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In Mauritania, many learners struggle with French, one of the official languages of instruction at school. This language barrier hinders student progress with the curriculum, increasing the chances of leaving school. This risk disproportionately affects adolescent girls due to discriminatory social norms undermining their continued education, even in urban areas of the capital, Nouakchott. To address these challenges, UNICEF Mauritania, in collaboration with the Akelius Foundation and national partners, has initiated a blended course to improve French proficiency for girls in a disadvantaged neighbourhood of Nouakchott. The blended course, which takes place at a community-based facility during afternoons, integrates regular teaching with the offline use of the Akelius Digital Learning app. This research brief presents evidence on how the blended course supported vulnerable girls' learning and other socio-emotional skills. It highlights lessons learnt for practitioners in implementing digital learning in resource-constrained environments, including the reliance on offline solutions and the co-design of digital content with the teachers.

In Italy, more than 700,000 asylum seekers and migrants arrived in the country between 2014-2020. Newly arrived children including refugees and migrants need to quickly acquire Italian skills to succeed in school and society. To help address this urgent need, the Akelius digital learning application was introduced in Bologna and Rome for Italian and English language learning in the 2021/22 school year. This research presents findings from the first year of implementation of the Akelius digital learning application in Italy. Results show the use of the application supported self-paced learning, boosted students' motivation and confidence and the use of the tool was especially beneficial for newly arrived children and children with disabilities. The report also explores challenges and good practices to inform improvements in the use of digital learning in classrooms.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the number of refugees and migrants arriving in the country has increased from just a few dozen arrivals annually prior to 2017 to 95,000 between 2018 and 2022. This increase has put incredible strain on the country's education systems. This research presents critical findings on the implementation and effectiveness of the Akelius digital learning application in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was introduced as a tool to support refugee and migrant children's English and German language learning. The findings demonstrate that using the digital application in a blended learning approach in classrooms was especially useful for personalizing learning and supporting children with diverse learning levels and needs. The report also explores the challenges faced, and good practices to tangibly improve the implementation of digital learning in classrooms.

The Kosovo Education Strategy (2022-2026) recognizes the need to scale up digital learning solutions to support individualized learning for children. Shkollat.org, Kosovo's version of the Learning Passport, combines the largest repository of curriculum-aligned video learning content in Kosovo with communication tools to engage students inside or outside the classroom. This research presents findings from the implementation of Shkollat.org in Kosovo, providing policy takeaways for the scale-up of digital learning solutions for education policymakers in the Western Balkans and beyond. Research findings are organized around six pillars of digital learning embedded within the Kosovo Education Strategy (2022-2026): digital learning platforms, content, teacher upskilling and support, connectivity, devices, and institutional support.

Learning remains largely out of reach for many of the most vulnerable children around the world. In low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 56% of children cannot read a simple text by the age of 10. This share is projected to rise to 70% after the pandemic. The school closures imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, coupled with an enduring tendency in low-income countries to allocate a limited share of the national education budget to the most vulnerable, are further widening inequalities in the global learning crisis landscape. The Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative implements innovative education programmes to improve learning for the most vulnerable children in five countries with high levels of out-of-school children: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, Madagascar and Nepal. This report documents the outcomes, lessons learned and recommendations based on the experience of the initiative across four types of learning programmes spanning the education lifecycle: (1) pre-primary education; (2) accelerated learning pathways; (3) programmes to reduce barriers to access and stay in formal school; and (4) vocational training.

The widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the learning crisis for children living in Eastern and Southern Africa. The crisis has also shown the great need to develop resilient education systems that can provide learning when schools are forced to close. Understanding how to provide remote learning equitably utilizing multiple modalities and emphasizing low-tech solutions in Eastern and Southern Africa is critical given the great challenges facing the region in terms of electricity and connectivity access. This report provides a summary of lessons learned in the East and Southern Africa region from remote learning during COVID-19 and provides concrete recommendations on how to increase the resilience of education systems.

