Principal investigator: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo
Article title: IMPROVING EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: LESSONS FROM RIGOROUS IMPACT EVALUATIONS
Article authors: Alejandro J. Ganimian and Richard J. Murnane
Location of the InterventionDeveloping countries
Sample Size: 119 studies
Sector: Education
Type of InterventionThe impact of public policies on educational outcomes.
Main Variable of InterestSchool enrollment
Evaluation method: Other – Analysis of impact assessments
Policy Problem
Evidence-based policies have become increasingly important in developing countries in recent years. Through impact assessments in the field of education, the literature presents divergent and conflicting conclusions about which public policies improve educational outcomes (Evans and Popova, 2015). Seeking to understand these inconsistencies in the conclusions from these studies, the authors conduct a narrative review, drawing attention to the design and implementation aspects of successful educational interventions.
One reason why children and young people cannot go to school is because the cost of going is too high, and therefore, various interventions seek to solve this problem through (i) reducing the direct costs of schooling; (ii) reducing ancillary costs for schooling; or (iii) improving school facilities.
Implementation and Evaluation Context
Several factors can improve the school life of children in developing countries.
Reducing direct and ancillary schooling costs can increase enrollment and retention rates. Similarly, effectively preparing children for school by providing medication, food, and parenting practices that encourage cognitive development can reduce the likelihood of children dropping out of school or repeating a grade.
There is also the implementation of policies to help parents understand the potential value of schooling, providing families with information about the quality of available schools or enabling the expansion of educational options for these families.
These are the types of policies that the studies selected for analysis by the authors observe to have potential impacts on children's educational lives.
Policy Details
For the analysis of evaluations carried out in the literature, the authors review educational interventions in pre-primary, primary, and secondary education in low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2015.
Studies were reviewed that included at least one of the following items: (i) enrollment; (ii) attendance; (iii) repetition; (iv) dropout; (v) retention; (vi) measures of performance or cognitive skills.
Since a subset of studies lacks cost-effectiveness data, the authors reported the effect of interventions on student participation, student performance, or teacher attendance for every US$100. Student participation was defined as the average school-level attendance among enrolled students.
The types of interventions included in the studies cited by the authors are the provision of computer-assisted learning and changes in incentives for teachers. Studies with interventions in the health field were also included, such as the provision of deworming medication and iron supplements, as this type of study contains one of the outcome variables.
Methodology Details
Only studies that take advantage of exogenous variation in treatment reception were included, either through random assignment of individuals to a type of treatment or through quasi-random variation in treatment assignment in natural experiments. Studies that used differences-in-differences, discontinuity regression, and instrumental variables were also included. Thus, studies that estimate counterfactual outcomes were not considered.
Furthermore, to ensure that the cost-effectiveness was the same across the different articles, the authors used the calculations of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which uses a methodology described by Dhaliwal, Duflo, Glennerster, and Tulloch (2012).
Studies in English and in peer-reviewed journals were searched. working papers and academic conferences, from January to September 2015. Thus, the studies were grouped according to how they are attempting to solve a specific problem, following the logic below:
Figure 1: Grouping of studies
From this, the authors focused on the average effects of the interventions rather than the effects on subgroups, and on the effects of offering the interventions because they cannot control whether individuals take the interventions to which they are eligible.
Results
In Bogotá, Colombia, the initiative to reduce school fees for low-income families in 2004 had an impact on increasing enrollment in early childhood education for children from poor families by 3% and by 6% for children from even poorer families (Barrera-Osorio, Linden, and Urquiola, 2007). Another way to reduce schooling costs would be through the creation of new schools closer to students' homes. This initiative was evaluated by Duflo (2001) in Indonesia between 1974 and 1978, demonstrating that such intervention led to an average increase of 0,12 to 0,19 years of schooling.
One strategy to increase school enrollment is through reducing the costs of supplementary education. According to Evans, Kremer, and Ngatia (2009), primary school students who received free uniforms in Kenya in 2002 were 44% more likely to attend school and also improved their performance in mathematics and English.
In terms of preparing children to learn at school, this involves providing medication, food, and parenting practices to encourage cognitive development. This type of policy has had a positive impact by reducing student dropout rates by a quarter in Kenya. Furthermore, this program has been highly cost-effective, as for every $100 spent, it increased student participation by 13,9 additional years (Miguel and Kremer, 2004).
Some studies argue that providing parents with information about school performance can help them make decisions about the right school for their child. And, according to this intervention, Andrabi, Das & Khawaja (2009) suggested that providing report cards with children's scores and the average scores of all schools in the studied region of Pakistan resulted in a 0,10 standard deviation increase in test scores for students in public schools.
Therefore, a general observation demonstrated that reducing school costs, improving facilities, providing medication, and promoting healthy nutrition increase enrollment and attendance among school-age children.
Lessons in Public Policy
School life with a quality education is in ever-increasing demand from society. Thus, the literature demonstrates some important points that can alter children's behavior regarding their school life, such as the fact that reducing the costs of attending school increases attendance and academic performance, and that the provision of quality education affects parental decisions and, consequently, the school life of their children.
Reference:
MURNANE, Richard J.; GANIMIAN, Alejandro. Improving educational outcomes in developing countries: Lessons from rigorous impact evaluations. NBER Working Paper, no. w20284, 2014.
