam based #alevels2021” (October 12, 2020)
Similarly, another student in a sarcastic post defended teachers while lashing out at the government:
Ah yes, let’s blame the teachers who spend their lives creating lesson plans, marking essays, supporting students and teaching the future generations. Let’s not blame the exam boards or the government.
— Macy…❤︎ (@MacySheil) August 13, 2020
Even recent graduates got involved in the discussion, such as this Ph.D. student:
The more I think the A Level results fiasco the angrier I get. This government has consistently let down and actively hurt the most vulnerable in our society.
— Holly Nielsen (@nielsen_holly) August 14, 2020
Students also decried the inequality inherent in the predicted grading approach. For example, these students commented on the income inequalities and racial bias within exam grading:
@madamammad: “Also absolute disgrace the way GCSE and A-Level grades will be downgraded if you go to a school in a bad area, yet private schools will be more likely to achieve their predicted grades. Pay your way through” (August 11, 2020)
Using predicted grades for exams can be slightly problematic . Especially for black students with biased and/or unsupportive teachers who tend to unpredictable students. Just personally teachers in my SHIT school would predict me C’s where I got A’s and A*s????
— Bobby???????? (@FreeBxbby) March 18, 2020
Many students who had completed secondary exams within the last few years went online to share their experience and reflect on the shortcomings of the A-level exams in general—even outside of the pandemic grading controversy. We commonly saw university and postgraduate students noting their success despite poor exam grades. For example, these Ph.D. students recounted their experiences and how exam grades did not define them:
I have a D in A-level biology and an E in chemistry. I picked myself up, did a foundation science degree and graduated top of the class in my medical biochemistry degree. I’ll be starting my PhD in cancer immunology in October. Grades don’t define you if you work hard! https://t.co/IhwxWTsIsX
— Emma Jennings (@EmmaKJennings) August 20, 2019
I was predicted BCB at A-level. I got AAB. I technically needed AAA to meet my Oxford conditions. St. Anne’s let me come anyway. They understood I was more than a letter on a piece of paper. Do you know what doesn’t have that kind of understanding: an algorithm.
— Jess Morley (@jessRmorley) August 11, 2020
While exams were not the major focus of discussion among teachers or parents like they were for students, the COVID-19 grading controversy brought them into the discussion. Some teachers expressed sympathy for students and deep frustration at the role they were asked to play in the process, for example:
I can’t wait until we can look back and laugh at the year the government got teachers to award all the GCSE and A Level grades, and the only guidance we got was stuff like “An A* is kind of like an A, but just…*better*” pic.twitter.com/cl534qU3XV
— Rosie (@brumrosie) May 12, 2021
I think a compromise would have been test 1 paper e.g. for GCSE and one or 2 papers- if 3 paoers do 2- for A Level but variables currently in place are bonkers…and the stress on teens let alone teachers for past weeks has been appalling
— Kathy M (@kvjm1) June 1, 2021
Parents weighed in on the controversy largely as it related to their own children’s experience. For example, this parent shares her anguish at the impact the A-level grading controversy has had on her daughter:
So my brilliant kid, who spent 5 years in and out of hospital and is disabled, had her teachers’ grades marked down and has lost her place at university. She got straight As at GCSE, mostly teaching herself in hospital. She called the uni. They said they’re full. I give up.
— Amanda Lees (@amandalees) August 13, 2020
This parent took to social media to express outrage at how the GCSE grading controversy affected one of his daughters’ classmates, Miles:
My kids go to Notre Dame High School. Miles is in my daughter’s year. Talented athlete. Bright. Black. Predicted A, A or B and a C. Got C, D, U. Absolute scandal. pic.twitter.com/nggOBO86bO
— Andrew Stronach (@aistronach) August 14, 2020
In summary, the role of exams in the English education system is one of—if not the—major preoccupations of students on social media, particularly those in secondary school. Exams intimately affect students’ lives and they, along with recent graduates, are frequently critical of the role exams play in their education. Given the major impact exams have on students combined with their vocal dissatisfaction of unjust grading policies, students appear to be the most ready for change of the three groups examined in the study. While exams were not the major topic for teachers and parents participating in online conversations, the grading controversy brought them into the conversation with messages that reinforced and often supported each other. This aligned response may have played a role in the government’s reversal of its predictive grading policy.
Insight 3
Students’ mental health and well-being have been top of mind both prior to and during COVID-19
Mental health and well-being are major topics of discussion related to education on social media. This issue has been prominent in the top 10 education-related hashtags both prior to and during COVID-19. Teachers and mental health experts are the main participants in this conversation. Most posts are focused on children—either raising awareness of the need to focus on children’s well-being or offering resources for parents or teachers to improve children’s well-being. However, much less focus has been on teachers’ own well-being.
