Drivers of Learning in Differentiated Classrooms
Lessons from two years of piloting a differentiated teaching intervention in Bangladesh secondary schools
Highlights
Children entering secondary school in Bangladesh often lack the foundational reading and maths skills expected from primary school. To address this, the Government of Bangladesh and UNICEF piloted the Learning Enhancement Strategy, an approach that helps teachers identify what each student already knows and adjust their teaching accordingly. This working paper draws on two years of evidence from 24 secondary schools to show what happened when teachers tried this approach in real classrooms, including which practices helped students learn and which did not.
The findings show that checking students’ understanding in ways matched to their level was the practice most consistently linked to better learning. Using varied learning materials also helped, particularly in maths, though many teachers lacked enough of these materials. Group work helped in Bangla but not in maths, mainly because it lacked ways to hold each student accountable individually. Large class sizes were less of a barrier than teachers expected, but very large classes still reduced the approach's effectiveness. Teachers’ confidence in checking student progress also dropped over the school year, pointing to a need for continued support.
This working paper recommends embedding levelled materials and assessment tools into national curriculum resources, training teachers to explicitly connect classroom practices to differentiation, building individual accountability into group work, and involving school leaders more closely in monitoring and supporting teachers. These steps can help make differentiated teaching a lasting part of how Bangladesh addresses learning gaps.
