As a new academic year begins, the children entering classrooms are growing up in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, data, and rapid technological change. Preparing them for that future takes more than getting them into school. It requires education systems that help children read, reason, solve problems, think critically, and continue learning throughout their lives. The most important investments in that future often begin in the earliest years of schooling. When children develop strong foundational skills and a love of learning in the early grades, every other opportunity in education becomes more attainable.

Jordan offers an important example of what this can look like in practice. Through ASAS, IREX’s early grade education partnership with the Ministry of Education and Jordanian institutions, we have seen what can happen when the different parts of an education system work together to support learning. In 2025, Grade 2 reading comprehension increased from 38.3% to 62.8%. In Grade 3, it increased from 58.7% to 79.4%. Math proficiency also improved. Just as important, 9,470 teachers and education staff completed professional development, and 259,000 learners were reached. These are not marginal gains. They suggest that coherent, systemic, classroom-focused reform can improve learning at meaningful scale.

These results point to something larger than a successful project. They raise a practical question for reformers everywhere: how do we take what is working in one education system and make it useful elsewhere? What do systems that improve early grade learning have in common? And how can those common elements be translated into lessons that others can adapt and apply?

Recent evidence from Brazil, Kenya, Morocco, and India points in the same direction. The contexts differ, but the lesson is remarkably consistent: early grade reform succeeds when the parts of the education system that shape classroom instruction are aligned around learning. Goals, curriculum, teaching materials, assessment, teacher preparation, coaching, supervision, and policy cannot operate as separate initiatives. They must reinforce one another.

Ceará, Brazil, combined clear literacy goals, regular assessment, technical support to municipalities, teacher-focused instructional reform, and incentives tied to outcomes. Kenya’s Tusome program paired structured teacher guides and student materials with training, classroom support, supervision, reading benchmarks, and systems for tracking learning. Morocco’s Pioneer Schools model combines diagnostic assessment, targeted remediation, structured instruction, teacher support, and ongoing assessment. India’s experience is harder to attribute to a single reform, but it reinforces a basic principle: measure what students know and can do, not simply enrollment rates, system inputs, or curriculum coverage.

Two ideas stand out across these experiences. The first is structured pedagogy: providing teachers with a coherent instructional approach that includes sequenced lessons, aligned materials, assessment for learning, training, and ongoing support. The second is teaching at the level of the learner: understanding what children know, identifying gaps, adapting instruction accordingly, and assessing progress continuously. Both approaches are among the interventions identified as highly cost-effective by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel.

The most fundamental lesson is that reform must reach the classroom. A new curriculum does not improve learning unless teachers can use it effectively. An assessment does not improve learning unless teachers and school leaders can respond to what it reveals. Teacher training does not change practice unless teachers receive ongoing support after the training ends. The test of reform is not whether individual components exist. It is whether those components work together as a coherent system to improve what happens between a teacher and a child every day.

That is what ASAS is helping build with Jordanian institutions. The work extends well beyond teacher training. Together with universities, the Ministry of Education, supervisors, and local partners, ASAS has connected initial teacher preparation, professional development, classroom practice, assessment, supervision, and policy around a shared objective: improving teaching and learning. Equally important, these reforms are being embedded within Jordanian institutions themselves, strengthening the system’s capacity and organizational memory to continue improving long after any single project has ended.

The opportunity now is to learn systematically from this experience and make those lessons useful elsewhere. For reformers, the key questions are practical. Which elements contributed most to the results? Which were specific to Jordan’s context? Which can be adapted successfully in other education systems? Answering those questions can help transform a successful national experience into knowledge that can be scaled.

That is how strong results become broader progress. In early grade learning, where missed learning accumulates over time, spreading effective practice may be just as important as identifying new innovations. ASAS demonstrates that when reform is coherent, locally led, and focused on learning, substantial gains are possible. It also shows that education systems can build the capacity to sustain and expand those gains over time.

As this academic year begins, the question is no longer whether meaningful improvements in early grade learning are possible. We have seen them in Jordan and in many other countries. The more important question is whether education systems are willing to act on what they already know.

Too often, successful reforms remain confined to individual projects, schools, or districts. The challenge now is to help proven approaches scale, adapting them thoughtfully to local contexts while preserving the elements that make them effective. Doing so requires sustained political commitment, strong institutional leadership, investment in teachers, and a clear focus on measuring success by what children learn rather than by what systems deliver.

The stakes are real. A child who leaves the early grades without strong foundational skills faces a steeper path through the rest of school and into adulthood. A child who learns to read with understanding, solve problems, and continue learning gains access to opportunities that can shape the course of a lifetime.

The lesson from ASAS is both encouraging and demanding. We already know far more about improving foundational learning than we sometimes acknowledge. The task before us is not to search endlessly for the next breakthrough. It is to apply what we have learned with discipline, adapt it with local leadership, and bring it to scale so that every child has a genuine opportunity to thrive in the future they will inherit.

Early Grade Education Activity | ASAS in Jordan is funded by the U.S. Government and supported by the following partners: IREX, Vanderbilt University (VU), Florida State University (FSU), School-to-School International, Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA), and Development Gateway (DG). Learn more at irex.org/ASAS.