Improving the quality of basic education in ASEAN–Emerging challenges and reforms

Southeast Asia has made remarkable progress in expanding access to education, surpassing many other developing regions in bringing children to school. However, ensuring foundational literacy and numeracy—core indicators of the quality of basic education—remains a pressing challenge across the region. Various education reforms, programs, and initiatives supported by governmental, non-governmental, and non-profit organizations have been implemented with mixed success. This essay introduces the eight papers featured in the Special Issue jointly proposed by the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute on the emerging challenges and necessary reforms to improve the quality of basic education in ASEAN. Contributions from ADB and ADBI staff, academic researchers, and practitioners within the region reflect on the state of education following the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting new evidence on barriers to learning outcomes and offering actionable policy recommendations for advancing education quality. The papers provide cross-country analyses and country-specific studies, focusing on Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. They address an array of interconnected topics, including the impact evaluation of government and non-government education programs, the effects of pandemic-induced school closures on learning outcomes, and stakeholder perceptions of education quality and learning achievement. Together, these studies present diverse methodological approaches and findings, offering a comprehensive lens through which to understand and tackle persistent educational challenges in ASEAN.