When schools started closing their doors due to COVID-19, countries in Europe and Central Asia quickly provided alternative learning solutions for children to continue learning. More than 90 per cent of countries offered digital solutions to ensure that education activities could continue. However, lack of access to digital devices and a reliable internet connection excluded a significant amount of already marginalized children and threatened to widen the existing learning disparities. This report builds on existing evidence highlighting key lessons learned during the pandemic to promote learning for all during school closure and provides actionable policy recommendations on how to bridge the digital divide and build resilient education systems in Europe and Central Asia.

Two years into the COVID-19 global pandemic, education has been seriously disrupted. In response to this crisis, the global priority remains to ensure every child is supported so they can return to school and catch up on lost learning. Recognizing the need to accelerate education recovery with urgent, at-scale action, this joint report by UNICEF in partnership with UNESCO and the World Bank highlights staggering levels of learning loss globally and takes stock of the measures being taken by countries to mitigate learning losses as schools reopen. Based on a survey of 122 UNICEF country and fundraising offices administered in early March 2022, the report presents the importance of and progress made in five key actions for education recovery, the RAPID: (1) Reach every child and retain them in school; (2) Assess learning levels; (3) Prioritize teaching the fundamentals; (4) Increase catch-up learning and progress beyond what was lost; and (5) Develop psychosocial health and well-being so every child is ready to learn.

One tool that many families own, across the globe, is a basic mobile phone. The use of low-cost basic mobile phones for educational purposes in humanitarian settings is critical where access to connectivity and higher cost devices is limited. The portability of mobile phones, combined with their communication features, offers multiple uses to support education in emergency (EiE). This report is the second of a two-part series that aims to provide practitioners with guidance and resources on, and lessons learned for, using mobile technology in EiE settings. The series draws from a review of the existing literature with feedback from and interviews with EiE practitioners. The first piece of this series -- "On Call: The Use of Mobile Phones for Learning in Emergencies" (ED624512) -- explores how basic mobile phones can be used to support EiE learning programmes and teacher training. It emphasizes key practices that education practitioners have adopted to improve the equity and safety of mobile phone-based programmes. The present report, the second in this series, instead provides guidance on planning and delivering learning assessments through mobile technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education systems around the world, resulting in an unprecedented emergency with school closures affecting 1.6 billion learners (Azevedo et al., 2021). This brought to light the need for resilient education systems that can provide education during emergencies and school closures (UNICEF, 2021). The challenge of reaching and educating children when schooling is interrupted is not new for education in emergencies (EiE) practitioners who develop and implement programmes in complex crises with limited resources. One tool that many families own is a mobile phone. Low-cost basic mobile phones can be used in humanitarian settings to support remote learning and are critical where access to connectivity and higher-cost devices such as laptops are limited. The portability of mobile phones, combined with their communication features, offers multiple uses in EiE. This report explores the use of mobile phones in EiE settings by combining a review of the existing literature with feedback from, and interviews with EiE practitioners on two critical questions: (1) How can basic mobile phones be used to support EiE learning programmes and teacher training?; and (2) What are the key practices undertaken by education practitioners to improve the equity and safety of mobile phone-based education programmes? Implementing an education programme would be incomplete without a learning assessment. Moreover, can mobile phones themselves be used to measure learning in EiE settings? While this question lies beyond the scope of this report, it is investigated in the second report in the series: "On Call: Using Mobile Technologies to Measure Learning in Emergencies" (ED624513). The complementary report outlines the key implementation steps and uses of mobile devices to support learning assessment needs in emergencies.

How can countries engage teachers, parents, and learners in the successful of scale-up digital learning solutions? EDUINO, North Macedonia's platform for digital learning, fostered a community of practice and successfully crowdsourced a large amount of educational content from teachers and educators around the country within weeks of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research presents factors that enabled the rapid development and scale-up of EDUINO at a systems, school, and classroom level. Research findings in the brief are organized around four key implementation strategies: (1) Developing and crowdsourcing curriculum-aligned learning content; (2) Fostering user engagement through a community of practice; (3) Furthering teacher capacity for digital learning; and (4) Reaching students with disabilities and other learning barriers.

