The Importance of The Importance of Education QualityEducation Quality

Ariel FiszbeinChief Economist,

Human Development NetworkWorld Bank

Brussels, June 24, 2008

1. Education quality is about children learning

It’s about children learning...

Education quality means that enough learning takes place in schools: we often assume it but….

Why should we care about learning outcomes? Because individual returns to education are linked

to learning, not just to years of education Because the overall economy benefits from

quality education

Returns to cognitive skills (literacy) are generally strong across countries

Estimated Returns to Cognitive Skills: Examples

● Three studies conducted in the U.S. show a 12% increase in earnings for every 1 SD increase in math scores. (Mulligan,1999; Murnane et al, 2000; Lazear, 2003)

● Chilean data shows that 1 SD increase in test scores on the IALS is associated with higher earnings of 15-20%. (Sakellariou, 2006)

Education Quality and Economic Growth

Hanushek and Woessman, 2007

2. But learning outcomes in developing countries are poor

Reading and Math Performance on the OECD PISA Exams, 2000-2003

WB Global Monitoring Report, 2007

Many children do not attain minimum learning levels

WB Global Monitoring Report, 2007

Student performance in mathematics: What it means?

Proficiency at Level 6 Students are able to carry out advanced

mathematical reasoning.

Proficiency at Level 2

Students can interpret and recognize situations in contexts that require no

more than direct inference.

Proficiency Below Level 1

Students can not answer questions involving

familiar contexts where all relevant information is

present and the questions are clearly defined.

Colombia

45%

18%

6%

2%

0%

0%

29%

Finland

6%

28%

27%

14%

5%

1%

18%

PISA, 2006

Can Indian children read?

41% of children in class 5 cannot read at class 2 level

22% of children in class 2 cannot recognize words

58% of children in class 5 cannot divide (3 digit by 1 digit)

2007 Annual Survey of Education Report (Rural), Pratham

What are children in Pakistan (Punjab) learning?

28.0%

43.0%

29.0%

Enrolled, but cannot add/subtract

Never Enrolled (Cannot add/subtract)

Can add and subtract

LEAPS Data from Punjab Pakistan

% 10-year olds who can add & subtract single-digit numbers

Note: "Enrolled but cannot add" includes the 2.8% of 10-year olds who have dropped out of school

LEAPS Data - Punjab, Pakistan 2007

3. The policy challenge is to identify how to improve learning outcomes

The policy challenge:

What are the levers to improve learning outcomes?

A variety of factors can potentially influence learning outcomes: households, schools, environment….

But we often can’t tell because of lack of rigorous evidence

A ‘general’ theory of what influences learning

outcomes

Demand Supply

StudentsParents

Community

TeachersSchools

Education authoritiesCommunity

Endowments & Behaviors

ofPolicy actions,

specific programs

Systemic reforms

Student learning

EducationPolicy

Economic, social, political context

Endowments & Behaviors

of

Vegas and Petrow. “Raising Student Learning in Latin America: The Challenge for the 21st Century”. 2008.

Examples of interventions…

Student/parent behavior & endowments: Early childhood development

School endowments: Textbooks, technology Teacher endowments and behaviors: Salary

incentives linked to performance, Capacity building School behaviors: School councils, non-government

provision

Given large inequalities in endowments, a key role of all interventions is to promote equality of educational opportunity

Early childhood interventions payoff later in life (including at school)

Colombia: increased child height (approx 2.4 cm/child), increased school attendance when in high-school (20 percentage points)

US (Perry Preschool Project): At age 40 participants had 1/3 higher earnings, more likely to be employed, less arrests, etc.

● Uruguay: 27% higher school attendance by age 16

Sources: Attanasio and Vera-Hernandez(2004), Schweinhart (2005), Berlinski, Galiani, and Manacorda (2006)

Inputs and pedagogical change can have effects but it is unclear how context specific they are…

Textbooks: No impact on test scores in Kenya IT: Computers with math games in primary

schools in India had 0.47 SD increase in math test scores

Remedial education in India, 0.14 SD increase in test scores in year 1, 0.28 SD increase in year 2.

Sources: (Glewwe, Kremer, and Moulin, 2003) and (Banerjee et al, 2006)

Affecting teachers can be a powerful instrument

Simply adding more teachers (w/o changing level of effort) does not help.

Kenya: Students of contract teachers score .18 SD higher than students taught by civil service teachers

India (AP): Monetary incentives to teachers increased test scores by 0.15 SD; more inputs to schools (extra teacher, block grant for school supply needs) only by 0.09 SD

Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer (2007); Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2006)

Institutional factors: Does decentralization ‘work’?

Argentina: decentralization to provincial governments, with little vertical or horizontal accountability Improve test scores in relatively wealthier areas,

but made the poor worse off Improvement in ‘well-run’ provinces, badly-run

provinces worse off

Sebastian Galiani, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Paul Gertler (2005)

Institutional factors: Does community participation work?

Mexico: School-based management initiative in rural, disadvantaged schools reduced repetition and failure

Pakistan: School councils did not affect learning outcomes, but study only captured year-1 effects.

India: information campaign on education outcomes improved teacher attendance and learning outcomes.

Sources: Gertler, Patrinos, and Rubio (2006), Das (2008) and Pandey, (2008)

Institutional factors: Do non-government schools work?

Pakistan: Children in private schools are 1.5-2.5 years ahead of children in government schools in terms of learning, controlling for child, household and school characteristics (Das, et al. LEAPS, 2007)

Bogotá: New, privately run, schools in poor, urban neighborhoods reduced dropout rates by 1.7 percentage points and improved test scores in math and reading by 0.19 SD and 0.27 SD, respectively (Barrera, 2006)

4. An Agenda for Education Quality

An Agenda for Education Quality

More systematic measurement of learning outcomes International assessments National assessments

No silver bullet: results likely to need actions to influence students/parents, teachers and schools –and the right inputs!

Strong links with broader economic policies Evidence-based policy: evaluation of reform

programs is key Political economy: who cares?

Who cares about quality?

Prime Minister: Education in this country is a disaster. We're supposed to prepare children for work. Most of the time they're bored stiff.

Sir Humphrey: I should've thought that being bored stiff was an excellent preparation for work.

(Yes, Prime Minister! BBC television series)

END

Teacher (non) effort…

Percent of countries that carried out at least one assessment between 1995-1999 and 2000-2006

UNESCO, GMR 2008