Weakest Part of Poorly-Performing Educational Systems: An Argument for Focus on "Teaching at the Right Level" and Improved Foundation-Year Performance

This note argues that in some 35 to 40 countries that are expanding education very quickly, there are learning problems that originate in the earliest grades, showing as a massive over-enrolment during this stage. The countries in question are typically not upper-middle or high-income countries, where the issue has been resolved. Nor, are they the very poorest countries, which have not mobilised towards massive enrolment expansion. Instead, the typical countries in this situation are countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Timor-Leste, and others that have received a great deal of funding and attention from development agencies, and have expanded enrolment quickly in the last decade or two. The arguments in this note are for countries that have serious systems problems and will hopefully learn from the RISE experience, including the identification of which sub-systems the learning should be applied to.