In Crisis: 7 Fixes You Can Start Now

By: Tiago Santana - Founder & CEO, Gray Group International • Serial entrepreneur and growth strategist who has built and scaled multiple companies across technology, media, and consulting. Expert in growth strategist and editorial voice for a global think tank building companies that advance the human experience

Key takeaways

• Start with a thorough assessment of your specific requirements before choosing a solution.
• Compare multiple options and verify that each meets your documented criteria.
• Avoid over- or under-investing: the right fit balances cost, performance, and long-term value.

Educational inequity is not abstract. It shows up in hiring pipelines, community trust, and lost growth. In 2024, Amina Hassan led a 420-person garment business outside Nairobi, Kenya, with annual revenue of about $6.8 million. She needed 60 new machine operators and line supervisors. Yet local applicants often struggled with basic reading, numeracy, and digital forms. Her training costs.

In This Article:

• Key takeaways
• What is educational equity really?
• Why is educational equity in crisis?
• Where do equity strategies usually fail?
• Which 7 fixes can you start now?
• What comes next for your organization?
• Sources and further reading

What is educational equity really?

In short: Educational equity means learners do not face sharply different odds because of income, disability, language, race, gender, or place.

Educational equity means learners do not face sharply different odds because of income, disability, language, race, gender, or place. Equal treatment sounds fair. In practice, it often preserves old gaps. The World Bank has warned that learning poverty in low- and middle-income countries reached about 70% after pandemic losses were considered.

The biggest confusion is simple. Teams measure access and call it progress. Enrollment can rise while learning stalls. A common mistake is funding visible inputs first, like laptops or scholarships, without checking whether students can read grade-level text or attend consistently.

How is equity different from equality?

Equality gives everyone the same thing. Equity gives people what they need to reach a fair chance at the same result. A rural school with weak transport links and no specialist staff cannot use the same support model as a well-funded urban campus.

That matters for leaders like Amina Hassan. If nearby schools serve children equally on paper but not equitably in practice, her future workforce arrives unevenly prepared. Equity work lowers pressure across the talent pipeline by broadening access earlier and more fairly.

Why do outcomes matter more than inputs?

Outcomes matter because inputs are only proxies. One district may spend more per student yet still produce weaker literacy gains if teacher coaching is poor or language support is missing. UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring work has repeatedly shown that exclusion often persists even where formal access expands.

Decision-makers should layer measures. Use attendance, formative assessment gains, transition rates, completion rates, and post-school pathways together. A common mistake is picking one vanity metric and calling it impact reporting. An equity stack scorecard is more useful than counting seats funded.

Why is educational equity in crisis?

In short: The crisis is real because disruptions hit weak systems hardest.

The crisis is real because disruptions hit weak systems hardest. UNESCO reported that around 1.6 billion learners were affected by full or partial closures during the pandemic in 2020. At the same time, UNICEF noted hundreds of millions of children lacked basic remote-learning conditions such as internet access or broadcast reach in many settings.

For employers and civic leaders, that shock did not end when schools reopened. Recovery has been uneven by region, income group, disability status, and language background. Many organizations still plan as if learning loss were temporary noise rather than a structural break affecting recruitment quality for years.

What did school closures reveal?

Closures revealed that continuity planning was thin almost everywhere. Devices helped some students but not all. The International Telecommunication Union has estimated that about 2.6 billion people remained offline in 2023, which makes digital-only recovery plans unrealistic in many places.

In peri-urban areas near Nairobi, families often shared one phone across several children. Power outages also disrupted study time. Systems counted content delivered while students fell behind quietly because connectivity maps overstated usable access.

How does learning poverty reshape opportunity?

Learning poverty changes life chances early because reading drives later learning across subjects. The World Bank's indicator tracks children who cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. Once that gap hardens, dropout risk rises and vocational training becomes harder to deliver well.

Early childhood research from Nobel laureate James Heckman has shown high returns from quality early investment, especially for disadvantaged children. Weak foundational learning raises later remediation costs for schools, employers, and public budgets alike. Waiting until secondary school usually means paying more for smaller gains.

