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Noam Angrist

Noam Angrist

Academic Director

Noam Angrist is the Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education. His interests focus on bridging the gap between evidence on ‘what works’ to enable young people to thrive and translation into scaled intervention and policy.

Noam has published in leading academic journals including NatureNature Human Behaviour, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. In addition, he has published across disciplines, including education, economics, public health, and the natural sciences. His research includes primary research on programme and policy effectiveness via randomised trials and natural experiments, building global databases and public goods, and synthesising evidence to inform policy.

He has consulted for the World Bank Chief Economist, FCDO’s Chief Economist, and led key aspects of the development of the World Bank Human Capital Index education pillar. This includes the development of Harmonized Learning Outcomes and a new global measure of education, Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling, which has been adopted as an indicator by the World Bank, FCDO and USAID to track education systems at the country level.

Noam led the development of UNICEF’s evidence menu for the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Hub (FLN) hub in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). He also led the academic research underpinning the inaugural report of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, which reviewed over 150 impact evaluations in education and provided timely recommendations on cost-effective ‘smart buys’ to improve learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.

He is the co-founder of Youth Impact, one of the largest NGOs dedicated to scaling-up health and education programmes backed by rigorous randomised trial evidence. Headquartered in Botswana, the organisation has scaled evidence-based programmes to over 100,000 youth across ten countries.

Youth Impact has pioneered the use of A/B testing in the social sector to optimise evidence-based programmes on the path to scale, conducting 25 rapid randomised trials in just 36 months, in addition to conducting multiple large-scale randomised trials in partnership with J-PAL and the World Bank. The organisation has solidified multi-year partnerships with UNICEF, USAID, and the Brookings Institution and signed an MOU with the Botswana government to scale-up evidence-based programmes nationally.

During Covid-19, Youth Impact produced the world’s first evidence on distance education, published in Nature Human Behaviour, and has since re-tested and scaled the programme in five additional countries (India, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines) with governments, NGOs, and multilateral partners within 18 months. These efforts represent some of the largest, fastest, multi-country evidence bases ever generated in education.

Noam has a BSc in Mathematics and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD (DPhil) from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Angrist was a Fulbright and Rhodes scholar, and his work has been recognised by Forbes, the Skoll World Forum, and the World Economic Forum.

Related resources

Blog

CIES 2025: A/B testing in education has arrived!
19 June 2025

Amanda Beatty, Vishal Sunil, Andrés Parrado, Noam Angrist, Clio Dintilhac, Kate Ross and Yue-Yi Hwa

Implementation science, General
A/B testing is becoming increasingly prominent in global education. This blog highlights key A/B testing work from What Works Hub for Global Education partner organisations, featured in the CIES 2025 panel, 'Educational technology and implementation science: Using A/B testing to iteratively improve and scale educational interventions'. Read more

Blog

New data and evidence on climate-resilient education
10 June 2025

Haogen Yao, Noam Angrist, Sarah Lane Smith and Katerina Ananiadou

Global, General
School disruptions are common and costly. This blog explores solutions for building more resilient education delivery during climate-related school disruptions and calls for improved data and evidence systems to support climate-resilient education. Read more

Blog

A clarion call for efficient and sustainable solutions to achieve foundational learning
1 May 2025

Ben Piper, Luis Benveniste and Noam Angrist

Cross-country, Global, General
Global education needs efficient and sustainable solutions to improve learning and to ensure scarce education funds are being used in the most effective way possible. That's why we're calling for contributions to a set of resources for improving efficiency and sustainability in the sector. Read more

Blog

Five ways we can transform global education in 2025
3 February 2025

Noam Angrist,  Jon Kay and Samuel Kembou

Global, General
In this blog, Noam Angrist, Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education, Jonathan Kay, Head of Evidence Synthesis at the Education Endowment Foundation, and Samuel Kembou, Global Lead for Learning and Evidence at the Jacobs Foundation, share five key wishes for the coming year. Read more

Blog

Six insights on implementation challenges at scale – and how to fix them
22 January 2025

Noam Angrist, Ben Piper, Rukmini Banerji, Hafsatu Hamza, Laura Poswell and Yue-Yi Hwa

Cross-country, General
This blog features a selection of snippets from the panel titled ‘Implementation Matters: Where Do Things Break Down at Scale?’, held during the fifth anniversary of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa Conference on 14-15 November 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya. Read more

Insight note

A/B testing in education: rapid experimentation to optimise programme cost-effectiveness
22 October 2024

Noam Angrist, Amanda Beatty, Claire Cullen and Moitshepi Matsheng 

Botswana, Implementation science, Randomised trial
This insight note explores the practical benefits of A/B testing in education, highlighting its ability to optimise interventions quickly and at a low cost in low- and middle-income countries. Read more

Journal article

How to improve education outcomes most efficiently? A review of the evidence using a unified metric
16 October 2024

Noam Angrist, David K. Evans, Deon Filmer, Rachel Glennerster, Halsey Rogers, Shwetlena Sabarwal

Cross-country, Evidence translation
Many low- and middle-income countries lag far behind high-income countries in educational access and student learning. While many interventions have been rigorously evaluated, comparing their results is difficult. This paper offers a comprehensive review of literature on effective education programs, with a focus on cost-effectiveness. Read more

Podcast

The gap between education policy and practice
4 October 2024

Noam Angrist

Cross-country
Education was hit hard by COVID-19 with over a billion children out of school at the height of the pandemic. In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Noam Angrist speaks to Tim Phillips about how the pandemic provided an opportunity to examine policy implementation and effectiveness. Read more

Working paper

Understanding gaps between policy and practice
22 July 2024

Noam Angrist, Stefan Dercon

Implementation science
This article presents new systematic analysis of the gap between education policy and practice across 50 countries during COVID-19, a time of substantial policy innovation. Read more

Blog

Improving implementation to improve learning outcomes: The What Works Hub for Global Education
11 June 2024

Noam Angrist and Michelle Kaffenberger

Implementation science, Evidence use, Evidence translation
Despite substantial progress in schooling, millions of children still struggle with basic learning outcomes. The What Works Hub for Global Education is contributing to filling this gap by advancing an "implementation science" in education. Read more

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