How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently? A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric
Many low- and middle-income countries lag far behind high-income countries in educational access and student learning. Limited resources mean that policymakers must make tough choices about which investments to make to improve education. Although h...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/801901603314530125/How-to-Improve-Education-Outcomes-Most-Efficiently-A-Comparison-of-150-Interventions-Using-the-New-Learning-Adjusted-Years-of-Schooling-Metric http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34658 |
| Summary: | Many low- and middle-income countries
lag far behind high-income countries in educational access
and student learning. Limited resources mean that
policymakers must make tough choices about which investments
to make to improve education. Although hundreds of education
interventions have been rigorously evaluated, making
comparisons between the results is challenging. Some studies
report changes in years of schooling; others report changes
in learning. Standard deviations, the metric typically used
to report learning gains, measure gains relative to a local
distribution of test scores. This metric makes it hard to
judge if the gain is worth the cost in absolute terms. This
paper proposes using learning-adjusted years of schooling
(LAYS) -- which combines access and quality and compares
gains to an absolute, cross-country standard -- as a new
metric for reporting gains from education interventions. The
paper applies LAYS to compare the effectiveness (and
cost-effectiveness, where cost is available) of
interventions from 150 impact evaluations across 46
countries. The results show that some of the most
cost-effective programs deliver the equivalent of three
additional years of high-quality schooling (that is,
schooling at quality comparable to the highest-performing
education systems) for just $100 per child -- compared with
zero years for other classes of interventions. |
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