Over the last two years, mental health and well-being has become an ongoing topic of conversation with several hundred posts a day (Figure 7). Surprisingly, given the concern around student’s mental health amid COVID-19, there was only a mild uptick in the conversation after the pandemic’s outbreak. We also see a drop-off in discussion around mental health at the end of 2020, following the overall decrease in the discussion of education generally.
Figure 7. Number of posts related to mental health and well-being
Source: Talkwalker and authors’ analysis.
Teachers in particular are concerned about their students’ stress and anxiety. Students’ ability to cope with the pressure of exams is one clear focus, particularly before the pandemic. After the onset of COVID-19, teachers are seeking guidance to help their students face the uncertainty of the pandemic. For example, before the pandemic, teachers offered students workshops to help prepare them to take their exams:
Year 10 GCSE PE students – don’t forget I’m running an exam technique workshop for you and your parents to attend this Thursday, 5-6pm. If you have lost your letter and want to attend, see me to let me know. @LuttHighPE @LuttHigh
— Mr Mather (@MrMatherPE) June 3, 2019
After almost two decades teaching GCSE students with SpLD I think that it’s more about reducing any other stressors at that time, the exam stress is almost unavoidable, properly training staff to fulfil their roles in providing AA & having the pupils practice with this too.
— Abigail Gray FCCT ???? (@AbigailSENworks) May 13, 2019
Another post authored before COVID-19 by an exam results helpline offers mental health tips for students receiving their exam results:
Picking up your A level results this week?
We know it can be a hard time, so here’s our top tips for staying well!#ExamResults #alevelresultsday #Alevels #mentalhealth pic.twitter.com/DlWpMYLT89
— Exam Results Helpline (@exam_helpline) August 12, 2019
During the early days of the pandemic, a teacher offered mental health tips for students during COVID-19 and encouraged sharing among fellow teachers:
To help students stay mentally healthy during this period of uncertainty, I have put together this list of 10 proven tips. Please feel free to share. #COVID2019uk #SelfIsolation #StaySafeStayHome #education #Wellbeing #mentalhealth #SLTchat #edchat #ukedchat pic.twitter.com/RQdhNbyTAP
— Will Haines (@MrWillHaines) March 19, 2020
Throughout the pandemic, teachers have been working on addressing the mental health needs of their students:
Introduced well-being Wednesday to my morning form time and can honesty say I am buzzing for it tomorrow! The students really enjoyed it last week and had some fantastic comments! Utilising the @Headspace content on YouTube! #Wellbeing #MentalHealth #Education
— RJ Mewes (@RJ_Mewes) January 19, 2021
The mental well-being of all students, including our most vulnerable, is absolutely paramount now we are back in schools. The rise in mental illness within our UK young people is staggering over lockdown. Again really good to see this acknowledged but more can be done ????
— Emily Barber (@MsEmilyBarber) May 13, 2021
Interestingly, teacher well-being and mental health, although a much smaller focus of discussion, featured more prominently before the pandemic than during it. For example, in August 2019 a psychologist and community activist noted:
Unless we start valuing our teachers in a real way they will continue to leave the profession in droves. #School #leaders need to wake up to #teacher #wellbeing, what it means, why it is important & how to do it. @surreyeps @MartynReah @CharteredColl @edpsydan @growinggtschool https://t.co/SGa6E5xmEX
— Dr Sue Roffey (@SueRoffey) August 9, 2019
Teachers and education personnel also continued to focus on a wide range of well-being needs they felt were important beyond just coping with the pandemic. For example, this school nurse sharing insight about a new resource designed to support students in the transition from primary to secondary school:
STOP PRESS 1 of 2 ????????#Northamptonshire #PrimaryschoolsWe have created a resource for year 6 children which can be accessed by schools or parent/carersDesigned to support #emotional #Wellbeing and build resilience at transition to secondary schoolhttps://t.co/JYYNErR1dr
— SchoolNurses NHFT ???? (@NHFTSchoolNurse) July 9, 2020
Parents did join the conversation around student mental health and well-being, especially as they related to learning amid COVID-19, although not nearly as frequently as teachers and mental health experts. Parents largely focused on the experiences of their own children.
