Education systems can use particular type of mobile phone tutoring to maintain and improve children’s learning during major disruptions such as school closures, which affect hundreds of millions of children worldwide, according to a major new study published in Nature by Noam Angrist and colleagues.
More than two billion people live in countries affected by emergencies that can disrupt education (from flooding to conflict), while an estimated 222 million children experience regular interruptions to their schooling and are in need of education-in-emergencies support. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a particularly stark example, with school closures affecting more than a billion children worldwide.
The study, conducted with partners across five countries, reports results from five large randomised trials trying different methods of remote learning during school closures in India, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and Uganda.
The researchers tested scalable models of remote education delivered through mobile phones during the COVID-19 pandemic, including weekly SMS messages and one-to-one phone call tutorials. While internet access remains limited in many low-income countries, mobile phone ownership is much more widespread, allowing teachers to reach children at home without relying on internet connectivity.
The findings show that phone call tutorials that are specifically designed to teach children at their current level of learning produced large and consistent learning gains across all five countries. The approach combined the reach of mobile technology with a targeted teaching method: tutors regularly assessed children's learning and adapted instruction to their individual level.
The findings were particularly striking in Uganda and the Philippines, where children had experienced some of the longest school disruptions. In Uganda, for example, the proportion of Grade 4 children able to perform division increased from 10% in the control group to 48% among children receiving the phone-based intervention at the end of the study.
The researchers estimate that the targeted mobile phone programme delivered approximately 3.6 learning-adjusted years of schooling per US$100 spent, placing it among the most cost-effective education interventions in a comparison of more than 150 programmes.
Crucially for the scalability of the findings, the study also tested whether the approach could work when implemented through government education systems, rather than relying solely on non-governmental organisations. Noam says: “The findings suggest that effective education interventions do not necessarily have to remain dependent on NGO delivery to retain their impact when they are taken to scale.”
In Nepal and the Philippines, where delivery models were directly compared, phone-based tutoring produced substantial learning gains when delivered by government teachers as well as NGO instructors. Government teachers generated an average gain of around 0.40 levels of mathematical operation, compared with around 0.30 levels for NGO teacher aides.
Although the trials were conducted during periods of major educational disruption, the researchers suggest that the potential applications extend beyond emergencies. Millions of children worldwide continue to receive too little effective instruction even when schools are open, including children who are taught beyond their current learning level or who have limited access to quality teaching because they live in remote areas. The researchers argue that low-cost, accessible mobile tutoring could therefore have a role both in responding to emergencies and in addressing the wider global learning crisis.
There are already examples of the approach being taken forward. In Karnataka, India, the government is scaling the approach during regular schooling and preparing to use it in response to potential school disruptions caused by monsoon seasons.
The authors emphasise that further research is needed to understand how the approach performs at even larger national scale, its longer-term effects, and how delivery could be refined to engage parents and support learning in classrooms.
Noam says: “The study demonstrates the value of conducting rigorous research not only on whether an education intervention works, but also on whether it can remain effective across different contexts and when implemented through the systems responsible for education at scale.
"Two key points are worth noting. First, the approach that worked combined the right platform (the mobile phone) with the right pedagogy (targeting instruction to children's learning level). The approach only works when both pieces are in place.
"Second, we saw a 'learning curve', with effects improving over time, suggesting implementation improved over time. This, combined with the multi-country nature of the study which tested the approach across diverse contexts, helps advance our understanding of how to implement such measures at scale - what we call implementation science."
Less than 1% of impact evaluations are conducted across multiple countries at once, and the study represents some of the fastest multi-country evidence ever generated in education. "Rigorous evidence need not be slow or small", says Noam, "it can be widespread and inform real-time policy and practice."
The study ‘Mobile education builds resilience during shocks in five countries’ is published in Nature. The research partners were: University of Oxford, Youth Impact, World Bank, Alokit, NewGlobe, Street Child, Teach for Nepal, Building Tomorrow, IPA, and the governments of Nepal and the Philippines.
Image: Canva with some AI edits.
