Secondary School Access Raises Primary School Achievement

Wayne Aaron Sandholtz and Wayne Sandholtz
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Wayne Aaron Sandholtz

No 11343, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: I use variation in ex-ante school fee payments to measure how Free Secondary Education (FSE) affected primary students in Tanzania. I first confirm FSE increased secondary access: secondary enrollments rose, household spending on secondary school fees plummeted, and elites’ transition premium disappeared. I then show that FSE increased primary exam pass rates by 6% and secondary transition rates by 23%. This was not due to supply inputs: there was no effect on school entry, and class sizes rose. Instead it appears to be driven by demand-side investments: primary students selected into better schools, attended more, and worked less.

Keywords: school access; human capital investments; high-stakes exam data; Tanzania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I25 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11343.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ces:ceswps:_11343

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().