Unlocking the Power of Personalized Learning

The world is facing a crisis in education, with learning plummeting across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic and even before that. Despite the challenges, some countries have found innovative solutions to improve education. One such approach is technology-assisted learning, which has shown remarkable results in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. In Malawi, the government and the Copenhagen Consensus Center joined forces to identify the most effective policies to boost the country's wellbeing and growth. The results were astonishing - technology-assisted learning emerged as the most powerful and cost-effective policy to improve education.The approach is simple yet effective. Almost universally, schools put all students in one grade, but many students are either far behind or far ahead. In Malawi, students are now using personalized, adaptive software on tablets for one hour a day. The software identifies where each student is at and teaches reading, writing, and numeracy at their exact level. Teachers describe how amazed they were to start using the software, and discover that their entire classroom of kids would become fully engaged. Children have described the relief of not having to worry about being embarrassed about getting a wrong answer in front of their peers, or being forced to compete for time with the teacher. The policy is incredibly cheap, costing as little as $15 per pupil per year. One year of one hour each day can deliver an astonishing three years of normal learning. Greater learning translates eventually into more skilled adults who will be more productive in the workforce and command a higher wage.