Promoting parental engagement in education: Experimental evidence from Uganda

Kjetil Bjorvatn (), Selim Gulesci (), Arne Nasgowitz (), Vincent Somville () and Lore Vandewalle ()
Additional contact information
Kjetil Bjorvatn: NHH
Selim Gulesci: Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin
Arne Nasgowitz: NHH
Vincent Somville: NHH
Lore Vandewalle: KU Leuven

No tep1925, Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: Can increased parental engagement in education improve children's schooling and learning outcomes in low-income countries? We present experimental evidence from Uganda where mothers of primary school students were randomly offered educational materials and an action plan aligned with the school curriculum in order to support their children's homework. The intervention increased the amount of time mothers spent studying with their children. It also improved children's likelihood to register for their end-of-term school exams which require households to pay a registration fee. Despite these improvements in parental engagement, we find no impact on children's performance in standardized tests. Our findings underscore both the promise and the limits of parental engagement, pointing to the need for complementary strategies to improve children's learning.

Keywords: Education; Parental engagement; Schooling; Learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2025/TEP1925.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:tcd:tcduee:tep1925

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Colette Angelov ().