Supporting Quality Decision-Making for Children in Crisis

Results and Recommendations from a Field-Mapping Study of Stakeholders’ Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research Practices and Needs

Nearly 62.5 million children are out of school in 32 countries affected by conflict. Those in school often face poor quality and multiple risks that prevent them from regularly attending and completing school, and from learning the academic and social-emotional skills critical for successful futures. Globally, there are approximately 411 million children who despite being in school are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics.

Solutions often focus on innovative and increased funding for education, but greater investments alone will be insufficient to ensure crisis-affected children are in school, safe and learning. To truly achieve academic and social-emotional learning outcomes for children, we need more and better evidence—about how educational programs in crisis contexts are implemented, and the quality of these services; and about what programs are working, for whom, under what circumstances and at what cost to achieve holistic learning and development outcomes for children. This information, generated using rigorous research methods, can shine a light on the most urgent problems and offer solutions for reaching the most number of crisis-affected children with the greatest impact at the lowest cost.