From diagnosis to action: strengthening the middle tier of education

María de las Mercedes Miguel has been the City’s Minister of Education since 2024. From 2016 to 2019, she served as Secretary for Innovation and Educational Quality at the National Ministry of Education and then as Director-General for Educational Planning and Innovation at the City’s Ministry of Education for six years. She led the RiverDAR programme from 2019 to 2023. She was also a member of the UNESCO 2030 Steering Committee and co-founded Enseña por Argentina, part of the global Teach for All network. She holds a degree in Journalism and is an alumna of the Institute for the Future of Learning at Harvard University.

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 its translation into scaled interventions and policy. 

Noam has published in leading academic journals including Nature, Nature 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) 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.

Aftab Alam is an education policy, planning and data systems professional with extensive experience in education governance, management information systems and implementation-focused reform.

As Director SEMIS at the Reform Support Unit, he leads Sindh’s Education Management Information System, Annual School Census, GIS-based analytics, and education data systems that support provincial planning, monitoring, and decision-making. His current work focuses on strengthening the use of education data at the provincial, district, and school-support levels, improving data-to-decision processes, and linking information systems to broader governance reforms. He is also engaged in Sindh’s school clustering initiative and the Government’s Technical Working Group on strengthening the education middle tier, with particular interest in clarifying roles, improving field-level support, strengthening institutional coordination and translating policy into effective school-level implementation. His broader interests include education governance, digital transformation, responsible use of AI, implementation learning and evidence-informed public policy.’

Neelofar Javaid is a Senior Advisor with the Learning Generation Initiative (LGI) at the Education Development Center (EDC). She brings over 20 years of experience supporting education policy, institutional reform, and implementation across Pakistan, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Jordan. She has worked with governments and development partners, including EDC, FCDO, and CIDA, with a focus on improving learning outcomes and advancing equity for marginalized children, particularly girls and out-of-school learners. Her work focuses on strengthening education systems and translating policy into measurable results.

Abdul is the Data, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager with nine years of professional experience, six years in international development and the remaining years in market research. He has extensive experience in programme monitoring and evaluation (M&E), development of logframes, theory of change and monitoring and evaluation strategies. Specific areas of expertise include data analysis, quantitative and qualitative research and report writing. He has expert knowledge of management information systems, survey design, impact evaluation and value for money assessment.

Barbara Tournier coordena projetos de pesquisa e de cooperação técnica sobre questões ligadas a docentes e à força de trabalho educacional como um todo. Ela se concentra especificamente na forma como uma melhor organização dos sistemas educacionais pode ajudar aos docentes em suas atividades diárias e aumentar sua motivação. 

Barbara conduziu programas de pesquisa plurinacionais, nomeadamente sobre carreiras docentes e liderança pedagógica no nível intermediário dos sistemas educacionais. Atualmente, dirige o trabalho do instituto ligado à análise da capacidade do nível intermediário, explorando a forma como o pessoal e as estruturas nesse nível podem ser aproveitados em benefício das escolas e dos profissionais da linha da frente. Além disso, apoia o instituto em âmbitos como os sistemas integrados de gestão de recursos humanos, o fortalecimento da liderança e a coordenação da formação virtual ou presencial em gestão de professores.