Over the past two decades, instructional coaching has emerged as a key feature of effective interventions to improve early grade
learning. This chapter traces South African research undertaken over the past twelve years on the impact of instructional coaching in large-scale structured pedagogic programmes. Combining evidence from large-scale counterfactual comparable and replication
studies and in-depth qualitative case studies that aim to uncover mechanisms, this chapter illustrates the contribution of this
research programme to advancing knowledge of how to improve early grade learning system-wide in the Global South. Specifically, the research highlights the feasibility, cost-effectiveness and mechanisms of on-site instructional coaching as part of structured pedagogic programmes.