Quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is important for young children's holistic healthy development. As ECCE scales, contextually relevant and feasible measurement is needed to inform policy and programs on strengths and areas for improvement. However, few measures have been designed for use across diverse contexts. Drawing on…

Teacher education is essential for improving Liberia's education system, particularly in rural areas where qualified teachers are scarce. Liberia's Rural Teacher Training Institutes (RTTIs) play a crucial role in addressing this shortage, yet several challenges undermine their effectiveness. This study identified key barriers to effective teacher…

Children in Liberia receive 2.2 learning-adjusted years of schooling, one of the lowest levels of educational attainment in the world. We study one approach to address low enrollment and low rates of learning: a 10-month accelerated learning program run by the Luminos Fund to help out-of-school children catch up to grade level. We conducted a…

Effective policy development will be critical to address educational challenges within the Global South. To accelerate economic, political, and social goals, the Global South is under increasing pressure to mimic policy development from other countries. In 2016, the Liberian Ministry of Education leveraged policy transfer to address systemic…

In the 2016-2017 school year, the Liberian government launched Partnership Schools For Liberia (PSL), a pilot program in which the management of 93 primary schools was transferred to 8 private contractors. The pilot owed much to the importation of western policy models and was facilitated by the British organisation ARK and involved BIA, a private…

In 1989, Liberia entered into a Civil War that was devastating to the population, which has not recovered since. The country's infrastructure was significantly destroyed. Eighty percent of schools were non-functional. The illiteracy rate was at 80% in 2017. The teacher population at the primary and secondary levels was 26,000, but, 65% of them had…

To experiment with the possible privatisation of its primary education system, Liberia initiated the Partnership Schools of Liberia (PSL), which turned over the management of 93 public schools to eight private contractors. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) study was initiated comparing the PSL schools with matched public schools and the results…

We present results from early learning programs in six African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. In partnership with ministries of education, RTI International has worked within government systems to support the design and deployment of locally contextualized materials, training, and assessment tools, with the goal…

The international community has pledged to provide a quality education for all by 2030. School leaders play a key role in improving student learning outcomes yet oftentimes educational leaders do not have opportunities to attend professional development events. The purpose of this study was to examine a Training of Trainers Model (TOT) used to…

This paper summarises experiences of efforts made by twenty individuals when implementing small-scale ICT development projects in their organizations located in seven developing countries. The main focus of these projects was the use of ICT in educational settings. Challenges encountered and the contributing factors for implementation success of…

In January 2016, the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS) offered a global professional mentoring programme that would link student affairs leaders internationally with new graduates and early career professionals in student services. Protégé participants were primarily new graduates of preparatory programmes in…

Under-enrollment of girls in primary and secondary is a longstanding and well-documented problem in developing countries. Limited parental and communal resources combine with cultural factors to create a disincentive for parents to send their girls to school and to keep them there throughout the school year and for the full primary and secondary…

This paper presents findings of a feasibility study to adapt and evaluate the impact of an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention on sexual risk behaviors of in-school 6th grade youth in post-conflict Liberia (n = 812). The study used an attention-matched, group randomized controlled trial. Four matched pairs of elementary/middle schools in…

Building on the success of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) as a measurement tool, many countries have begun to show interest in moving away from assessments alone and toward interventions focused on changing teacher pedagogy, and as a result, increasing student reading achievement. Liberia, for example, began an EGRA-based intervention,…

This book highlights the experience of Liberia in both assessing and improving reading in primary schools. As a result of an Early Grade Reading Assessment, the Ministry of Education and partners, including the United States Agency for International Development, came together to identify and develop strategies for improving reading in schools.…