Teaching for Tomorrow

Awardees: Margaret Wang (HGSE) and Natasha Japanwala (HGSE)

Summary: Pakistan is failing to prepare its population for the future: approximately two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, and the country must generate nearly a million jobs every year for the next 30 years, without interruption, in order to even maintain unemployment at the current levels. Couple this with poor learning outcomes (less than half of third graders are able to read a sentence in Urdu nationwide) and it is immediately clear that there is a huge gap when it comes to equipping the next generation for the 21st century. As a result, our project aims to find a scalable solution on how we can support teachers in Pakistan in teaching 21st century skills in the classroom. We will be testing whether an online platform that will provide both a curriculum and teacher training is valuable and implementable.