Over the past 25 years, education outcomes have stagnated globally, while the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities in the education system. Learning has been pushed back by eight months globally on average, and there are now over a billion students in learning poverty, defined as children under the age of 10 years old who are unable to read and understand a simple text.

This report examines how the education community has studied interventions that can reduce inequities like these and move more students to proficiency, collecting strong evidence for what foundational skills students need to master, such as reading, numeracy, and critical thinking. Despite a growing evidence base, school systems often struggle to turn well-designed policies into action, and well-intentioned changes fizzle out in the “implementation gap.” To make changes stick, leaders must know not only what interventions to use, but also how to implement them well at scale.