The Hong Kong-based Yidan Prize Foundation has announced the 2021 recipients of the Yidan Prize for Education Research and the Yidan Prize for Education Development.

Eric A. Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow and professor at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research. His work on education outcomes and the importance of teaching quality has helped shape the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (ensure inclusive and equitable quality education) by reframing targets for learning outcomes and has shown that how much students learn — and not how many years they spend in school — is what boosts economies.

The 2021 Yidan Prize for Education Development was awarded to Pratham Education Foundation CEO Rukmini Banerji for her work in improving learning outcomes. The Annual Status of Education Report assessment approach, pioneered by Banerji and her team in India, revealed literacy and numeracy gaps among children who had already spent several years at school, and developed the Teaching at the Right Level program, which works with schools and local communities to provide basic reading and arithmetic skills.

The laureates will each receive HK$30 million ($3.9 million) — HK$15 million in the form of a cash prize and HK$15 million in support of a project fund of their choice. Hanushek plans to create a research fellow program in Africa that will build analytical capacity to shape education policies from a local perspective, while Banerji plans to strengthen and expand Pratham's work with young children so strong foundations can be built early in a child's life. Established by Tencent co-founder Charles Chen Yidan, the Yidan Prizes are the world's largest international award for education.

"Dr. Rukmini Banerji and the Pratham team have a clear mission: 'Every child in school and learning well,'" said Dorothy K. Gordon, head of the Yidan Prize for Education Development judging panel and a board member of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education. "A reminder that we need to focus on education quality and not just school enrollments. The solutions that they have deployed toward this goal have proven to be cost-effective and scalable with a demonstrated potential to impact globally — disruptive education innovation with transformative results."