Promotion with and Without Learning: Effects on Student Enrollment and Dropout Behavior

Many educators and policymakers have argued for lenient grade promotion policy – even automatic promotion – in developing country settings where grade retention rates are high. The argument assumes that grade retention discourages persistence or continuation in school and that the promotion of children with lower achievement does not hamper their ability or their peer’s ability to perform at the next level. Alternatively, promoting students into grades for which they are not prepared may lead to early dropout behavior. This study shows that in a sample of schools from the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, students are promoted primarily on the basis of merit. An econometric decomposition of promotion decisions into a component that is based on merit indicators (attendance and achievement in mathematics and language) and another that is uncorrelated with those indicators allow a test of whether parental decisions to keep their child in school is influenced by merit-based or non-merit-based promotions. Results suggest that the enrollment decision is significantly influenced by whether learning has taken place, and that grade promotion that is uncorrelated with merit has a negligible impact on school continuation.Grade repetition; grade retention; grade promotion; enrollment; achievement; dropout; Pakistan

Promotion with and without learning : effects on student enrollment and dropout behavior

Many educators and policymakers have argued for lenient grade promotion policy - even automatic promotion - in developing country settings where grade retention rates are high. The argument assumes that grade retention discourages persistence or continuation in school and that the promotion of children with lower achievement does not hamper their ability or their peers'ability to perform at the next level. Alternatively, promoting students into grades for which they are not prepared may lead to early dropout behavior. This study shows that in a sample of schools from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, students are promoted primarily on the basis of merit. An econometric decomposition of promotion decisions into a component that is based on merit indicators (attendance and achievement in mathematics and language) and another that is uncorrelated with those indicators allows a test of whether parental decisions to keep their child in school is influenced by merit-based or non-merit-based promotions. Results suggest that the enrollment decision is significantly influenced by whether learning has taken place, and that grade promotion that is uncorrelated with merit has a negligible impact on school continuation.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Secondary Education,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning

Gains in the education of Peruvian women, 1940 to 1980

Since the mid 1950s, Peru's education policies have been designed to raise skill levels and make education available to more of the population. Those policies rested mainly on expanding the number of schools and as a result, school enrollment rates and attainment levels rose. However, an apparent parental preference to educate sons more than daughters meant that boys'schooling levels rose more quickly than girls'. Policies were not enough to bring girls'schooling even with boys', especially in rural areas. School quality, measured crudely by the supply of textbooks and the number of teachers, appears to have improved the schooling of women. Peru's education policies have reduced the direct costs associated with going to school. However, time allocation patterns reveal that the opportunity cost to the family of school attendance could be an effective barrier to further improvements in school enrollment and continuation rates. Even at a young age, girls - especially in rural families - participate in the labor market and contribute substantially to productive work at home.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Population&Development

Schooling in Developing Countries: The Roles of Supply, Demand and Government Policy

In developing countries, rising incomes, increased demand for more skilled labor, and government investments of considerable resources on building and equipping schools and paying teachers have contributed to global convergence in enrollment rates and completed years of schooling. Nevertheless, in many countries substantial education gaps persist between rich and poor, between rural and urban households and between males and females. To address these gaps, some governments have introduced school vouchers or cash transfers programs that are targeted to disadvantaged children. Others have initiated programs to attract or retain students by expanding school access or by setting higher teacher eligibility requirements or increasing the number of textbooks per student. While enrollments have increased, there has not been a commensurate improvement in knowledge and skills of students. Establishing the impact of these policies and programs requires an understanding of the incentives and constraints faced by all parties involved, the school providers, the parents and the children. The chapter reviews the economic literature on the determinants of schooling outcomes and schooling gaps with a focus on static and dynamic household responses to specific policy initiatives, perceived economic returns and other incentives. It discusses measurement and estimation issues involved with empirically testing these models and reviews findings. Governments have increasingly adopted the practice of experimentation and evaluation before taking steps to expand new policies. Often pilot programs are initiated in settings that are atypically appropriate for the program, so that the results overstate the likely impact of expanding the program to other settings. Program expansion can also result in general equilibrium feedback effects that do not apply to isolated pilots. These behavioral models provide a useful context within which to frame the likely outcomes of such expansion.

