Improving  Primary  Educa2on  with  Evidence  

Promoting an Evidence-Based Policy Agenda

Rachel  Glennerster  Execu2ve  Director,  J-­‐PAL  

Department  of  Economics,  MIT    

From  Evidence  to  Policy:  Decision  Science  Symposium  Kigali,  Rwanda    May  21-­‐22,  2013  

J-PAL Research in Education

2

¨  Network of 80 academics doing RCTs and working to influence policy

¨  95 RCTs on education: important lessons for primary education

Overview

¨  Education quality – Helping all children learn ¤  Targeted tutoring to teach basic skills ¤  Teaching to the right level in Ghana ¤  Tracking students by learning level ¤  Assessing learning levels with the ASER test

¨  Improving enrollment, attendance and retention ¤  Addressing uncertainty about the benefits of education ¤  Reducing the cost of schooling ¤  Providing rewards for school-goers ¤  Addressing cross-generational sex through schools ¤  Treating health barriers to attendance: Deworming

¨  Policy Lessons

In school, but not yet learning well

¨  Rwanda has made enormous progress in expanding school access: primary school net enrollment at 96%

¨  Improvements in school enrollment are only the first step ¤ Worldwide, many children are reading and doing math

below grade level ¤  In Rwanda as well, many school children have not mastered

the basic reading and numeracy skills ¤  13% of students in P4 could not read a single word of P2-P3

level text (EGRA 2011)

¨  Many possible investments, what is the priority?

Challenges in addressing low learning levels

¨  Children lacking basic skills may make up a large portion of a class

¨  Hard working teachers are often faced with many different learning levels in one class

¨  Difficult for teachers to help children master basic skills while still teaching official curriculum for grade level

¨  Reorienting instruction toward actual learning levels found effective in many different environments

Helping children who have fallen behind catch up

¨  Tutoring curricula developed Pratham ¤  Special classes in school taught by NGO workers

¤  After school classes taught by volunteers in rural India

¤  Summer camps taught by government teachers

¤  Same simple curricula, teachers can be trained in a week

¤  Teachers taught to identify those falling behind

¨  Results: ¤  60% of non-readers learned to read letters ¤  25% of children who could only read letters learned

to read stories

Adapting the Pratham model to Africa

¨  Ghana is piloting the Teacher Community Assistant Initiative (TCAI) ¤  Train teachers to adapt to learning level of pupils

¤  Trains youth assistants in Pratham model

¨  Preliminary results: ¤  Youth assistants most effective, basic skills and math

improved after just a few months (0.1-0.2 SD)

¤  Opportunities to unemployed youth, who are trained to provide the tutoring

Application in Rwanda? ¨  Unemployed youth could be trained to deliver

tutoring in basic skills, supporting overburdened teachers

¨  Vacation or after school camps also possible

Tracking students by learning level in Kenya

¨  Free primary education led to large classes in Kenya

¨  NGO funded additional contract teachers ¤  Students split into different classes by learning level (“tracking”)

¤  Test scores improved for all students, including both students with higher and lower initial learning levels (by 0.2 standard deviations)

¤  Reducing class size without tracking did not improve learning

Application in Rwanda?

¨  Leverage Rwanda’s primary school double shift program to separate students by learning level

Learning level can be determined with a simple (ASER) test

How can we increase student time spent in school?

¨  With no school fees for 12 years of education, Rwanda has experienced large increase in enrollment

¨  But many students still drop out or fail to attend class when enrolled

¨  Ministry of Education has identified low completion and high dropout and repetition rates as key challenge in basic education

¨  Even when schooling is free, why the irregular attendance in Rwanda and elsewhere?

J-PAL Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Interventions to increase student time in school (Additional school years gained per $100 spent)

20.7 yrs

informationon returnsto education,for parents(MADAGASCAR)

free primaryschooluniforms(KENYA)

.71 yrs

dewormingthroughprimaryschools(KENYA)

13.9 yrs

meritscholarshipsfor girls(KENYA)

.27 yrs

conditionalcash transferfor girls’ attendance(MALAWI)

.09 yrs

unconditionalcash transferfor girls(MALAWI)

.02 yrs

additionalschool years gained per $100 spent

Source: www.povertyactionlab.org

Addressing uncertainty about the benefits of education

¨  In some contexts families may not know benefits of school

¨  Providing information on wages of those staying on can increase time spent in school, and is highly cost-effective: ¤  Madagascar: parents given information on wages at returns to school meetings

¤  20 additional years of education for every $100 spent

¤  Dominican Republic: secondary school boys provided with information on average wages earned by people with different levels of education

Application to Rwanda?

