Dear John,

Happy World Children’s Day! Today, we celebrate international togetherness, awareness, and improvement of children's welfare.

Over the last few decades, although primary school enrollment has increased in sub-Saharan Africa, millions of students are falling behind in learning, struggling to keep up as teachers progress in their lesson plans. As it stands, 9 in 10 children cannot read or do basic math by age 10, suggesting that the traditional way of teaching is not working.

A key area of IPA’s work focuses on closely working with the Ghanaian government and partners to scale Differentiated Learning, an intervention that groups learners by their learning level rather than by age or grade for a part of each school day to improve basic reading and math skills among primary school students.

The Ghanaian government has demonstrated how Differentiated Learning can significantly improve learning outcomes in public schools. As part of an evaluation completed in 2013, IPA worked with the Ministry of Education to evaluate four methods of Differentiated Learning with variations during class time and after school and having the lessons taught by teachers vs. assistants from the school community. In a recent article in the Economic Journal, Annie Duflo, Jessica Kiessel, and Adrienne M Lucas suggest that all the methods improved learning outcomes in early-grade reading and math skills. Building on this research, a second study was conducted focusing on the issue of implementation fidelity. This study evaluated an improved version of Differentiated Learning with an extra focus on management and program compliance. In collaboration with IPA, the Ministry of Education, and UNICEF, researchers Sabrin Beg, Anne Fitzpatrick, and Adrienne M Lucas conducted a randomized evaluation and found that the program substantially improved math and reading skills for students in Ghana. Based on this evidence, IPA and our partners are now supporting the Ghanaian government in scaling Differentiated Learning to 10,000 schools, progressively contextualizing it to the curriculum and teacher training, and finding ways to increase implementation.

Our research on Differentiated Learning in Ghana can be found here, from early studies to scaling efforts and policy activities.

This World Children’s Day, we invite you to consider supporting IPA in our work to scale evidence-based solutions that have the potential to improve the lives of people living in poverty around the world.