The Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries

Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, it is shown that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. Shallow learning profiles are in part the result of curricular paces moving much faster than the pace of learning. To demonstrate the consequences of a gap between the curriculum and student mastery, a simple, formal model is constructed, which portrays learning as the result of a match between student skill and instructional levels, rather than the standard (if implicit) assumption that all children learn the same from the same instruction. [CGD Working paper 293]. URL:[http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1426129]