Telementoring and homeschooling during school closures: A randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh

Hashibul Hassan, Asad Islam, Abu Siddique and Liang Choon Wang ()
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Liang Choon Wang: Department of Economics, Monash University, Australia

Munich Papers in Political Economy from Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich

Abstract: Prolonged school closures due to political unrests, teacher strikes, natural disasters, and public health crises can be detrimental to student learning in developing countries. Using a randomized controlled experiment in 200 Bangladeshi villages, we evaluate the impact of over-the-phone mentoring and homeschooling support delivered by volunteers on the learning outcomes of primary school children during school closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The telementoring program improved the learning outcomes of treated children by 0.75 SD and increased homeschooling involvement of treated mothers by 0.64 SD. The impacts on learning are driven primarily by the direct mentoring of children and to some extent also by the increased homeschooling involvement of mothers. Academically weaker children and households from relatively lower socioeconomic backgrounds benefitted the most from telementoring. These findings suggest that learning crises in low-resource settings can be addressed by simple and very low-cost technology solutions.

Keywords: Telementoring; homeschooling; school closure; primary education; randomized experiment; rural areas. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I21 I24 P46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-isf and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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https://cms.mgt.tum.de/fileadmin/mgt.tum.de/facult ... ed_learning_-_V4.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Telementoring and Homeschooling During School Closures: a Randomised Experiment in Rural Bangladesh (2024)
Working Paper: Telementoring and Homeschooling during School Closures: A Randomized Experiment in Rural Bangladesh (2023)
Working Paper: Telementoring and homeschooling during school closures: A randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh (2021)
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