For example, a parent writing on Mumsnet.com, a popular online forum for parents, reached out to her community for support when her son’s increasing levels of anxiety prevented him from passing his school-leaving qualifications:
Lu9months:“my son is 16 and very bright but anxious. he was predicted excellent gcses. however his anxiety has become so severe that hes no longer able to get into school for the gcse assessments. he doesnt think he can do A levels now. im panicking about his future but all that really matters is his wellbeing. id love to hear stories of school/education problems all working out fine in the end, to help me focus on the here and now and stop worrying so much about what the future holds . Thanks.” (April 23, 2021)
Another parent on Twitter is concerned about how stressed her daughter is with the difficulties of wearing face masks in the heat:
I have just picked my daughter up from school,she is very stressed ,the school are making them wear masks in communal areas and she is barely able to breathe in this heat.She has also not been allowed to get a drink.We need to stand up to this Government as this is child abuse.
— ???? Lorraine ???? ❤ ????????☀️????????????️???????????????????????????????? (@lorrain00414525) September 15, 2020
In summary, children’s mental health and well-being has been an ongoing topic of conversation on social media for teachers before and during the pandemic—but much less so than for teachers’ own well-being. Many teachers are concerned with how to help students handle the stress in their lives, especially as it relates to schooling. Parents care about this too and amid COVID-19 have joined the online conversation alongside teachers, but it has been a less dramatic uniting of conversations than the exam controversy.
Insight 4
Parents have disparate interests and lack a unifying motivation to push for broader education change
Parents participating in the education conversation on social media are heavily focused on their personal experience and the particular needs of their children. We saw across the two years that parents have wide-ranging and disparate interests, including different interest groups for the specific learning needs—from autism to dyslexia—of their children. Many parents also voiced concern or pride about their child’s progress in school.
For example, parents of children with autism shared their experiences with the school system:
When a child cries every morning and every night because they have anxieties or fears around school & the parent(s) communicate this with school – listen and support – but never respond with ‘well the child is fine when they are here’ #SencoChat #Autism #MentalHealth #EduTwitter
— SEN Lisa ???? (@Lisa_SEND) September 29, 2020
I just want to add something about free school meals, because my carers allowance is added as earnings, we do not get free school meals for our 2 young boys , think about that , penilised because I’m caring for my disabled son.
— Autism care and share (@autcareandshare) June 16, 2020
We saw many posts of parents celebrating their children’s accomplishments, such as this one:
Huge congratulations to my daughter Rebekah on passing the 12+ entrance exam and interview for Oundle School. It’s her ambition to be an engineer & I’m so grateful to Oundle for giving her this opportunity ???? pic.twitter.com/ByjuZDCiBG
— Dr Liz Sennitt Clough (@LizSennitt) February 24, 2021
Not surprisingly, with the onset of the pandemic, many parents took to social media to share their experiences and perspectives on coping with school closure and lockdown. Over and above their concerns with exam grading and students’ mental health, parents expressed frustration at coping with home learning and school closures and shared advice for how to handle the situation. For example below several Mumsnet parents were cited anonymously in a news story at the end of 2020:
“Blended/online learning does NOT work if you have multiple kids of different ages. It does not work if parents are working full time.”
“The guilt I felt over having my child in front of a screen for 10 hours a day was just unendurable.”
Parents, like teachers, also offered up tips and suggestions for coping with education amid the pandemic, as in this parent’s post cited in the BBC on March 21, 2020:
“The key is finding out what works for you as a family, but have a delineation between home life and school. Don’t spend all day in pyjamas. Come together for a mindfulness session rather than an assembly and do topic-based work, too. My daughter and I will do the Egyptians next week.” (March 21, 2020)
Parents also shared their support of their children’s schools thanking them for their flexibility and communication:
Just read the letter from the head teacher of my son’s primary school explaining why they have taken the decision to move to online learning. Magnificently written and she and the teachers have my full support #MakeSchoolsSafe
— Dr Yinka Olusoga (@YinkaOlusoga) January 3, 2021
Not all parents were forgiving, however, as many vented their frustrations upon what they viewed as incompetent political leadership. Parents had varying and diverse critiques, such as these two parents who criticize politicians from both the Conservative and Labour Parties:
If I’d voted in the way @Matt_VickersMP had this evening, I’m not sure I’d be able to sleep tonight. And I’m not exaggerating here. If a government chooses not to provide free school meals during half term for our most vulnerable children, what kind of government do we have?
— Matt Smith (@utb_smith) October 21, 2020
Liz Kendall pushing for teachers getting vaccinated over half term in that relentless Labour mantra. I’ve never once heard them mention teaching assistants, or childminders or police officers, or bus drivers or shop assistants. What’s special about teachers?
