School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010

Paul Glewwe, Eric Hanushek, Sarah Humpage and Renato Ravina

No 120033, Working Papers from University of Minnesota, Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy

Abstract: Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality. Then an even higher bar is set in terms of econometric methods used, leaving 43 “high quality” studies. Finally, results are also shown separately for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially when the evidence is limited to the “high quality” studies. The few variables that do have significant effects – e.g. availability of desks, teacher knowledge of the subjects they teach, and teacher absence – are not particularly surprising and thus provide little guidance for future policies and programs.

Keywords: Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010 (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:umciwp:120033

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.120033

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