Introduction

Despite the central role of pre-service teacher education (PSTE) in promoting quality education, it has largely been left out of the significant investments made to improve foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) over the past two decades. These bilateral- and multilateral-funded interventions have instead tended to focus on in-service teacher training as a means of producing faster results at scale.

While investments in PSTE may take longer to influence student-level outcomes, they are key to the sustainability of pedagogical changes in schools. If the PSTE sector is not involved, systems will be forced to engage in intensive, continuous rounds of professional development to realign the knowledge and skills of new teachers to school practices.