Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Shawn Cole and Leigh Linden ()

No 5446, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Many efforts to improve school quality by adding school resources have proven to be ineffective. This paper presents the results of two experiments conducted in Mumbai and Vadodara, India, designed to evaluate ways to improve the quality of education in urban slums. A remedial education program hired young women from the community to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children lagging behind in government schools. We find the program to be very effective: it increased average test scores of all children in treatment schools by 0.14 standard deviations in the first year, and 0.28 in the second year, relative to comparison schools. A computer-assisted learning program provided each child in the fourth grade with two hours of shared computer time per week, in which students played educational games that reinforced mathematics skills. The program was also very effective, increasing math scores by 0.35 standard deviations the first year, and 0.47 the second year. These results were not limited to the period in which students received assistance, but persisted for at least one year after leaving the program. Two instrumental variable strategies suggest that while remedial education benefited the children who attended the remedial classes, their classmates, who did not attend the remedial courses but did experience smaller classes, did not post gains, confirming that resources alone may not be sufficient to improve outcomes.

Keywords: Computer aided education; India; Program evaluation; Remedial education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5446 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India (2007)
Working Paper: Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomised Experiments in India (2006)
Working Paper: Remedying education: Evidence from two randomized experiments in india (2005)
Working Paper: Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5446

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5446

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().