Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global learning levels were unacceptably low. In 2019, learning poverty — the share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 — had reached 57 percent in low- and middle-income countries (World Bank and others 2022b). This constituted a global learning crisis. Despite significant expansion in access to schooling in most low- and middle-income countries over the past 50 years to near-universal levels for primary school, progress in improving global learning levels had stalled.