Improving learning in primary schools of developing countries: A meta-analysis of randomized experiments (original) (raw)
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Cost-Effectiveness of Primary School Interventions in Africa
Sub-Saharan African countries are engaged in the difficult task of meeting the Millennium Development goals as well as the broader targets of Education for All, both of which seek to provide six full years of primary education of good quality. Until recently the focus was on keeping children in school and on finding the financial resources to pay teachers. Increasingly there is an interest in the quality side of the equation, as leaders and decision makers have begun to recognize that children can stay in school and not learn very much. This paper seeks to strengthen this changed focus by estimating the “cost effectiveness” of 46 potential “interventions” that could result in increased primary school learning. Furthermore, throughout the world quality improvement is often sought through investments made on the basis of untested or partially tested assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of particular interventions. While education is increasingly considered the key to economic success --and investments in education by national governments as well as international agencies are growing--, current knowledge about cost-effectiveness in education is extraordinarily inadequate, especially considering the huge amounts of money that go into education. Undertaking traditional empirical cost-effectiveness research in education is costly and time consuming. The authors sought a “short cut” this approach, though an approach which harnesses expert opinion on “what works” in education. A “typical” low income English speaking country, a composite of six East and West African countries (e.g., Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia) was created. The authors decided that French speaking Africa as well as southern Africa had different characteristics and could be the subject of a future survey. The authors then devised a questionnaire which was given to twenty-three international education planners and economists, mainly located in universities and international agencies, all of whom were well acquainted with educational research, and who have an understanding of attempts at educational reform in the region. Each respondent was asked to estimate the potential impact of 46 possible primary school interventions on learning (as defined by the score on a standardized test given at the end of fourth grade), as well as the probability that these interventions would be adequately implemented. These interventions included those typically thought of in the African context as well as interventions used elsewhere in the world. The authors plugged in their own estimates of the incremental unit costs of these interventions, and then created an index ranking the cost-effectiveness of each of the 46 interventions. . The main conclusions from this exercise are as follows: • There appear to be a number of low cost but effective interventions which can be utilized to increase learning; These include: assigning best teachers (for teaching to read and write) to first grade; enforcing regulations on the official length of the school year; enforcing student attendance policies; paying teachers regularly; using a revolving fund for textbooks; ending the practice of switching teachers during the school year; and rotating teachers and principals among schools. ii • Some very expensive interventions may have a small impact on learning (per unit of required resources). These especially include computers, school feeding programs, longer daily schedule, smaller number of students per class, and raising teachers' salaries without complementary training and better selection criteria for new teachers. • Some interventions are of moderate to high cost but could have a significant impact. These include : making textbooks available to each student, and providing a small library for each classroom. Other interventions with high probable impact are those related to a longer school year, decentralization, and mass media campaigns encouraging parents to pay more attention to learning and developmental needs of their children. • All those polled consider implementation issues of great importance. Compared with Latin America, the potential impact of well implemented interventions is greater but implementation issues are much more difficult and relative costs higher.
Journal of Development Economics, 2020
Despite large schooling and learning gains in many developing countries, children in highly deprived areas are often unlikely to achieve even basic literacy and numeracy. We study how much of this problem can be resolved using a multi-pronged intervention combining three interventions known to be separately effective. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in The Gambia evaluating a literacy and numeracy intervention designed for primary-aged children in remote parts of poor countries. The intervention combines para teachers delivering after-school supplementary classes, scripted lesson plans, and frequent monitoring focusing on improving teacher practice (coaching). A similar intervention previously demonstrated large learning gains in rural India. After three academic years, Gambian children allocated to the intervention scored 46 percentage points (3.2 SD) better on a combined literacy and numeracy test than control children. Our results demonstrate that, in this type of area, aggressive interventions can yield far greater learning gains than previously shown.
Making Schools Effective in Developing Countries Spring 2008-9 SYLLABUS
Poor children live in poor communities and poor countries -those least able to afford the costs of schooling. This shows up in the difficulty that poor families have in meeting their children's educational costs and that poor countries have in sustaining the recurrent costs of schools. Major attention has been given recently to strategies for ensuring that all children in developing countries complete a good quality primary education. But what works, and is it affordable? This course is designed to help students understand what lessons for improving schools in developing countries can be gleaned from the empirical literature. The course has three main sections. The first section will review the evidence regarding the quality of education in developing countries, drawing from a range of cross-national studies of achievement and recent reports from multilateral donor agencies. The second section of the course will consider various models of school effectiveness, and will examine the evidence related to the impact of various school inputs, including teacher and teaching quality on student learning. The third section will examine the evidence linking systemic reform, including local control of schools and parent and community participation, with better student learning outcomes. While this is not a research methods course, it does rely heavily on quantitative research evidence, including evidence from evaluations using multivariate regression methods and from randomized control designs. For this reason, students are strongly encouraged to have prior coursework in statistics.
Reforms to Increase Teacher Effectiveness in Developing Countries: Systematic Review, September 2016
2016
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a aCost-Effectiveness in African Schools 2007.doc
Sub-Saharan African countries are engaged in the difficult task of meeting the Millennium Development goals as well as the broader targets of Education for All, both of which seek to provide six full years of primary education of good quality. Until recently the focus was on keeping children in school and on finding the financial resources to pay teachers. Increasingly there is an interest in the quality side of the equation, as leaders and decision makers have begun to recognize that children can stay in school and not learn very much. This paper seeks to strengthen this changed focus by estimating the “cost effectiveness” of 46 potential “interventions” that could result in increased primary school learning.
Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality. Then an even higher bar is set in terms of econometric methods used, leaving 43 “high quality” studies. Finally, results are also shown separately for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially when the evidence is limited to the “high quality” studies. The few variables that do have significant effects – e.g. availability of desks, teacher knowledge of the subjects they teach, and teacher absence – are not particularly surprising and thus provide little guidance for future policies and programs.
The benefits and costs of alternative strategies to improve educational outcomes
Global Crises, Global Solutions, 2009
This paper reviews the stylized facts regarding the levels of human capital investments and the returns to those investments in developing countries. It shows that 23% of children in developing countries do not complete the fifth grade and of these, 55% started school but dropped out. We argue that eliminating dropouts is the most cost effective way to make progress on the goal of Universal Primary Education. Of the various mechanisms we can use, mechanisms that stimulate schooling demand have the strongest evidence of success to date and are the most cost effective.
2011
The improvement of education in developing societies might benefit from theory and research on educational effectiveness. ... The research evidence points at the importance of factors at the classroom level and the relatively small possibilities that the school and the above school level have to influence those factors at the classroom level. This is illustrated by the evaluation of the primary education quality improvement project in Indonesia, a project that aimed at the improvement of education through teacher professional development, provision of textbooks, community participation and management of schools. The results tend to support the general feeling about educational effectiveness. Conclusions stress the importance of the development of knowledge by (inter)national consultants, the content of the intervention - educational effectiveness and improvement and the adaptation of the knowledge to national and local circumstances - and procedural and technical knowledge how to de...