Where do equity strategies usually fail?

In short: Most equity strategies fail at diagnosis before they fail at delivery.

Most equity strategies fail at diagnosis before they fail at delivery. Leaders often fund broad categories instead of mapping specific barriers by subgroup and place. Hidden constraints usually sit outside classrooms: transport costs, nutrition gaps, unsafe routes, disability screening delays, or language-of-instruction mismatch.

Here is a practical lens leaders can use. A local coalition might find rural absenteeism spikes during harvest season. An urban district might find housing costs driving teacher turnover. Those need different fixes even if test scores look equally weak at first glance.

Are access gaps bigger than leaders think?

Yes, especially once you look below headline enrollment numbers. Many systems report near-universal primary access while missing irregular attendance or silent disengagement among girls, displaced students, rural learners, or children with disabilities. UNICEF has estimated that children with disabilities are far less likely to attend school than peers in many countries.

Case study one helps make this concrete. Pratham's Teaching at the Right Level model in India focused on actual learning level rather than age-grade placement alone over many years of setup across states, supported by repeated evaluations with J-PAL affiliates. Results commonly showed meaningful gains in basic reading and math when instruction matched assessed need closely.

Do support systems miss disability and language?

Too often, yes. Systems may claim inclusion while procurement excludes accessibility standards or teacher guides ignore multilingual classrooms entirely. We commonly see platforms launched without captions, screen-reader testing, offline modes, or mother-tongue supports in early grades.

Microsoft's Immersive Reader features were built into mainstream products over several years to support reading accessibility through text spacing options, read-aloud tools, line focus functions, translation support, and parts-of-speech aids. The lesson is not to buy one vendor. It is to build accessibility into core products from the start.

Which 7 fixes can you start now?

In short: Start with targeted action instead of broad pledges.

Start with targeted action instead of broad pledges. Seven fixes stand out: diagnose barriers by subgroup, track foundational learning, fund tutoring, support teachers with coaching, add meals or transport where needed, design accessible multilingual tools, and build continuity plans for shocks.

These moves work best as a portfolio, not separate programs. Do not compete on visible donation volume. Create value where others ignore hidden bottlenecks, like parent communication, low-bandwidth delivery, or transition support into apprenticeships for local employers like Amina's factory network.

Map barriers across income and zip code

Begin with disaggregated data. Break results down by income band, location, gender, disability status, language group, and school stage. Then map those findings against transport routes, connectivity reliability, school meal coverage, and labor market demand.

Do not fund what you have not mapped. That is the fastest way to move from vague concern to precise action. Good mapping shows which barriers hit which learners where, so leaders can match the fix to the real problem.

Build inclusive support beyond the classroom

Many of the highest-return fixes sit outside direct instruction. School meals can lift attendance modestly. Cash support can reduce dropout pressure. Health screening can catch hearing or vision issues early. Teacher coaching beats one-off workshops because it changes daily practice over time.

The strongest models connect social protection with education goals rather than forcing schools to solve poverty alone. Amina's firm could co-fund transport stipends for trainees while local partners handle counseling, literacy screening, and family outreach more credibly than an employer acting solo would manage.

Partner with employers and community groups

Partnerships matter because no single actor owns all the bottlenecks. Schools control instruction. Employers understand skill demand. Community groups know why students disappear from programs. Public agencies hold data rules, budgets, and scale pathways.

If your organization wants help turning these fixes into an operating plan, Gray Group International can help assess barriers, design partnership models, and build measurement frameworks tied to fair outcomes. Schedule a strategy conversation at Gray Group International.

Ready to take your educational equity in crisis strategy further?

Gray Group International works with business leaders to turn insight into action. Reading about the right approach is one thing; building the team, processes, and decisions that actually move metrics inside your specific organization is another. That second part is where most of the value lives, and it's where we focus.

Every engagement starts with a working session, not a deck. We listen to where you are today, look at the data and constraints with you, and propose the next two or three concrete moves that we believe will produce the most leverage. You leave with a plan you can act on whether or not you continue to work with us.

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Sources and further reading

• Forbes business news and analysis