Parental Human Capital and Effective School Management : Evidence from The Gambia
Education systems in developing countries are often centrally managed in a top-down structure. In environments where schools have different needs and where localized information plays an important role, empowerment of the local community may be att...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/04/24353319/parental-human-capital-effective-school-management-evidence-gambia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21852 |
| Summary: | Education systems in developing
countries are often centrally managed in a top-down
structure. In environments where schools have different
needs and where localized information plays an important
role, empowerment of the local community may be attractive,
but low levels of human capital at the local level may
offset gains from local information. This paper reports the
results of a four-year, large-scale experiment that provided
a grant and comprehensive school management training to
principals, teachers, and community representatives in a set
of schools. To separate the effect of the training from the
grant, a second set of schools received the grant only with
no training. A third set of schools served as a control
group and received neither intervention. Each of 273 Gambian
primary schools were randomized to one of the three groups.
The program was implemented through the government education
system. Three to four years into the program, the full
intervention led to a 21 percent reduction in student
absenteeism and a 23 percent reduction in teacher
absenteeism, but produced no impact on student test scores.
The effect of the full program on learning outcomes is
strongly mediated by baseline local capacity, as measured by
adult literacy. This result suggests that, in villages with
high literacy, the program may yield gains on students
learning outcomes. Receiving the grant alone had no impact
on either test scores or student participation. |
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