What Works Hub for Global Education

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What Works Hub for Global Education

An international partnership working out how to implement education reforms at scale, with the goal of increasing literacy, numeracy and other key skills.

01/10/2026

What does it take to turn evidence into better education at scale for all children?

Our new highlights video brings together some key ideas and conversations from .

🎥 Watch the video to hear from some of those who joined us in September.

29/09/2026

🎓 Congratulations to our 2026 Implementation Research Fellows!

We’re delighted to celebrate the successful conclusion of this year’s What Works Hub for Global Education Implementation Research Fellowship residency.

From 17–21 September, our Fellows came together for an intensive week of workshops, discussion and collaboration, exploring emerging implementation research frameworks and methodologies with the Hub’s research team. They shared experiences from their different organisations and contexts, and identified common questions and themes across geographies.

The cohort also had the opportunity to learn from senior mentors, including Rukmini Banerji, Senior Advisor and former CEO of Pratham Education Foundation, before developing research proposals grounded in their work with their home organisations and presenting their ideas on the final day.

A huge congratulations to:

– Samuel Kembou, Global Program Director, Jacobs Foundation
– Karthik Menon, Lead – Co-Head, Measurement, Monitoring and Evaluation, Pratham Education Foundation
– Jose Enrique ‘Iking’ Corpus, Director IV, Monitoring and Evaluation Office, Philippines Department of Education
– Akashi Kaul, Director, Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Assessment and Learning (RMEAL), Central Square Foundation
– Tom Dreesen, Chief, Education Research (OiC), UNICEF Office of Research - Innocentii
– Claire Cullen, Head of Research and Innovation, Youth Impact
– Nompumelelo ‘Mpumi’ Nyathi-Mohohlwane, Director for Reading, Department of Basic Education South Africa

The residency marks the beginning of a year-long Fellowship, during which the Fellows will continue developing their research and learning from one another remotely, while applying implementation research to the challenges and opportunities they are seeing in their own organisations and education systems.

We’re excited to see where their ideas take them, and to continue learning alongside this brilliant group of practitioners and researchers.

Congratulations to all our Fellows, and welcome to the next stage of the journey! 🌍📚

Blavatnik School of Government

28/09/2026

How much does it cost to deliver high-quality learning by phone – and how effective is it?

New research in Nature finds that phone-based tutoring cost around US$11 per child on average across the five-country study.

The programme delivered 3.6 learning-adjusted years of schooling (LAYS) per US$100, placing it among the most cost-effective education interventions in a comparison of 150 programmes.

The findings suggest that scalable, low-cost approaches could play an important role in helping education systems respond to disruption – while also addressing learning gaps beyond emergencies.

🔗📗 Read the paper: https://buff.ly/MyFkFNB

25/09/2026

🔍📚➡️🌏 What does it take to turn evidence into effective, equitable and sustainable initiatives on the ground?

We were delighted to welcome Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta (Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner, Government of Karnataka, India), who shared her experience of designing and implementing reforms across Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) and revitalising 5000+ rural public libraries in the state.

Her presentation offered valuable insights into the realities of taking an ambitious programme from design to delivery: from understanding local needs to strengthening systems, working with communities and adapting solutions to local contexts.

We had a really fruitful conversation about what it takes to make programmes work in practice, including the importance of local government ownership, flexibility, coordination across sectors, and learning from implementation.

Exchanges such as this one are at the heart of the What Works Hub for Global Education: connecting evidence with the realities of policy and practice, and learning not only what works, but how it can work at scale.

A big thank you to Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, for sharing her experience and insights with us, and to everyone who contributed to such an engaging discussion.

| Blavatnik School of Government

23/09/2026

Implementation is part of the research, not just the final step.

Identifying 'what works' is only the beginning. The real challenge is understanding how effective interventions can be put into practice.

The What Works Hub for Global Education has published a new paper in Science, arguing that the next frontier for education research is understanding how evidence-based approaches are implemented, adapted and sustained at scale.

