Teacher Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Pupil-fixed effects estimates for twelve countries

Christopher Hein and Rebecca Allen ()

No 13-08, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: This paper estimates the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher quality by applying point-in-time pupil-fixed effects. It uses a large cross-sectional dataset of grade 6 teaching and learning in 12 sub-Saharan countries. The findings are generally in line with the existing literature that finds such observable characteristics to be weak predictors that significantly differ in their effects across countries. Teacher subject competency test scores, the only consistent predictor of teacher quality across African countries in other studies, are only significant in the Seychelles. Contrary to US studies, we do not find consistent returns to teacher experience. Our estimates suggest that teacher characteristics are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. The analysis presented here provides comparable estimates of within-school variation of teacher quality and unique lower-bound estimates of teaching ability.

Keywords: Teacher Quality; Teacher Characteristics; Africa; SACMEQ; Complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I25 O15 O55 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-05-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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