Announcement
Education systems across parts of Ethiopia are actively strengthening children’s learning, even amid environmental stress, conflict, displacement, and resource constraints. As access to schooling expands, attention is increasingly shifting toward learning quality. UNICEF estimates that around 7.6 million children remain out of school, while many enrolled learners struggle to achieve foundational literacy by age 10, underscoring the opportunity to introduce teaching approaches that more effectively support learning and wellbeing in diverse classroom contexts.
In refugee-hosting regions such as the Somali region, where classrooms are often overcrowded and resources limited, strategies that empower teachers and actively engage learners are especially important for improving learning outcomes.
Against this backdrop, education actors face a critical question: which approaches can improve learning outcomes at a cost that is feasible for crisis-affected education systems?
A new cost-effectiveness analysis of PlayMatters, a Learning through Play initiative implemented by a consortium led by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in partnership with the LEGO Foundation, offers promising early evidence.
What the study examined
In 2025, researchers evaluated a PlayMatters’ cohort of implementation in the Somali region of Ethiopia. The program integrates Learning through Play into pre-primary and primary classrooms through a whole-school approach that combines:
- foundational and refresher teacher training delivered through a cascade model
- ongoing coaching, peer learning circles, and school-based continuous professional development
- community engagement and school leadership support
- the provision of teaching and learning materials aligned with Minimum Quality Standards
Using data from a randomized controlled trial across 35 schools, the study assessed impacts on children’s literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional learning, alongside changes in teacher instructional practices. These impact results were then paired with detailed cost data from program implementation to assess cost-effectiveness, which is how much it costs to achieve meaningful improvements in learning. This excludes additional costs incurred by the government.
What the findings show
The analysis found that improving student learning outcomes by 0.2 standard deviations, a benchmark of improvement commonly used in education research to signal meaningful progress in learning, costs between US$24 and US$64 per child, depending on the learning domain.
What this means
- PlayMatters achieved better (up to 5 times larger) or equivalent impacts across reading comprehension, numeracy, social-emotional learning, and wellbeing outcomes compared to other education-in-emergencies interventions at approximately one-sixth of the average cost of education interventions in conflict-affected settings;
- these gains were achieved at a relatively low cost, even in settings facing displacement, teacher shortages, and limited infrastructure.
At the teacher level, costs ranged from US$622 to US$1,185 per teacher to achieve the same level of learning improvement across their students. While this reflects substantial upfront investment in training, coaching, and materials, these costs are spread across many learners and school years. Strengthening teacher practice in this way increases the likelihood that learning gains are sustained beyond the life of a single project.
Overall, the program reached nearly 19,800 students and 377 teachers at a total cost of US$38 per child. This is substantially lower than the estimated global average cost of humanitarian education programs, which stands at approximately US$240 per child.
While many education-in-emergencies interventions focus primarily on access and enrollment, these findings suggest that it is possible to improve learning quality and outcomes at scale, without prohibitive costs.
Beyond test scores, the study also found improvements in teacher instructional practices and indications of positive effects on teacher wellbeing. More inclusive, engaging, and child-centered classrooms may help address teacher burnout and support children’s social-emotional development, which outcomes are critical in displacement-affected contexts but often overlooked.
Relevance for policy and scale
This study represents one of the first cost-effectiveness analyses of a large-scale Education in Emergencies intervention in humanitarian settings.
While the evidence is based on a single cohort in one region, the results suggest that Learning through Play is likely a cost-effective approach to improving foundational learning in crisis-affected education systems.
Amidst such promising findings, cost-effectiveness may vary across contexts with different cost structures and system capacities, so replication across multiple settings can strengthen this evidence. An ongoing randomized controlled trial in Uganda will help validate and refine these estimates.
Even so, the findings provide early, policy-relevant evidence that investing in teacher-centered, play-based approaches can deliver meaningful learning gains at a cost that compares favorably with other humanitarian education investments. For governments, donors, and education actors facing urgent learning crises and constrained budgets, PlayMatters offers a promising model worthy of further investment, adaptation, and scale.