ABSTRACT
To enhance education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, we need access to good data about what has (and hasn’t) worked previously. With the right data, we can make evidence-informed probability estimates about which Jenga blocks to add, remove, or hollow out in our quest for Lean education improvement. In this chapter we wade through the existing data trove. The first part of the chapter catalogues the research and research questions from 57 systematic reviews of circa 2,500 unique studies. Then, in the second part, we interrogate the findings for glimmers of light on ‘what works best’. We conclude that the current research gives us more to go on in addressing the easier problem (access to education) and correspondingly less on the hard problem (quality of education). And that, overall, the dataset is not yet large enough or consistent enough in its conclusions for us to have deep confidence about what might work in developing countries.
