Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries
Noam Angrist,
Micheal Ainomugisha,
Sai Pramod Bathena,
Peter Bergman,
Colin Crossley,
Claire Cullen,
Thato Letsomo,
Moitshepi Matsheng,
Rene Marlon Panti,
Shwetlena Sabarwal and
Tim Sullivan
No 31208, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Education systems need to withstand frequent shocks, including disease and climate events, which close schools for over 222 million children. During these emergencies, alternative models are needed to deliver education. However, rigorous evaluation of effective educational approaches in these settings is challenging and rare, especially across multiple countries. We present results from five randomized trials in India, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, and Uganda to evaluate the provision of education in emergency settings. These multi-site coordinated trials enable us to uniquely inform internal and external validity simultaneously. We also test multiple scalable models of remote targeted tutoring instruction, comparing government and NGO delivery. While SMS messages have mixed results, phone call tutorials show consistent effectiveness across diverse settings. We find large and robust effect sizes on learning, with average effects of 0.30- 0.35 standard deviations. These effects are highly cost-effective, delivering up to four years of high-quality instruction per $100 spent. Results also show similar effects when delivered by government teachers as NGO instructors and sustained improvements to teacher beliefs and practices. We further evaluate effects during a government scale-up with 25,000 teachers in India and an additional weather shock in the Philippines. Altogether, our results reveal it is possible to strengthen the resilience of education systems, enabling education provision amidst disruptions, and to deliver cost-effective learning gains across contexts and with governments.
JEL-codes: I20 I24 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-sea and nep-ure
Note: CH DEV ED
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31208.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Building resilient education systems: evidence from large-scale randomized trials in five countries (2023) 
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:nbr:nberwo:31208
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31208
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().