— Justine Carroll ???????? (@JustineClaire65) February 1, 2021
In summary, parents’ focus is—not surprisingly—on the particular needs of their children and how to help them in their educational journey. The daily tasks ahead of parents are what preoccupy them, and they reach out for connection, advice, support, and information around a variety of topics. The pandemic was understandably a topic of concern for many parents over and above the issues with exams and mental health, many highlighting how hard it was to cope but equally many thanking their child’s teachers and schools for coping well. However, overall parents’ sentiment on their child’s education is quite mixed with many pockets of narrowly focused conversations, demonstrating that there was no one common parent voice or perspective on social media. Without common interests and motivations among parents, it may be difficult to engage them in conversations about broader education system change.
Conclusion
There is strong appetite for connection and talking about education across everyday people from students to teachers to parents. However, except for connecting and commiserating about education amid COVID-19, these key actors in England’s education system are largely talking about different things in their online discussions. While students, teachers, and parents use social media to connect and share resources, each group tends to talk to each other versus across groups. Students frequently share resources and tips on exams, teachers share classroom resources and build their networks using hashtags like #edutwitter, and parents seek advice from other parents about their child’s schooling. The pandemic provided a unique moment where students, teachers, and parents shared a similar narrative as illustrated by the 2020 exam controversy. It is likely that this alignment and overwhelming criticisms were factors driving leaders to reverse course on the exam grading policy.
When key actors in a system are aligned in their desires—as evidenced by the sentiments expressed in their conversations—it is much more likely for systems to change in the direction stakeholders are collectively pushing. For education advocates and policymakers wishing to “build back better” and use the disruption of the pandemic to improve England’s education system, it will be important to engage students, teachers, and parents in the process. Because these actors have such disparate areas of attention, bringing them into a shared conversation is necessary—as it is unlikely to happen on its own—and social media and other online platforms are just a few of many venues to facilitate this. Perhaps the cohesive force of shared moments amid COVID-19 could be an entry point to exploring the possibility of developing a more aligned education narrative among students, teachers, and parents. The possibility of harnessing this moment to help leapfrog the English education system forward is one that would be well served by forging a shared vision and narrative of education.
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management and other scholars, nor the views of its donors, their officers, employees, or Boards of Governors .
Brookings gratefully acknowledges the support provided by BHP Foundation, Big Change Charitable Trust, and Joann McPike.
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Developing a roadmap for USMCA success
Introduction
The passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) through the U.S. Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, as well as with strong political backing in Canada and Mexico, underscored the importance of USMCA for North American trade and economic relations.1 It builds on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and largely retains NAFTA’s commitment to lowering trade barriers although it rolls back trade openness in the auto sector. USMCA also adds robust new and timely commitments, particularly on digital trade, labor, and the environment.
The importance of USMCA for regional economic relations is amplified by growing geopolitical competition with China and the COVID-19 pandemic. This competition is over whether China will develop the world’s largest and most innovative economy in this century with attendant military prowess, or whether the U.S., and the West more broadly, will retain its economic lead and dynamism. These tensions are leading to calls to reduce North America’s economic reliance on China. The pandemic has also underscored the importance of expanding and deepening resilient supply chains, of which reshoring activities within North America will be vital to the region’s economic health and sustainability.
USMCA presents an opportunity for the three countries—U.S., Mexico, and Canada—to “build back better” and leverage the region’s collective talents, capital, and expertise to develop a more competitive, sustainable, and inclusive North American economy, which can rival some of its fiercest competitors. Ideally, USMCA will also provide a sustainable framework for the region to work as key partners on important and forward-looking issues.
At this critical juncture, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings established the USMCA project to research, monitor, and support the development of an ambitious but achievable USMCA agenda. This work includes a website that will house the interactive data on North American trade and investment flows, track USMCA committees and dispute settlement action, and follow compliance with USMCA commitments. It will also publish an annual report that will assess progress and identify opportunities.
Maximizing the opportunities that USMCA presents the region will require the three countries to see each other as true partners with a common cause. It would also be vital to develop a new narrative for the agreement that articulates both the economic and political importance of the USMCA for U.S., Mexico, and Canada relations. This view was widely shared by several participants at a recent Brookings roundtable—participants comprised of senior representatives from business, civil society, and former government officials from the three USMCA countries. The USMCA provides the framework for this robust partnership among the three countries.
Related Content
This paper will provide background on NAFTA and how it has evolved into present day USMCA. It will then focus on five priority areas where progress is still needed and where USMCA could have the most impact:
Building a more competitive North American economy, including by growing trade and investment;
Ensuring resilient supply chains;
Expanding digital trade;
Supporting improvements in wages and working conditions; and
Addressing climate change.
The conclusion provides recommendations on how USMCA can help the region advance on each of these priority areas.
Download the full policy brief