GoKawiilWeekly phone tutoring sessions boost learning during school closures, five-country trial finds
A study led by Oxford researcher Noam Angrist tested a low-cost intervention combining text-message nudges and a weekly 20-minute phone call from a teacher to support children's learning when schools shut down. The randomized trials, involving more than 16,000 households across India, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and Uganda during COVID-19 closures, followed an earlier pilot in Botswana and were published in Nature.
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With schools frequently disrupted by pandemics, conflicts or natural disasters, education systems have lacked rigorously tested, scalable solutions for keeping children learning outside the classroom. Because mobile phones are widely accessible even in low-resource settings, this approach could offer a practical, affordable model for governments and NGOs to deploy quickly during future emergencies.
- A weekly 20-minute phone call from a teacher plus text nudges improved learning outcomes during school closures.
- The trial spanned five countries and over 16,000 households, following a 2020 Botswana pilot.
- The method's low cost and reliance on widely available mobile phones make it scalable for future crises.
Logitech H390 USB Headset — If the study's takeaway is that a 20-minute call can move the needle on learning, a comfortable headset makes those tutoring calls far easier to run back-to-back. The Logitech H390 plugs in over USB with a noise-cancelling boom mic and inline volume and mute controls, so a tutor or parent can talk clearly hands-free while working through problems on paper or screen.
See Logitech H390 USB Headset on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: nature.com — Basu, 2026-09-09
Published there as: “Pick up the phone! Phone calls with tutors keep kids learning when schools shut down”
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