Executive Summary

Project Host:

Fellows:

Alejandro Villanueva, Social Entrepreneur Fellow
Animesh Priya, Social Entrepreneur Fellow
Daniel Ansari, Research Fellow
Dietsje Jolles, Research Fellow

Introduction

The global community is at risk of failing a generation of young people in the Global South who may never become the doctors, leaders, human rights activists, or teachers they might have been. Worldwide, it is estimated that 70% of children are not learning to read by the age of 10. An estimated 82 million primary-school-aged children are out of school due to crisis, poverty, or discrimination (UNESCO).

The Luminos Fund is tackling this challenge head-on, working alongside governments and community-based organizations to run accelerated education programs that help children catch up to grade level, reintegrate into government schools, and prepare for lifelong learning. In just 10 months, Luminos students progress from not recognizing letters of the alphabet to reading short stories. To date, Luminos has helped over 277,787 children in Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, Liberia, and The Gambia secure a second chance to learn.

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Organization’s Role & Strength

The Luminos Fund was created to ensure all children have equal access to joyful, foundational learning, especially those shut out of education by crisis, poverty, or discrimination. Our vision is of a world where no child is ever denied the chance to learn. Luminos believes that learning to read is a crucial milestone in every child’s life. At Luminos, we unlock the light in every child through the transformative power of foundational learning. We do this by upholding the following core beliefs and values:

We believe that every child is capable of learning a remarkable amount in a short period of time, if given the chance.
We keep children’s joy and well-being at the heart of everything we do.
We embrace assessment as a key component of effective teaching and learning.
We celebrate and empower local leadership throughout our work with partner communities and governments.
We use research, program, data, and skilled classroom observation in the tenacious pursuit of excellence.
We celebrate the unique contexts and cultures of the communities we serve in our curricula and pedagogy.
We act with the highest standards of integrity and care, ensuring mutual accountability among colleagues and partners.
We take the initiative to solve problems where we find them, managing details large and small with urgency.
We act deliberately to ensure that our organization is inclusive for people of different genders, racial backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, religious beliefs, abilities, and other sources of diversity.
We build deep, authentic relationships with our supporters in celebration of the mutually transformative power of giving.

In just one school year, we teach students to read and do math – to learn how to learn – through a joyful, activity-based curriculum. Results of a IDinsight randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Luminos program in Liberia prove children in Luminos classrooms learn a remarkable amount during the program. In one year, a child in the Luminos Liberia program learns 90% of what the average Liberian will learn in their lifetime.

Furthermore, 90% of Luminos students advance to local government schools to continue their education, and Luminos students are twice as likely to complete primary school than their peers.

Need Summary

Luminos has a robust evidence base and internal and external evaluation system to inform the continuous improvement of our program. Nonetheless, Luminos recognizes the need to strengthen its capacity for data-based decision-making to drive ever-better outcomes for students. For instance, in Luminos programs, average learning gains are significant; however, there is a small but persistent segment of students who seem to attend class regularly but fail to make material progress.

To that end, Luminos is working diligently to strengthen and refine its assessment and data collection capacities to better monitor individual student progress and learning gains in real time. To further improve the learning outcomes and understand the unique learning needs of each child, Luminos must ensure the effective and rigorous collection of high-quality data at the student level, with rapid feedback loops.

The Luminos MEAL system in each country includes weekly teacher-led assessments; thrice-annual curriculum-aligned summative assessments; and weekly field supervisor-administered assessments for a small sample of students in each classroom, followed by classroom coaching to teachers to ensure they are well-equipped to use assessment data to guide learning. This system is supported by Luminos’ network of community-based organization partners. Luminos partners collect individual student assessment data quarterly, which is then processed and analyzed by our country teams to inform programmatic decisions.

There is significant value in streamlining the collection of student-level data, across Luminos program countries, to both increase data quality and further strengthen Luminos capacity to deliver rapid feedback and real time program iteration. Luminos is exploring high-impact, low-cost solutions that will provide further insights into learning variability and inform improvements to teaching and learning strategies through the collection of reliable, localized assessment data.

This low-tech, data-driven solution would allow Luminos to monitor incremental learning gains through weekly student assessments. Luminos works in challenging, low-resource contexts; ensuring the data it collects is relevant, timely, accurate, and complete is thus a key challenge.

Solution summary & next steps

Through the 2023 LEAP Challenge, Luminos aims to pinpoint struggling students earlier in the school year in order to provide targeted support and gain insights into the root causes of these difficulties. This will potentially allow for the creation of risk profiles that predict future needs.

This report serves as a springboard for developing a more robust assessment system that can effectively identify struggling students early on and inform targeted interventions. The recommendations aim to build on existing infrastructure, tools, and processes, rather than develop an entirely new approach to assessment.