About the Activity 'Participation & Messaging (PM)': 1) What is PM? - Technology to promote participation in school. The challenge facing the education sector, a significant number of children are out of school worldwide and this situation has been exacerbated by the impact of Covid-19. Many of the most marginalised who were previously enrolled in schools are at risk of never returning. Our goal is to end simplistic approaches to messaging: Messaging is considered to be the most cost-effective means of increasing Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS). However, the evidence for this is limited and there is a lack of understanding regarding the factors that make messaging more or less effective in certain contexts. This combination means that policymakers tend to invest in messaging in overly simplistic ways, assuming it to be a silver bullet. Clear evidence on how messaging should be used in different contexts will increase the impact it has on participation and learning outcomes.2) Guiding question - How can nudge technologies and messaging apps be used to re-engage students, reduce the number of out-of-school children, and improve learning outcomes?

EdTech Hub is a global research partnership supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the World Bank. The partnership's goal is to empower the people making decisions about technology in education. EdTech Hub works across five focus areas that technology could support: girls’ education, teacher professional development, promoting participation, personalised learning and improving data collection, analysis and planning to improve learning outcomes. EdTech Hub was established to tackle the problem of a lack of clear evidence. Technology has the potential to help address the global learning crisis, but that potential is not being realised. Policymakers and other decision-makers face an overwhelming choice of technology solutions, are unclear on what works and what doesn’t and are forced to make decisions based on low or no evidence.EdTech Hub, undertakes rigorous academic research and gives evidence-based advice about how to use technology in education. With EdTech Hub’s help decision-makers inside and outside government can make clear, evidence-based policy decisions to achieve maximum impact.