Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
25
Improving quality in school systems
While providing adequate financing for the education system is a must, the flaws in the
system that puts children at a disadvantage should be taken into account to provide
education for all. Resources should be allocated considering the needs of the disadvantaged
groups. In this respect, it is important to reallocate resources taking into account the needs of
disadvantaged groups. Apart from access, quality of education should be prioritized.
Quality of the education system could be tracked via assessment tests. In recent decades,
more and more national assessments have been conducted in the world. In 1990 only 12
national assessment tests were conducted while this number reached 110 in 2013. 106 National
assessment tests could be informative for policymakers and for the public to make governments
more accountable. An increasing trend in the number of participants is also seen for the
international assessment test PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). In 2000,
for the first round of PISA Test 43 countries participated.107 This number almost doubled by
2018 with 80 countries participating in the test for the latest round. 108
To improve learning outcomes of children, an exhaustive systematic review points to
interventions that are directly targeted at teachers: pedagogical interventions, repeated
teacher training and providing performance incentives for teachers.109 Pedagogical
interventions include computer assisted training and training children at their own pace while
taking into account their needs. In India a computer assisted learning program for mathematics
which provided fourth grade children with the chance to play games on a computer to enhance
their learning for two hours a week found the intervention to increase children’s learning by
0.47 standard deviations at the end of 2 years.110 Conn (2014) 111 also finds that pedagogical
interventions which focus on teaching techniques are more effective for improving student
learning than any other type of intervention. These pedagogical interventions can be in
computer-assisted learning models or models that emphasise the role and skill of the teacher
more. It is worth noting that these computer aided learning programmes are only useful when
they are tailored to students’ needs. It is crucial to combine these interventions with some kind
of teacher or parent training. Otherwise, as was seen in Peruvian ‘One Laptop per Child’
programme, such programmes would not improve students’ learning outcomes.112
Improving teachers’ skills, capacity and performance brings about better learning
outcomes for students, particularly in developing countries. Evans and Popova (2015a)
highlight in their review of systematic reviews that interventions targeting teachers such as
pedagogical interventions or repeated trainings improve children’s learning outcomes the
106 (UNESCO, 2015)
107 For the list of participating countries see:
108 For the list of participating countries see:
109 (Evans & Popova, 2015a)
110 (Banerjee, Cole, Duflo, & Linden, 2007)
111 (Conn, 2014)
112 (Cristia, Ibarraran, Cueto, Santiago, & Severin, 2012)