Digital learning has the potential to offer interactive and personalized learning for children, in and out of school, including the most marginalized. However, depending on programme design, delivery, and use, digital learning can also exacerbate learning inequalities. This report presents tangible findings on the implementation and use of digital learning to improve outcomes for marginalized children in Lebanon. This report focuses on the UNICEF-Akelius Foundation Partnership and its implementation of a digital course used on tablets and mobile phones for language learning of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The report provides findings across three areas: First, the report investigates the digital course's use in a blended learning environment where it was used on tablets by students as part of traditional face-to-face classroom instruction with teachers. Second, the analysis examines the transition to remote learning where the course was used on devices owned by the household, supported by teachers remotely. Third, the report estimates the effectiveness of the use of the digital course during this period of remote learning from August-November 2020 showing positive results for language and art competencies.

COVID-19 school closures in South Asia lasted longer than in any other region. To mitigate subsequent effects, governments and education actors in South Asia provided a range of remote learning modalities. This report presents evidence on the reach and effectiveness of these remote learning strategies through a meta-analysis of studies from the region. Large differences in students' access to connectivity and devices show that high-tech remote learning modalities did not reach all students. Lessons learned indicate that the effectiveness of one-way or low-tech modalities can be enhanced through increased engagement and support from educators. Teachers, parents and caregivers must be supported to help children learn remotely, especially in cases where they must rely on these low-tech remote learning modalities. Formative assessments are needed to understand the scale of lost learning and target responses to remediate this learning loss when schools reopen.

The implementation of remote learning?in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 school closures?confirmed that the divide?in access to electricity and?technology?remained?a?major hurdle?for governments across the region?to serve all children.?School closures risk widening?existing learning gaps as?private schools were?more prepared to use technology?for remote learning and children from wealthier households?received more support at home?while schools were closed.?As?countries in the region reopen their schools,?it is vital that governments incorporate key?lessons learned?to?improve?the resilience?and equity?of the education systems. This report?presents evidence on remote learning during the COVID-19?school closures in Latin America and the Caribbean?to help guide decision-makers to build more effective, sustainable and resilient education systems for current and future crises.

COVID-19 school closures in East Asia and the Pacific threaten to widen existing learning inequities and increase the number of children out of school. During the pandemic, governments rapidly deployed remote learning strategies, ranging from paper-based take-home materials to digital platforms. However, lack of electricity -- critical to connectivity -- remains a key obstacle for the region, particularly in rural areas. Therefore, while digital learning platforms were offered by most Southeast Asian countries, take-up was low. A combination of modalities -- including mobile phone-based learning strategies -- and collaboration with a range of non-governmental education stakeholders have the potential to enhance the reach of remote learning and to make it more engaging for students. Lessons from the regional implementation of these strategies emphasize the importance of research to understand the needs of students, educators and parents and the impact of remote learning, especially in low-resource contexts.

Countries in West and Central Africa strived to implement national responses to continue learning activities during school closures. These responses relied on a mix of channels, including online platforms, broadcast media, mobile phones and printed learning packs. Several barriers, however, still prevented many children and adolescents in the region from taking advantage of these opportunities, resulting in learning loss in a region where almost 50 per cent of children do not achieve minimum reading skills at the end of the primary cycle. This report builds on existing evidence to highlight key lessons learned in continuing education for all at times of mass school closures and provides actionable recommendations to build resilience into national education systems in view of potential future crises.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have collaborated in the third round of the Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures, administered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and OECD to Ministry of Education officials. The questions covered four levels of education: preprimary, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary. While the first two rounds of the survey were implemented during the periods May-June and July-October 2020, respectively, the third round was implemented during the period February-June 2021. In total, 143 countries responded to the questionnaire. Thirty-one countries submitted responses to the OECD ("OECD survey") and 112 countries responded to the UIS ("UIS survey"). Seven countries responded to both surveys. In these instances, the more complete set responses were used in analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every aspect of society. In mid-April 2020, 192 countries had closed their schools, putting 9 out of 10 enrolled children out of school. These closures disproportionately affected marginalized children, worsening existing inequities across education systems worldwide. This brief draws on the experience of five UNICEF education country programmes supported by the Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative, to document tangible lessons in adapting education programmes to support the most marginalized children during school and learning centre closures. The evidence in this brief stems from a series of semi-structured interviews with Education and Child Protection specialists, as well as a document review of available COVID-19 response studies, in the five LUL-supported UNICEF Country Offices.

