Ethiopia
How can national education reforms increase learning and learning equity?
Why Ethiopia?
Ethiopia has rapidly expanded primary schooling to achieve near-universal enrolment in recent years and dedicated about 25 percent of annual government funding to education in 2020. Yet, despite these efforts, learning levels have remained low, exemplifying the learning crisis that we see all over the world.
Now, the RISE Ethiopia Country Research Team is analysing Ethiopia’s national-level reforms aimed at increasing learning outcomes, with a particular focus on reforms’ effects on the most marginalised students, including girls; those in extreme poverty; pastoralist communities (rural and nomadic); those who speak minority languages; and those with disabilities.
For more about the team's work, see their technical research overview or a list of all Ethiopia Country Research Team research outputs.
Researchers and institutions
The Ethiopia Country Research Team comprises an international, multidisciplinary partnership between researchers at universities and research centres worldwide, coordinated by the Ethiopian Policy Studies Institute and University of Cambridge’s Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre. Partner institutions include the Institute of Educational Research at Addis Ababa University, University College London Institute of Education, Cornell University, and Stockholm University.
A list of Ethiopia Country Research Team members is available on our People page.
Research agenda
The team’s objective is to rigorously assess the implementation and impact of reforms associated with the second phase of Ethiopia's General Education Quality Improvement Program (GEQIP, 2013/14 -2017/18), with the aim also of informing the third phase of GEQIP.
The team will achieve this through three areas of research. The first builds an understanding of how GEQIP had been designed and implemented. The second evaluates the initiatives and their impacts on raising learning outcomes equitably, and the final area of research will analyse how and why the reform had the observed effect on learning in order to influence future policy developments.