“Implementation is not simply a final step after identifying an effective intervention. It is something that needs to be measured, understood, and improved. It needs its own evidence base.” – Noam Angrist, lead author and Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education

🔗📕 Read our new paper 'An agenda for implementation science in education': https://buff.ly/XSP4QDI

18/09/2026

We’ve had a brilliant couple of days at the What Works Hub for Global Education Conference! 🌍

We asked participants to sum up the conference, and what they found inspiring, in three words.

Here’s our vox pop to hear what they had to say. 🎥

17/09/2026

Thank you for two wonderful days at the 2026 WWHGE conference!

Two days, dozens of presentations and conversations spanning research, policy and practice, all centred on one critical question: how can we turn evidence into better implementation at scale to improve foundational learning for all children?

During the conference, we heard crucial insights from rigorous research and practical policy and implementation experience, together exploring implementation of effective education reforms at scale. We also heard directly from policymakers and education leaders about the opportunities, and the challenges, of putting evidence into practice.

The closing discussions brought this full circle: from evidence to action, the people and decisions needed to make education work for children.

Thank you to all our speakers, chairs, partners and participants for making the conference such a rich exchange of ideas.

The work doesn’t stop here. The next challenge is to take what we have learned and keep working together to make evidence-informed education work in the real world, for more children.

📸 Snapshots from the conference.

14/09/2026

💬 🌍 We were delighted to hear such rich perspectives from government leaders at the What Works Hub for Global Education Community of Practice event today!

Grace Muzila, former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Skills Development in Botswana, opened the talk with keynote remarks, highlighting the importance of learning, adapting and improving as we take evidence to scale.

This was followed by a lively government panel, chaired by Dhir Jhingran, Founder & Executive Director at the Language and Learning Foundation, bringing together perspectives from Muhammad Khalid (Secretary, KP Elementary & Secondary Education Department, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan), Kholosa Nonkenge (Acting Deputy Director, Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation, Department of Basic Education South Africa) and Dr Folake Olatunji-David (Director, Basic Education, Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria).

As Grace Muzila put it: “Start small and start strong.”

This event was a valuable reminder that successful implementation is about learning from experience and working collaboratively with governments to make evidence work in practice.

Blavatnik School of Government Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

08/09/2026

⏳ Just 7 days to go!

On 15 September, the What Works Hub for Global Education Conference 2026 will bring together researchers, policymakers and practitioners from around the world to explore one crucial question.

We know what works to improve foundational learning. The harder question is: how do we make it work consistently, equitably, and at scale within government systems?

Join us online for two days of research, practical experience and honest conversations about what it takes to support governments to implement, adapt and scale effective approaches to foundational learning.

📅 15–16 September

💻 Join us online via YouTube livestream: https://buff.ly/7juHcUa

Here’s a snapshot of what’s in store ⬇️

04/09/2026

How does evidence shape effective implementation at scale?

Last month in Accra, the What Works Hub for Global Education joined Ministry of Education GH, UNICEF Ghana, World Bank Ghana, Jacobs Foundation, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Innovations for Poverty Action and other partners for the Ghana and Regional Foundational Learning Evidence and Implementation Support Day, which introduced Ghana’s Education Evidence Lab (GEEDLab).

The day brought together evidence on teacher deployment, professional development, curriculum, and language of instruction, highlighting the 'next frontier' of effective implementation. Regional and district directors were in the room throughout, reflecting on the evidence presented and connecting it with their contextual realities.

Jennifer Opare-Kumi from the Hub presented emerging evidence from the Ghana Education Outcomes Project - GEOP and the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge. Across the Hub's outcomes-based financing research in Ghana and Sierra Leone, learning gains have run through observable changes in classroom practice with teachers adopting pedagogies such as structured pedagogy and targeted instruction. Where practice didn't shift, outcomes didn't follow. That makes implementation data a usable early signal of whether programmes are on track, well before learning outcomes data becomes available.

Thank you to Ghana's Ministry of Education and all the partners and researchers who contributed to such a rich discussion. GEEDLab, with World Bank and Hub support, will publish a short action note consolidating the day's key messages, priority actions and evidence gaps and the Hub will be hosting blog posts with partners on moving from evidence to action in Ghana's education sector.

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