Italy was the first country in Europe to implement a nationwide lockdown. Children and their families lived in nearly complete isolation for almost two months. Students missed 65 days of school compared to an average of 27 missed days among high-income countries worldwide. This prolonged break is of concern, as even short breaks in schooling can cause significant loss of learning for children and lead to educational inequalities over time. At least 3 million Italian students may not have been reached by remote learning due to a lack of internet connectivity or devices at home. This report explores children's and parents' experiences of remote learning during the lockdown in Italy, drawing on data collected from 11 European countries (and coordinated by the European Commission's Joint Research Center). It explores how children's access and use of digital technologies changed during the pandemic; highlights how existing inequalities might undermine remote learning opportunities, even among those with internet access; and provides insights on how to support children's remote learning in the future. [This report was produced with OssCom.]

We consider the problem of identifying a parallel Wiener-Hammerstein structure from Volterra kernels. Methods based on Volterra kernels typically resort to coupled tensor decompositions of the kernels. However, in the case of parallel Wiener-Hammerstein systems, such methods require nontrivial constraints on the factors of the decompositions. In this paper, we propose an entirely different approach: by using special sampling (operating) points for the Jacobian of the nonlinear map from past inputs to the output, we can show that the Jacobian matrix becomes a linear projection of a tensor whose rank is equal to the number of branches. This representation allows us to solve the identification problem as a tensor recovery problem.

The power of multivariate functions is their ability to model a wide variety of phenomena, but have the disadvantages that they lack an intuitive or interpretable representation, and often require a (very) large number of parameters. We study decoupled representations of multivariate vector functions, which are linear combinations of univariate functions in linear combinations of the input variables. This model structure provides a description with fewer parameters, and reveals the internal workings in a simpler way, as the nonlinearities are one-to-one functions. In earlier work, a tensor-based method was developed for performing this decomposition by using first-order derivative information. In this article, we generalize this method and study how the use of second-order derivative information can be incorporated. By doing this, we are able to push the method towards more involved configurations, while preserving uniqueness of the underlying tensor decompositions. Furthermore, even for some non-identifiable structures, the method seems to return a valid decoupled representation. These results are a step towards more general data-driven and noise-robust tensor-based framework for computing decoupled function representations., Comment: Accepted for presentation at the 14th International Conference on Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation (LVA/ICA 2018), July 2-6, 2018, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Many real world systems exhibit a quasi linear or weakly nonlinear behavior during normal operation, and a hard saturation effect for high peaks of the input signal. In this paper, a methodology to identify a parsimonious discrete-time nonlinear state space model (NLSS) for the nonlinear dynamical system with relatively short data record is proposed. The capability of the NLSS model structure is demonstrated by introducing two different initialisation schemes, one of them using multivariate polynomials. In addition, a method using first-order information of the multivariate polynomials and tensor decomposition is employed to obtain the parsimonious decoupled representation of the set of multivariate real polynomials estimated during the identification of NLSS model. Finally, the experimental verification of the model structure is done on the cascaded water-benchmark identification problem.

Multidimensional systems are becoming increasingly important as they provide a promising tool for estimation, simulation and control, while going beyond the traditional setting of one-dimensional systems. The analysis of multidimensional systems is linked to multivariate polynomials, and is therefore more difficult than the well-known analysis of one-dimensional systems, which is linked to univariate polynomials. In the current paper we relate the realization theory for overdetermined autonomous multidimensional systems to the problem of solving a system of polynomial equations. We show that basic notions of linear algebra suffice to analyze and solve the problem. The difference equations are associated with a Macaulay matrix formulation, and it is shown that the null space of the Macaulay matrix is a multidimensional observability matrix. Application of the classical shift trick from realization theory allows for the computation of the corresponding system matrices in a multidimensional state-space setting. This reduces the task of solving a system of polynomial equations to computing an eigenvalue decomposition. We study the occurrence of multiple solutions, as well as the existence and analysis of solutions at infinity, which allow for an interpretation in terms of multidimensional descriptor systems., Comment: 21 pages, accepted for publication in International Journal of Control (in press), 2018