Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia

We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls...

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Main Authors:	Blimpo, Moussa P., Gajigo, Ousman, Pugatch, Todd
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2020
Subjects:	SECONDARY EDUCATION GENDER GAP SCHOOL FEE ELIMINATION SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34294

id	okr-10986-34294
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-342942021-05-25T10:54:38Z Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia Blimpo, Moussa P. Gajigo, Ousman Pugatch, Todd SECONDARY EDUCATION GENDER GAP SCHOOL FEE ELIMINATION SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by 55%. The share of older test takers increased in poorer districts, expanding access for students who began school late, repeated grades, or whose studies had been interrupted. Despite these changes in the quantity and composition of students, we find robustly positive point estimates of the program on test scores, with suggestive evidence of gains for several subgroups of both girls and boys. Absence of learning declines is notable in a setting where expanded access could strain limited resources and reduce school quality. Our findings suggest that financial constraints remain serious barriers to post-primary education, and that efforts to expand access to secondary education need not come at the expense of learning in low-income countries like The Gambia. 2020-08-06T19:53:04Z 2020-08-06T19:53:04Z 2019-02 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34294 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Journal Article Africa Gambia, The
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	SECONDARY EDUCATION GENDER GAP SCHOOL FEE ELIMINATION SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS
spellingShingle	SECONDARY EDUCATION GENDER GAP SCHOOL FEE ELIMINATION SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS Blimpo, Moussa P. Gajigo, Ousman Pugatch, Todd Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
geographic_facet	Africa Gambia, The
description	We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by 55%. The share of older test takers increased in poorer districts, expanding access for students who began school late, repeated grades, or whose studies had been interrupted. Despite these changes in the quantity and composition of students, we find robustly positive point estimates of the program on test scores, with suggestive evidence of gains for several subgroups of both girls and boys. Absence of learning declines is notable in a setting where expanded access could strain limited resources and reduce school quality. Our findings suggest that financial constraints remain serious barriers to post-primary education, and that efforts to expand access to secondary education need not come at the expense of learning in low-income countries like The Gambia.
format	Journal Article
author	Blimpo, Moussa P. Gajigo, Ousman Pugatch, Todd
author_facet	Blimpo, Moussa P. Gajigo, Ousman Pugatch, Todd
author_sort	Blimpo, Moussa P.
title	Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
title_short	Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
title_full	Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
title_fullStr	Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
title_full_unstemmed	Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
title_sort	financial constraints and girls’ secondary education : evidence from school fee elimination in the gambia
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2020
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34294
_version_	1764480595476348928

Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education : Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia

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