Your search

This policy paper provides a cost-effectiveness analysis of Camfed’s programme in Tanzania. Camfed’s programme adopts a multidimensional approach that is aimed at reaching marginalised girls at risk of dropping out from secondary schools by using interventions that are aimed at both increasing their chances of staying in school and learning.

Considering whether or not a proposed investment (an intervention, technology, or program of care) is affordable is really asking whether the benefits it offers are greater than its opportunity cost. To say that an investment is cost-effective but not affordable must mean that the (implicit or explicit) “threshold” used to judge cost-effectiveness does not reflect the scale and value of the opportunity costs. Existing empirical estimates of health opportunity costs are based on...

Structured learning programmes have emerged as a promising way to address the low learning levels observed in many developing countries. The delivery model of these programmes matters, and on-site teacher coaching has been recommended to be highly effective, especially in early grade literacy. In this paper, we report on a series of government-led randomised experiments in South African primary schools that build on each other to test various models of teacher training and coaching. We find...

We investigate the impacts of school-based internet access on pupil achievement in Peru, using a large panel of 5,903 public primary schools that gained internet connections during 2007-2014. We employ an event study approach and a trend break analysis that exploit variation in the timing of internet roll-out up to 5 years after installation. We find that internet access has a moderate, positive short-run impact on school-average standardized math scores, but importantly that this effect...

Many successful piloted programs fail when scaled up to a national level. In Kenya, which has a long history of particularly ineffective implementation after successful pilot programs, the Tusome national literacy program—which receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development—is a national-level scale-up of previous literacy and numeracy programs. We applied a scaling framework (Crouch and DeStefano in Doing reform differently: combining rigor and practicality in...

We conducted a randomized evaluation of a program in Brazil that provided secondary schools with classroom observation feedback and access to expert coaching. Coaching content was based on Teach Like A Champion, by Douglas Lemov, which imparts practical strategies to increase teachers’ effectiveness by maximizing time on instruction and student engagement. In treatment schools, the program raised the skills of pedagogical coordinators tasked with supporting teachers to improve instruction,...

This study intends to present a bespoke teacher professional development MOOC designed by Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team that allows MOOCs to become a viable means offering cost-effective, quality professional teacher development. TESSA is a network of teachers and teacher educators, working to improve classroom teaching in Africa. TESSA MOOC is an innovative approach to capacity building for teacher educators and teachers across Africa. The study presents outputs of...

This paper examines the returns to education with respect to three labour market outcomes namely wages, employment and occupation using the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 68th round (2011–12) data. Wage equation (without selection bias) results point to the fact that returns to education increase at an increasing rate as the level of education increases and the impact of education is found relatively higher in the case of urban than rural areas. In case of employment, the study finds...

The distinction between economic analysis and financial analysis is not always straightforward. In this post I try to clarify this. Definitions I have previously defined WASH economics as “the stud…

Developing sustainable and scalable educational initiatives is a key challenge in low-income countries where donor-funded short-term projects are limited by both contextual factors and programme design. In this concept paper we examine some of the issues related to in-service teacher development in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, grounded predominantly in our experiences of over 5 years of iteratively developing, refining and evaluating an intensive school-based professional learning...

World Development Report 2018: LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise

Can we nudge children, adolescents and their parents to make better decisions on education? And can we nudge teachers to support and encourage better decision making? Education decisions are taken at young ages and involve immediate costs and potential, future benefits. In such settings behavioural barriers (e.g. lack of self-control, limited attention and social norms) likely influence choices and this may motivate the use of low cost ‘nudges’ to gently push behaviour in the desired...

We present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (a) unconditional grants, (b) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (c) both of the above. After two years, we find (a) no impact on student test scores from providing school grants, (b) some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives, and (c) significant positive effects from providing both programs. Most importantly, we find...

Several rigorously evaluated programs have recently shown positive effects on early literacy and numeracy outcomes in developing countries. However, these programs have not been designed to evaluate which ingredients of the interventions are most essential to improve literacy outcomes. Policy makers therefore lack evidence as to whether program ingredients such as teacher professional development (PD), instructional coaching, learner materials, teachers’ guides, community support, or...

Education of poor and disadvantaged populations has been a long-standing challenge for education systems in both developed and developing countries. In China, millions of students in rural areas and migrant communities lag far behind their urban counterparts in terms of academic achievement. When they fall behind, they often have no way to catch up. Many of their parents have neither the skills nor the money to provide remedial tutoring; rural teachers often do not have time to give students...

Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has become a major policy priority within education systems worldwide. But keeping teachers professionally up-to-date and providing them professional development opportunities on continuing basis is a big challenge. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be a cost and resource effective means to complement the traditional methods of professional development of teachers. This optimism is based on the assumption that use of MOOCs will facilitate mass...

Globally, according to UNESCO (2017), 264 million children of primary and secondary school age are out school. UNESCO also estimates that worldwide roughly 100 million young people are fully illiterate. While data on attendance, enrolment, and literacy can be difficult to gather in fragile and conflict-affected settings, estimates suggest that children in these settings are roughly three times more likely to be out of school than children living in stable, but low-income countries.