Is just increasing spending on education enough?

Responsible researcher: Adriano Valladão Pires Ribeiro

Article title: INPUTS, INCENTIVES, AND COMPLEMENTARITIES IN EDUCATION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM TANZANIA

Article authors: Isaac Mbiti, Karthik Mutalidharan, Mauricio Romero, Youdi Schipper, Constantine Manda and Rakesh Rajani

Location of intervention: Tanzania

Sample size: 350 schools

Sector: Education

Type of intervention: Transfer of resources to schools and teachers

Variable of main interest: Passing mathematics, Swahili and English assessments

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

Improving the educational system in developing countries is a global challenge, where hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually by governments and donors. Despite this, it is not always that increased spending on education is converted into improvements. This leads us to believe that increased resources have limited impact and other restrictions would also play an important role in determining educational outcomes. A complementary restriction on spending would be the effort expended by the teacher, that is, the supply of materials resulting from increased spending would only increase the quality of teaching if accompanied by high commitment from the teacher and vice versa.

Assessment Context

The complementarity highlighted above can be tested in an experiment in Tanzania, a place where teachers lack both resources and motivation and effort. In 2001, school fees for public primary education in the country were abolished, an important step towards universal primary education with the growth in the number of enrollments from 52% in 2000 to 94% in 2008. However, the level of education has improved. remained low, with only a third of third-year elementary school students having the math and literacy proficiencies expected of a second-year student.

The rapid growth in enrollment was not accompanied by increased spending on primary education, resulting in a lack of infrastructure in schools, basic teaching materials and an average of almost 50 students per teacher. Furthermore, a World Bank study revealed that one in four teachers was absent from work and half of the teachers who were at school were absent from the classroom. The content was taught for around two hours, less than half the schedule, and 47% of teachers reported that they would choose another career if possible.

Intervention Details

Once the problems of both lack of resources and unmotivated teachers were identified, a program to individually mitigate each of these obstacles and another that attacked both at the same time were launched. The interventions were implemented by Twaweza, a civil society organization in East Africa focusing on citizens and the delivery of public services, in partnership with the government to facilitate their implementation and evaluation. It is also noteworthy that the program was applied to a nationally representative sample of 350 schools in 10 districts in Tanzania throughout 2013 and 2014.

Some schools were selected to receive extra funds per student that were in addition to the resources initially provided by the government. The resources were announced by Twaweza to participating schools and some members of the community that also included students' parents at the beginning of each school year. The resources would be transferred to the school's account in two installments, one in April and the other in August or September, and the way they would be spent was decided by the school management. Despite this, schools should be accountable, recording and publicly sharing information about revenue and expenditure of resources with the community.

The teacher incentive program provided for a cash amount to be paid to the teacher based on the performance of their students in an independent assessment conducted by Twaweza. Given the emphasis on early primary education, the program was limited to teachers in the first to third years and focused on mathematics and literacy subjects in English and Swahili (the official language of Tanzania). The rule adopted was simple and depended only on the number of students approved in these assessments. Ultimately, schools nominated for both programs would follow the same protocols as above. The difference between the transfer of resources to schools, which was unconditional, and incentives for teachers, which would depend on students' test results, is highlighted.

The selection of schools participating in each program was done randomly. First, the 10 districts were randomly selected. Then, the 35 participating schools were randomly selected, in which 7 would receive the transfer of resources, 7 would only receive teacher incentives, 7 would participate in both programs and the remaining 14 would form the control group without receiving any resources.

Methodology Details

The variables used to evaluate the effects of the programs were results in mathematics, English and Swahili tests. The random way of selecting schools for the control or treatment group makes it possible to compare the impacts of the transfer of resources, incentives for teachers and both, since differences in average exam results could be computed from the adopted program. The idea is that, when considering the individual characteristics of schools, teachers and students, the inequality observed in evaluations would be fully explained by the implementation of the project. That is, the only element that would explain the difference in the products of interest between schools in the control group and the treatment group would be participation in one of the programs.

Results

Assessment of the transfer of resources to schools alone indicates that funds were spent mainly on books and classroom materials such as blackboards, chalk and maps. Other expenses were administrative and student support, such as security and food. It is also noted that the expenditure per student was twice the amount compared to the control group and there was no increase in spending on teachers as per program rules. Regarding evaluations, following the methodology above, no difference was found in exam results between schools in the control group and schools that only received the cash transfer. In other words, despite spending per student having, in fact, increased, no effect on learning was found.

Schools with only teacher incentives indicated an increase in exam passes. At the end of the second year, students were 37%, 17% and 70% more likely to pass exams in mathematics, Swahili and English, respectively. Finally, schools that received the financial aid and teacher incentives also saw a similar increase in spending per student as schools that only received the extra funds. However, this time, the impacts on assessment results were positive, at the end of the second year the probability of passing the mathematics, Swahili and English tests increased, respectively, by 49%, 31% and 116%. It is noted that the effects of combining the programs were even greater than those indicated by encouraging teachers alone.

Public Policy Lessons

The results above show that there are several factors restricting the advancement of educational quality in developing countries and that simply increasing spending per student is not enough. Furthermore, mitigating only some factors and not others can also limit improvements. Another lesson to highlight is that more funding for education can increase learning when accompanied by better incentives for the effective use of resources. In this case, there were clear rules to be adopted by schools to be accountable, information was made available to the general public and, mainly, to the affected community and a simple model of incentive for teachers.

Reference

MBITI, Isaac; MURALIDHARAN, Karthik; ROMERO, Mauricio; SCHIPPER, Youdi; MANDA, Constantine; RAJANI, Rakesh. “Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 134, Issue 3, August 2019, Pages 1627–1673, 2019.