Substantial effort is invested in improving education policy, yet for policy to matter it must be implemented in practice. This paper presents new systematic analysis of the gap between education policy and practice across 50 countries during COVID-19, a time of substantial policy innovation. We find large gaps between policy intent and policy implementation in practice. While “policy-practice gaps” are large in most regions of the world, Latin America is a bright spot, with lessons for other regions. We further examine two components of the policy-practice gap to help better understand it: naive policy and ineffective service delivery. We find policies are often designed sensibly and are not naive; rather most of the policy-practice gap can be explained by ineffective service delivery. Our findings highlight the need to prioritise implementation science in education to close the gap between policy and practice. We also examine settings beyond COVID-19, and find similar patterns in the policy-practice gap. Substantial attention among the education community today is dedicated to policymaking, yet minimal attention is paid to policy implementation. Our results motivate as much attention on the latter as the former.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-WhatWorksHubforGlobalEducation-WP_2024/04