Can Discussions about Girls’ Education Improve Academic Outcomes? Evidence from a Randomized Development Project

Christopher S Cotton, Ardyn Nordstrom, Jordan Nanowski and Eric Richert

The World Bank Economic Review, 2025, vol. 39, issue 1, 211-227

Abstract: This article evaluates the impact that facilitated discussions about girls’ education have on education outcomes for students in rural Zimbabwe. The staggered implementation of components of a randomized education project allowed for the causal analysis of a dialogue-based engagement campaign. This campaign involved regular discussions between trained facilitators and parents, teachers, and youth about girls’ rights, the importance of attending school, and the barriers girls face in pursuing education. The campaigns increased mathematics performance and enrollment in the year after implementation. There was no similar improvement in literacy performance during this period. Longer-term data on the broader project suggest that adding additional education-focused interventions did not further increase mathematics performance and enrollment beyond what can be attributable to the dialogue campaigns alone.

Keywords: Girls' Education Challenge; randomized controlled trial; multifaceted intervention; discussion-based information campaign; empowerment programs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhae021 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:wbecrv:v:39:y:2025:i:1:p:211-227.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The World Bank Economic Review is currently edited by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik

More articles in The World Bank Economic Review from World Bank Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().