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Fields Changed

Registration

Field Before After
Trial Status in_development completed
Trial End Date June 24, 2024 July 31, 2024
Last Published August 15, 2023 02:49 PM August 21, 2026 09:12 AM
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date December 31, 2023
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) Random sample: 80 public schools were randomly chosen from the population of 992 public schools.
Was attrition correlated with treatment status? No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 31,760 pupils
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms Researchers assigned 40 schools to the treatment group and 40 to the control group.
Is there a restricted access data set available on request? No
Program Files No
Data Collection Completion Date July 31, 2024
Is data available for public use? No
Intervention Start Date January 24, 2022 January 01, 2022
Intervention End Date July 24, 2023 December 31, 2023
Additional Keyword(s) Management, randomised field experiment, multilevel model, clusters, causality, causal effect, randomised controlled trial, RCT, field RCT Management, randomised field experiment, clusters, causality, causal effect, randomised controlled trial, RCT, field RCT, natural randomised field experiment
Keyword(s) Education, Firms And Productivity, Governance Behavior, Education, Firms And Productivity, Governance
Did you obtain IRB approval for this study? No Yes
Secondary Outcomes (End Points) Brazilian Basic Education Assessment System (Saeb) is a standardised test applied every two years by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep), an autonomous federal government agency.
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Irbs

Field Before After
IRB Name ERF (Ethics, Risk and Fieldwork) Committee, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
IRB Approval Date June 22, 2021
IRB Approval Number non assigned
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract Causal evidence on the effectiveness of management in education is limited and ambiguous. In this study, we investigate how cost-effective management practices boost student learning through a randomised field experiment conducted with 31,760 students from 80 grade 1–9 public schools in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The experiment intervention, delivered by municipal servants exclusively to school managers, involved one-to-one coaching and on-the-job training focused on implementing the World Management Survey (WMS)’s “23 best management practices” for the education sector. We also conducted two doubleblind, in-depth management surveys, one prior to and one following the programme implementation, to evaluate precisely the quality of the management of the schools. The surveys were based on the WMS methodology. After two years, the estimated average treatment effects were 0.928 (0.260) SD for school management, 0.226 (0.059) SD for reading, and 0.237 (0.059) SD for mathematics. Instrumental variable estimates indicate that a one-point improvement in school management (on a 1—5 scale) led to gains of 0.680 (0.245) SD in reading and 0.714 (0.265) SD in mathematics. Students in schools achieving a one-point management improvement were more than two academic years of learning ahead of peers in untreated schools. We present causal estimates amongst the largest in the education intervention literature based on a programme that costs only $15.22 (PPP-adjusted) per student per year. The programme can be applied to any school and has expanded in Brazil.
Paper Citation Puccioni, F. G., & Cavalcanti, T. (2025). The impact of cost-effective management practices on student learning: Evidence from a large-scale randomised field experiment (Cambridge Working Papers in Economics No. 2515). Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge. https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:2515
Paper URL https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:2515
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