Phone tutorials boost learning during school closures across five countries

Overview

Updated Sep 10

More than 200 million children each year lose school time to disease, conflict and climate shocks. A five-country study in Nature shows a weekly phone call from a tutor kept primary students learning through COVID closures. Cost: about $11 per child.

Students who got calls plus text prompts learned about three times more than in typical education programs, per the randomized trials. The results give governments a proven, scalable tool for keeping education going when classrooms close.

Why it matters

When disease, conflict or climate closes schools, governments now have a proven way to keep 200 million children learning at about $11 each.

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Key Indicators

$11

Cost per child for eight weeks of phone tutoring

Includes weekly 20-minute calls plus text prompts delivered by government or NGO tutors.

Learning gains vs. average effective education intervention

Students receiving calls learned roughly three times more than those in typical programs, per trial results.

16,000+

Households enrolled in the five randomized trials

One primary-school child per household, mostly grades 3-5 except Kenya (grades 1-2).

3.6

Years of high-quality schooling per $100 spent

Ranks the approach among the most cost-effective education interventions studied.

Voices

Curated perspectives — historical figures and your fellow readers.

People Involved

Noam Angrist

Education researcher and study co-author

Leading the Karnataka scale-up analysis

Organizations Involved

University of Oxford

University

Hosts the research team and scale-up analysis

Oxford's public-policy school that published the phone-tutoring research and its Karnataka scale-up paper.

Nature

Academic journal

Published the peer-reviewed trial results

The journal that published the randomized trial results on phone-based tutoring across five countries.

Timeline

March 2020 September 2026

5 events Latest: September 9th, 2026 · 2 months ago

Tap a bar to jump to that date

September 2026
Nature publishes five-country results
Latest Publication

Study shows phone-call tutorials deliver large, cost-effective learning gains across all five countries.
September 9th, 2026
June 2024
Karnataka budgets phone tutoring scale-up
Policy

Indian state plans rollout with over 25,000 teachers, more than ten times the trial sample.
June 2024
December 2022
Five-country trials complete
Research

Randomized trials run in India, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines and Uganda with 16,000 households.
December 31st, 2022
December 2020
Botswana proof-of-concept trial
Research

Pilot shows phone-based tutoring can sustain learning during closures, informing the larger trials.
December 2020
March 2020
COVID-19 declared a pandemic
Context

Schools worldwide begin extended closures, disrupting education for billions of children.
March 11th, 2020

Scenarios

Karnataka confirms phone tutoring works at 25,000-teacher scale

Likely Resolves by End of 2027

Discussed by: Angrist and colleagues in their follow-on working paper for the What Works Hub for Global Education

Karnataka's state-run program covers more than 25,000 teachers, an order of magnitude beyond the trial sample. Researchers are analyzing results with a difference-in-difference design that compares school districts with staggered program rollout. If effects hold, it would be among the largest demonstrations of a government-delivered targeted-instruction program in a developing country.

Phone tutoring becomes standard tool in emergency education plans

Possible Resolves by End of 2029

Discussed by: Nature policy briefings and the international education development community

The low cost and proven government deliverability make adoption attractive to ministries of education. If national governments incorporate phone-call tutoring into official emergency preparedness plans, the study moves from evidence to policy. UNESCO's global monitoring would document such adoptions.

Gains fade when governments run the program

Possible Resolves by End of 2027

Discussed by: Researchers noting that small pilots often fail when scaled across contexts and delivered by government systems

Programs that succeed as pilots frequently lose effect when bureaucracies absorb them. The Karnataka analysis, or other replications, could find null results. The $11 price point is attractive, but whether gains persist outside emergency closures remains untested, since the trials ran only during COVID shutdowns.

Historical Context

2 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

2014-2015

Ebola school closures and radio education (2014)

When Ebola shut schools across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, education ministries turned to radio broadcasts to keep children learning. Programs aired structured lessons for months with limited interactivity and little evidence of impact.

Then

Radio kept some learning continuity but had no rigorous evaluation; many children returned to school far behind.

Now

Set a precedent for mass-media emergency education but left governments without proven models.

Why this matters now

The phone-tutoring study addresses the same emergency-education problem with a two-way channel, and it is the first multi-country trial to show large, measurable gains.

2001-present

Teaching at the Right Level movement (2000s-present)

India's Pratham developed a model that groups children by learning level rather than grade, then teaches targeted material. Randomized trials across India and Africa showed large gains and governments adopted the approach.

Then

TaRL became one of the most widely replicated education interventions in low-income countries.

Now

Demonstrated that level-targeted instruction works where grade-based curricula fail.

Why this matters now

Phone tutoring applies the TaRL mechanism - assessing each child and teaching at their level - through a single remote tutor, extending a proven pedagogy to emergencies.