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need for substantially increasing the supply of qualified teachers, including through
international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least
developed countries. Many OIC countries already have such international collaboration schemes
in place. Others (e.g. Jordan and Malaysia) have launched new projects to improve the quality of
education by investing in ICT infrastructure in the education sector. While the use of ICT based
teaching and learning models remain a popular choice to aid teachers and students, hard
evidence on the efficacy of technology and software remains elusive. New ICT-based models
therefore must be tried in small-scales and only be scaled up following an evaluation of their
impact on learning outcomes.
Maintain the credibility of national level student assessment systems. While participation in
international assessments should be encouraged as a means to inform and aid government
education reforms, equally important is to retain the quality and credibility of high-stake
national examinations so that they truly capture the state of basic competencies and critical
thinking skills. In Jordan, the majority students fail to clear the Tawjihi, creating tremendous
pressure on students and school authorities. In contrast, the majority in Malaysia passes the
equivalent Secdondary School Certificate Test (SPM) examination. The national examination
system should be reformed to incentivize learning and ensure mastery of basic competencies.
Invest to close the gender gap in enrolment as well as literacy and numeracy outcomes.
Mothers play a big role in children’s later educational success in school. This highlights the
importance of improving schooling and learning opportunities for girls given the positive
spillover effect into the learning achievements of the next generation and achieve the SDG target
4.1 of ensuring that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and
secondary education leading to effective learning outcomes by 2030. However, while in middle-
income OIC countries girls outnumber boys, the opposite is true in case of low-income member
countries such as Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In these countries, girls also lag behind boys
in literacy and numeracy outcomes. In Pakistan, for instance, the pro-male gaps in learning
outcomes are very large and persistent over time; there was almost no noticeable improvement
in gender gap during the study period 2014-2016 and some regions (such as FATA, Balochistan
and KP) continue to depict extremely high pro-male gaps in learning outcomes. These gaps
greatly undermine the contribution of women to the economy. Further investments targeting
girls’ school participation should be prioritized. Conditional transfers such as Female
Scholarship Schemes have been promising in improving attendance and enrolment in OIC
member states in South Asia. Such progress in girls’ schooling is lacking in African member
states. Most importantly, evidence on the impact of conditional cash transfers on learning
outcomes is weak.
Identify remedial policies to assist lagging students early through better early-childhood
learning opportunities. Income poverty and poor health combines to limit early-life learning
opportunities. The level of malnutrition and stunting is very high in some OIC member states
such as Pakistan. Therefore, investment in child health and accessible quality pre-primary
schooling can go a long way in removing inequalities in learning opportunities in later stages of
school education. The importance of early development is already recognized in the SDGs target
4.2 i.e. ensuring that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care
and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education by 2030. Country-
specific analysis of learning outcomes for Jordan, Malaysia and Nigeria also confirms the
importance of pre-primary schooling. However, OIC member countries differ significantly in
terms of the coverage of “Early Childhood Education and Development” (ECED). In majority
countries, participation rate is low. In many instances, reliance on private providers limit access