Adapting, Innovating, and Scaling Foundational Learning: Four Lessons from Scaling Teaching at the Right Level in Botswana. Executive Summary

Millions Learning, a project of the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, explores scaling and sustaining effective innovations leading to improved system-wide approaches. CUE is implementing a series of Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSLs), in partnership with local institutions in several countries, to generate evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in global education. CUE, in partnership with Youth Impact, launched an RTSL in Botswana focused on the process of implementing, adapting, scaling, and sustaining the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach in primary schools across the country. The case of TaRL in Botswana offers a rich example of how an innovation developed and refined in one context can be adapted to and strategically expanded in a new location by a local organization in partnership with the government. While TaRL's scaling journey in Botswana is still unfolding, the case provides an opportunity to investigate key facilitating factors, decisions, and barriers that have contributed to and constrained the scaling process to date. This summary, and the report it draws from, explores four key lessons that have emerged from the work of scaling TaRL in Botswana.