Promoting girls'and women's education : lessons from the past

Many societies underinvest in girls'and women's education for three main reasons: high direct, indirect, and cultural costs; too few private benefits; and parent's failure to consider the social benefits of education. Strategies that have increased female enrollment are those that: lower the costs of education by providing culturally appropriate facilities, scholarships, and alternative schools that offer classes in the early morning or evening; and those that train girls and women in growth sectors of the economy at the same time that they make strong recruitment and placement efforts. Strategies that have failed include those that distribute school uniforms and offer vocational training that is not directly linked to employment. Too little information is available to assess the effectiveness of programmed learning, day care, home technologies, information campaigns, school meals, and the revamping of curricula and textbooks to introduce broader roles for women. More research is needed on: 1) the importance parents and girls attach to the quality of available education when making their schooling decisions; 2) girls'and women's participation in educational programs; and 3) individual, family, community, and school factors that limit girls'and women's participation and achievement. There should also be more experiments with different approaches and more evaluation of program outcomes.Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Girls Education

Student and Teacher Attendance: The Role of Shared Goods in Reducing Absenteeism

A theoretical model is advanced that demonstrates that, if teacher and student attendance generate a shared good, then teacher and student attendance will be mutually reinforcing.� Using data from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, empirical evidence supporting that proposition is advanced.� Controlling for the endogeneity of teacher and student attendance, the most powerful factor raising teacher attendance is the attendance of the children in the school, and the most important factor influencing child attendance is the presence of the teacher.� The results suggest that one important avenue to be explored in developing policies to reduce teacher absenteeism is to focus on raising the attendance of children.Absenteeism; teacher attendance; student attendance; shared good; Northwest Frontier Province; Pakistan

The effects of Peru's push to improve education

From the mid-1950s to the 1960s, the Government of Peru undertook a major expansion of public education, increasing the number of schools, requiring primary schools that offered an incomplete cycle to add grades, and increasing school inputs (principally teachers and textbooks). The paper examines the effects of Peru's educational policies, and the effects of family background and community characteristics on the schooling levels of a number of adults. Data on males and females were analyzed seperately by birth cohort.Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Education Reform and Management

A Better Start in Life: Evaluation Results from an Early Childhood Development Program

Informed by a growing body of research showing that investments in early childhood health, nutrition, and cognitive and psychosocial development have immediate and long-term benefits on children, the Philippine government undertook a five-year pilot Early Childhood Development (ECD) Project. The project was implemented in Regions 6, 7, and 12 to improve the survival and developmental potential of children in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged areas, and thus to help them escape poverty and deprivation. This study evaluates the impact of this ECD Project based on selected indicators of (1) EDC service utilization, and (2) child health, nutrition, and cognitive and psychosocial development. The study, which followed a sample of children over four years, uses difference-in-difference method of estimating impact, adjusted for duration of program exposure, which compared changes over time in the project areas of Regions 6 and 7, and in the control areas in Region 8. The sample included over 6,000 children of age 0-4 years at the start of the study. Results show mixed positive impact of the project over the period.early childhood development, child health, nutrition

A Better Start in Life: Evaluation Results from an Early Childhood Development Program

Informed by a growing body of research showing that investments in early childhood health, nutrition, and cognitive and psychosocial development have immediate and long-term benefits on children, the Philippine government undertook a five-year pilot Early Childhood Development (ECD) Project. The project was implemented in Regions 6, 7, and 12 to improve the survival and developmental potential of children in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged areas, and thus to help them escape poverty and deprivation. This study evaluates the impact of this ECD Project based on selected indicators of (1) EDC service utilization, and (2) child health, nutrition, and cognitive and psychosocial development. The study, which followed a sample of children over four years, uses difference-in-difference method of estimating impact, adjusted for duration of program exposure, which compared changes over time in the project areas of Regions 6 and 7, and in the control areas in Region 8. The sample included over 6,000 children of age 0-4 years at the start of the study. Results show mixed positive impact of the project over the period.early childhood development, child health, nutrition

Gender disparity in South Asia : comparisons between and within countries

Using data assembled from the Demographic Health Surveys of over 50 countries and from the National Family Health Surveys of individual states in India, the authors create a new data set of comparable indicators of gender disparity. They establish three findings: 1) As is by now well-known, the level of gender disparities in health and education outcomes for girls in South Asia is the highest in the world. 2) Even within South Asia, and within India or Pakistan, there are huge variations in gender disparity. Differences in gender disparity among Indian states or among provinces in Pakistan are typically greater than those among the world's nations. The ratio of female to male child mortality in one Indian state (Haryana) is worse than in any country in the world, although in another state (Tamil Nadu) it is lower than in all but three countries. 3) Across and within the set of developing nations, gender disparity is not only a phenomenon of poverty. There is almost no correlation between per capita income and the gender disparities in health and education outcomes. So although absolute levels of health and education outcomes for girls are strongly related to economic conditions, the disparities between outcomes for girls and boys are not. Understanding what causes such great gender disparity within South Asia is the next pressing question for researchers.Public Health Promotion,Early Childhood Development,Early Child and Children's Health,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,Health Economics&Finance,Early Child and Children's Health,Adolescent Health,Early Childhood Development,Health Monitoring&Evaluation