¨  Test whether a gap between expected earnings and actual earnings

¨  If lack of awareness of benefits, information can be provided cheaply

Lowering the costs of going to school

¨  Even when school is free, parents face costs ¤  Uniforms, books, child labor forgone

¤  Many children report not having the funds for school costs

¨  Reducing costs increases attendance ¤  Free uniforms for poorest students in Kenya reduced school absenteeism by 44%

¤  Test scores also increased by 0.25 standard deviations

¨  Small subsidies can be effective ¤  $10 a month stipend in Malawi conditional on school attendance increased schooling

¤  Free school meals increased attendance at preschools in Kenya

¨  Rwanda already provides subsidies to poor families and free school meals

¨  Free school uniforms for a wider group of children?

Providing incentives to learn: Merit-scholarships

¨  In Kenya, researchers evaluated a program similar to the First Lady’s Best Performing Girls Program: ¤  Merit-based scholarships offered to sixth grade girls who scored in the

top 15% on government tests

¤  Winning girls received a grant to cover school fees and supplies, and public recognition at an awards assembly

Results ¤  Merit scholarships improved student and teacher motivation, test scores

and student attendance

¤  Boys and low performing girls also benefitted

¨  Free school meals was also found to increase student daily attendance – an initiative already provided in Rwanda

Teenage childbearing in Rwanda (% of women ages 15-19 who have had children or are pregnant)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1992 1995 2000 2005 2008 2010

Perc

ent

Data source: World Bank, World Development Indicators

Rwanda: HIV prevalence (%) by age and sex

Data source: RDHS 2010

0.8

2.4

3.9 4.2

7.9

6.1 5.8

0.3 0.5

1.7

3.5 3.8

7.5

5.6

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49

Women (%) Men (%)

Can girls be taught to avoid sugar daddies?

¨  Reducing cross-generational sex is critical to controlling the spread of HIV and keeping young people safe ¤  In Rwanda, as in most African countries, older

men are more likely to have HIV than boys

¤  One out of 10 girls has first sexual experience with a man ≥10 years older

¨  Rwanda’s “Sinigurisha” informational campaign about sugar daddies could be informed by evidence from a program tested and proven effective in Kenya

Girls respond to information on relative risk

¨  Sugar daddies campaign in Kenya: ¤  10-minute educational video on sugar daddies

shown to students in grade 8

¤  Girls knew about HIV but not that older men more risky

¤  Students given information about local HIV prevalence rates, by gender and age group

¨  Results: ¤  Teenage childbearing with older men fell 61%

¤  No offsetting increase in childbearing with same age partners

Health as a barrier to education

¨  Infectious diseases can hinder education ¤  Intestinal worms can make children tired, potentially malnourished, may damage

the long term immune system

¤  Deworming drugs cost only a few cents per pill and can be administered on mass through schools (in infected areas)

¨  Mass school based deworming in Kenya ¤  Reduced absenteeism by 25%

¤  14 additional years of education per $100 spent

¤  Preschool siblings had higher cognition

¤  Girls more likely to pass end of school leaving exam

¤  10 years later, those dewormed worked longer hours, and those in employment had higher earnings

¨  Important to sustain Rwanda’s deworming program

Using Schools to deliver health care

¨  Schools are the best place to efficiently reach large numbers of children – especially since the introduction of free primary education ¤  There are more schools than health clinics and more teachers than health

personnel

¤  Administering deworming tablets can be done by teachers

¨  School-based deworming is cost-effective because it uses existing infrastructure

¨  Limited (but growing) evidence on the importance of non-infectious diseases as impediments to schooling ¤  Micronutrients

¤  Eyeglasses

Priorities for learning from evidence

¨  Many children in school but not learning ¤  Targeted basic skills program ¤  Organize school shifts by learning levels

¨  School drop out ¤  Assess whether families know wages of

those completing school ¤  Free school uniforms? Other remaining costs

of school attendance?

¨  School health ¤  Information on HIV risk by age ¤  Sustain deworming program