Have impact assessments shown changes in children's school lives?

Responsible researcher: 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 Intervention : Developing countries

Sample Size : 119 studies

Sector : Education

Type of Intervention : Effect of public policies on educational outcomes

Variable of Main Interest : School enrollment

Assessment method: Others – Analysis of impact assessments

Policy Problem

Evidence-based policies have increased in recent years in developing countries. Through impact assessments in the area of ​​education, the literature presents divergent and conflicting conclusions about which public policies improve educational results (Evans and Popova, 2015). Seeking to understand such incompatibilities in the conclusions arising from these studies, the authors carry out 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, several interventions seek to solve this problem by (i) reducing the direct costs of schooling; (ii) the reduction of additional costs for schooling; or (iii) improving school facilities.

Implementation and Evaluation Context

Some issues can improve the school life of children in developing countries.

Reducing the direct and complementary costs of schooling can increase the enrollment rate and retention of children in schools. As well as effectively preparing children to learn at school, providing medicines, foods and parenting practices that encourage cognitive development. This way, it would be possible to reduce the chances of the child giving up learning or repeating the school grade.

There is also the implementation of policies to make parents understand the potential value of schooling, providing families with information about the quality of schools available or enabling the expansion of schooling options for these families.

These are the types of policies that the studies selected for the authors' analysis observe their possible impacts on children's educational lives.

Policy Details

To analyze the evaluations carried out in the literature, the authors review educational interventions in pre-primary, primary and secondary grades in low- or middle-income countries from 2000 to 2015.

Studies that included at least one of the following items were reviewed: (i) enrollment; (ii) frequency; (iii) repetition; (iv) evasion; (v) retention; (vi) measures of performance or cognitive abilities.

Because for a subset of studies there is data on cost-effectiveness, the authors reported the effect of interventions on student participation, student performance, or teacher attendance for every 100 US dollars. In which student participation was defined as the average attendance at school level among enrolled students

The types of interventions contained in the studies included by the authors are the provision of computer-assisted learning and changing incentives for teachers. Studies with interventions in the health area were also included, such as the intervention of providing deworming and iron supplements, as this study contains one of the outcome variables.

Methodology Details

Only studies that take advantage of exogenous variation in treatment receipt were included, either by random assignment of individuals to a treatment type or by quasi-random variation in treatment assignment from natural experiments. Studies that used differences in differences, discontinuity regression and instrumental variables were also included. Therefore, studies that estimate counterfactual results were not considered.

Furthermore, to ensure that the cost-effectiveness was the same between the different articles, the authors used the calculations of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which uses the methodology described by Dhaliwal, Duflo, Glennerster and Tulloch (2012 ).

Studies were researched in English and in peer-reviewed journals, working papers and academic conferences, from January to September 2015. Thus, the studies were grouped according to how they are trying to solve a specific problem, following the logic below:

Figure 1: Grouping of studies

From this, the authors focused on the average effects of interventions rather than the effects of subgroups, and on the effects of offering interventions because they cannot control whether individuals take up the interventions for 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 the costs of schooling would be through the creation of new schools close to students' homes. Such an 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 by reducing the costs of supplementing schooling. 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 even increased their performance in mathematics and English.

In terms of preparing children to learn at school, it is about providing medicines, foods and parental practices to encourage cognitive development. This type of politician had a positive impact by reducing student dropouts by a quarter in Kenya. Furthermore, this program was highly cost-effective, as for every $100 spent, it increased an additional 13.9 years of student participation (Miguel and Kremer, 2004).

Some studies argue that providing parents with information about school performance can help parents make decisions about school for their child. And, according to this intervention, Andrabi, Das & Khawaja (2009) suggested that the provision of report cards with children's scores and the average of all schools in the region of Pakistan studied, there was an increase of 0.10 standard deviations in children's tests. public school students.

Therefore, a general observation demonstrated that reducing school costs, improving facilities, delivering medicines and healthy nutrition increases enrollment and attendance of school-age children.

Public Policy Lessons

School life with quality education is always in increasing demand from society. Thus, the literature demonstrates some important points that can change children's behavior during their school life, for example, the fact that reducing the cost of going to school, increasing school attendance and performance, and providing quality schooling affects parents' decisions and, consequently, their children's school lives.

Reference:

MURNANE, Richard J.; GANIMIAN, Alejandro. Improving educational outcomes in developing countries: Lessons from rigorous impact evaluations. NBER Working Paper, no. w20284, 2014.