The impact of school resources on the quality of education in developing countries may depend crucially on whether resources are targeted efficiently. We use a randomized control trial to analyze the impact of a school grants program in Senegal, which decentralized a portion of the country's education budget.
External Link(s)
Citation
Carneiro, Pedro et al. 2015. "Decentralizing Education Resources: School Grants in Senegal." AEA RCT Registry. March 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.671-2.0.
Primary outcomes: test scores of students (French, mathematics and oral), by gender, baseline ability and geographical region (north/south)
Secondary outcomes: use of funds, parental investments, parental expectations
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Experimental Design
In 2009, all Senegalese primary schools were eligible to respond to a call for proposals for school grants to fund pedagogical improvements in education quality. An evaluation committee first ranked the applications and discarded low quality and ineligible applications. The remaining ones, referred to as “approved applications” were grouped into two categories. The first consisted of very good proposals which were eligible for financing. The second consisted of strong proposals with potential, but which needed revision. These were sent back to schools with comments from the evaluation committee, then re-submitted. This process resulted in the selection of 633 projects to fund, which were randomly allocated to three funding cohorts. 211 schools were selected randomly to receive funding in the first cohort (June 2009), at the end of the school year. This funding could only be executed at the beginning of the following school year (October/November). Of the remaining schools, 211 were to receive funding in June 2010, and another 211 were to receive funding in June 2011.
Three waves of surveys were administered to students and their families, teachers, and principals in these schools. A baseline survey was conducted at the start of the 2009-2010 academic year (in November), right as the first round of grants were able to be executed. Subsequent surveys took place in November 2010 at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year (first follow-up), and in May 2011 at the end of the 2010-2011 academic year (second follow-up).