Pascaline Dupas, UCLA Pupil-Teacher Ratios, Locally-Hired Contract Teachers, and School-Based Management: Evidence from Kenya Making Schools Accountable: What Works? World Bank, June 22, 2009

Kenya Extra-Teacher Study  Collaborative effort:  Academics: Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer and myself  Implementing NGO: ICS Africa  Funding from World Bank (BNPP)

Kenyan Context: Free Primary Education  Free Primary Education started in 2003  Enrollment in primary school increased from 5.9 to 7.6 million, particularly in lower grades  Reform reduced income for school committees; fewer locally-hired teachers  Average PTR in Grade 1: 80 in area of study  Greater heterogeneity of student preparation

ICS Extra Teacher Program (ETP)  Ran for two academic (= calendar) years: 2005 and 2006  Involved 140 schools:  70 control, 140 ETP treatment schools  ETP Treatment: Provided funds to school committee to hire an extra teacher locally  Extra Teacher required to have same qualifications as civil service teachers  Salary: 2,500 Ksh (~$35) a month, compared to ~7,000 ksh a month +benefits for civil service teachers  Short-term contract, renewable after a year, school can fire extra teacher if performance unsatisfactory

Mechanics of the ETP program  Extra-Teacher assigned to 1 st grade  Added one section in 1 st grade: from 1 to 2 in most school, 2 to 2 in a few schools  Extra Teacher randomly assigned to one section; followed students in that section through Grade 2 (vs. rotation)  Division of students between sections was done at random (70 schools) or based on initial preparation level (70 schools)  Schools supposed to treat teachers equally  Resources supposed to be shared equally

School-Based Management (SBM):  Add-on implemented in half of ETP schools  Designed to enhance role of parents in monitoring ETP teachers  Training of school committee on how to monitor contract teacher’s performance Soliciting input from parents Checking teacher attendance  Formal subcommittee to evaluate contract teacher’s performance; Review meeting at end of first year of contract to decide whether to renew

Questions this design can answer:  Can hiring contract teachers locally at low pay help increase students’ learning? Can contract teachers perform well despite their lack of experience and low pay?  Can empowering the community to monitor teachers’ performance increase teachers’ effort and students’ learning?  Does lowering the pupil-teacher ratio improve learning?  Do more homogenous classes increase average learning? Do they hurt the students who are “tracked” in the lower-performing class?

Outcomes of Interest  Final outcome: Test scores  Intermediate outcomes:  Teacher Effort  Student Attendance

Effects on Test Scores  Overall: test score gain of 0.16 standard deviations in ETP schools relative to comparison schools  But not every student benefitted equally showshow  Students of civil service teachers  No significant gain relative to comparison schools despite reduction in class size from ~80 to ~40!  Students of contract teachers  Scored 0.23 SD more than students of civil service teachers in same schools  Students in SBM schools  Not affected if assigned to contract teacher  If assigned to civil service teacher No significant gains for literacy Scored.18 SD more in math than comparable students in non-SBM ETP schools

Test Scores at End of Program back

Possible explanations for test score results  Why such a large contract teacher effect?  Incentives short term renewable contract, possibility to become permanent more likely to be local  Less rotation Continuity could be good for students Also could increase accountability  Why didn’t reduction in pupil-teacher ratio increase scores?  Civil service teachers did not change teaching technique?  Increased absence? indeedindeed  Why an SBM effect on civil service teachers? Reinforce mission of contract teacher Civil service teachers cannot expect contract teachers to take their classes

Teacher Effort  Contract teachers  In class and teaching 29.1 percentage points more than civil service counterparts in same school  No significant effect of SBM (not surprising since contract teachers essentially teaching all the time)  Civil service teachers  Probability in class and teaching 12.9 percentage points lower in ETP schools than comparison schools (from base of 58.2%)  Displacement effect weaker in SBM schools (7.3 percentage points more likely to be in class and teaching, not quite significant) Grouping by initial preparation (9.2 percentage points more likely to be in class and teaching)  Classes sometimes combined when teacher absent

Student Attendance  Contract teacher  Increases student attendance by 1.7 percentage points (from base of 86.1%)  SBM  Increases student attendance by 2.8 percentage points back

Grouping Students by Initial Preparation  Tracking appears to be effective  Raises average test scores by approximately 0.13 s.d.  Gains throughout distribution of initial scores  Consistent with focus model of peer effects  Highlights importance of response of teacher behavior

Long-term results only persist with tracking Test Scores at the end of 2007 (one year after ETP program had ended)

Conclusions and Caveats  Scaling up ETP/SBM/dedicated teacher assignment combination attractive in this context  Raises test scores for students  Costs are modest  Caveats in generalizing  Contract teachers were trained  ETP teachers may be motivated by prospect of obtaining civil service positions  Hard to isolate impact of dedicated teacher (rotation effect)  Adding civil service teachers might have different effects