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Teacher Training and Entrepreneurship Education: Evidence from a Curriculum Reform in Rwanda

Last registered on March 28, 2022

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Teacher Training and Entrepreneurship Education: Evidence from a Curriculum Reform in Rwanda
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001030
Initial registration date
February 11, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 11, 2016, 5:30 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
March 28, 2022, 1:18 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Oregon State University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2016-04-01
End date
2018-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
At least ten countries across Africa, including Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Namibia, are currently undergoing secondary curriculum reforms to teach youth the skills they need to succeed after school. Yet many of these reforms are not effective due to implementation challenges, particularly the prevalence of traditional rote-memorization pedagogy. This study will examine pedagogy-targeted curriculum reform and teacher training in the delivery of Rwanda’s revised secondary school entrepreneurship curriculum, to be introduced in 2016. A subset of schools will be randomly selected to receive two years of ongoing teacher training on the curriculum. A control group will receive the curriculum only. The study will measure impact on student academic and life outcomes over a period of three years. The results will inform government efforts to implement competency-based curriculum reforms in secondary schools across Africa.

Registration Citation

Citation
Blimpo, Moussa and Todd Pugatch. 2022. "Teacher Training and Entrepreneurship Education: Evidence from a Curriculum Reform in Rwanda." AEA RCT Registry. March 28. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1030-4.0
Former Citation
Blimpo, Moussa and Todd Pugatch. 2022. "Teacher Training and Entrepreneurship Education: Evidence from a Curriculum Reform in Rwanda." AEA RCT Registry. March 28. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1030/history/197211
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intensive in-service teacher training on the secondary school entrepreneurship curriculum over two years. The training includes 10 days of teacher workshops spread throughout each year of the two year intervention, and a one-day administration workshop each year for two years. The training intensity is intended to go beyond standard one-time initial teacher trainings.
Intervention Start Date
2016-05-01
Intervention End Date
2017-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
student outcomes:
income
employment
business creation
cognitive skills
non-cognitive skills
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Cognitive skills: standardized test scores, grades, endline tests of entrepreneurship knowledge
Non-cognitive skills: self-efficacy, creativity

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Treatment: schools will be randomly selected to receive intensive in-service teacher training on the entrepreneurship curriculum over two years. The training includes 10 days of teacher workshops spread throughout each year of the two year intervention, and a one-day administration workshop each year for two years.

Control: A second set of schools will participate in the new entrepreneurship curriculum without intensive training in the entrepreneurship curriculum. Most teachers in control schools will not receive any in-service training. A subset (about 15%) of teachers in control schools will participate in a 5-day general orientation on changes in the broader curriculum.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization of schools in office by computer random number generator
Randomization Unit
school
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
200 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
3,000 students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
treatment: 100 schools
control: 100 schools
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
MDE for outcomes measured in standard deviations (test size 5%, power 80%, intra-cluster correlation=0.2): 0.2 s.d. MDE for outcomes measured in proportions (test size 5%, power 80%, intra-cluster correlation=0.2): 0.1 (10 percentage points)
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Innovations for Poverty Action Institutional Review Board #00006083– USA
IRB Approval Date
2016-01-22
IRB Approval Number
13918
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
October 01, 2018, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
August 31, 2021, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
207 schools
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
endline 2018: 2,880 students
follow-up 2021 (most recent): 1,530 students
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
endline 2018: 1,447C/1,433T (students) follow-up 2021 (most recent): 765C/765T students
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
Yes

Program Files

Program Files
Yes
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
We assess, via a field experiment, how a comprehensive teacher training program affects the delivery of a major entrepreneurship curriculum reform in Rwanda. The reform introduced interactive pedagogy and a focus on business skills in the country’s required upper secondary entrepreneurship course. We randomly split a sample of 207 schools into treatment and control. Both groups received the government’s standard training. In addition, the treatment group was assigned intensive training organized by an NGO for two years. The training consisted of (i) six training sessions during school breaks, ii) exchange visits each term where teachers provided feedback to their peers, and (iii) outreach and support from NGO staff at least twice per year. The control group received only the default government training, which was not specific to entrepreneurship and lacked each of these elements. The program increased teachers’ use of active instruction, consistent with the reform’s features. These effects on pedagogy did not translate into improvements in student academic outcomes or skills. While still in secondary school, treated students increased participation in their own businesses by 5 percentage points, or 17% of the control mean. Wage employment (at others’ firms) declined by a commensurate amount in response to treatment, leaving no effect on overall income. These results suggest substitution between entrepreneurship and employment among students in treated schools.
Citation
Moussa P. Blimpo, Todd Pugatch, Entrepreneurship education and teacher training in Rwanda, Journal of Development Economics, Volume 149, 2021, 102583, ISSN 0304-3878, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102583.
Abstract
The persistently high employment share of the informal sector makes entrepreneurship a necessity for youth in many developing countries. We exploit exogenous variation in the implementation of Rwanda's entrepreneurship education reform in secondary schools to evaluate its effect on student economic outcomes up to three years after graduation. Using a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated a three-year intensive training for entrepreneurship teachers, finding pedagogical changes as intended and increased entrepreneurial activity among students. In this paper, we tracked students following graduation and found that increased entrepreneurship persisted one year later, in 2019. Students from treated schools were six percentage points more likely to be entrepreneurs, an increase of 19 percent over the control mean. However, gains in entrepreneurship faded after three years, in 2021. Employment was six percentage points lower in the treatment group. By some measures, income and profits were lower in the treatment group, with no robust differences in these outcomes overall. Lower incomes and profits were concentrated among marginal students induced into entrepreneurship by the program. Youth entrepreneurship programs may therefore steer some participants away from their comparative advantage. Nonetheless, the program increased university enrollment, suggesting the potential for higher long run returns.
Citation
Blimpo, Moussa and Blimpo, Moussa and Pugatch, Todd, Unintended Consequences of Youth Entrepreneurship Programs: Experimental Evidence from Rwanda. IZA Discussion Paper No. 16489, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4592983 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4592983

Reports & Other Materials