Does Effective School Leadership Improve Student Progression and Test Scores ?

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Evidence from a Field Experiment in Malawi 

Evidence from high-income countries suggests that the quality of school leadership has measurable impacts on teacher behaviors and student learning achievement. However, there is a lack of rigorous evidence in low-income contexts, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our new study, with Salman Asim of the World Bank and Stefan Dercon and Donna Harris of the University of Oxford, tests the impact on student progression and test scores of a two-year, multi-phase intervention to strengthen leadership skills for head teachers, deputy head teachers, and sub-district education officials. The intervention consists of two phases of classroom training along with follow-up visits, implemented over two years. It focuses on skills related to making more efficient use of resources; motivating and incentivizing teachers to improve performance; and curating a culture in which students and teachers are all motivated to strengthen learning. A randomized controlled trial was conducted in 1,198 schools in all districts of Malawi, providing evidence of the impact of the intervention at scale. The findings show that the intervention improved student test scores by 0.1 standard deviations, equivalent to around eight weeks of additional learning, as well as improving progression rates. The outcomes were achieved primarily as a result of improvements in the provision of remedial classes.

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Are Short-Term Gains in Learning Outcomes Possible ?

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Evidence from the Malawi Education Sector Improvement Project

This paper presents evidence of the impact of a five-year package of interconnected interventions intended to improve learning environments in eight disadvantaged districts in Malawi. The intervention, which was implemented over five years, provided additional finance to schools to support the hiring of additional teachers and construction of learning shelters to improve class sizes in lower primary, along with constructing classrooms and providing results-based finance to reward improvements in staffing. The interventions were targeted to eight districts with longstanding disadvantages in staffing, learning environments, and learning outcomes, particularly for girls. Employing administrative data and data from a nationally representative independent sample of public primary schools, the analysis finds that these investments closed the gap in learning outcomes between the targeted districts and the rest of Malawi. There is also suggestive evidence that the program reduced learning gaps between girls and boys. The findings suggest that even in a low-income environment with significant constraints, targeted efforts to reduce class sizes can close district-level gaps in learning.

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Can Targeted Allocation of Teachers Improve Student Learning Outcomes?

Research

Evidence from Malawi

Teachers are one of the most important inputs for learning, but in many low-income countries they are poorly distributed between schools. This paper discusses the case of Malawi, which has introduced new evidence-based policies and procedures to improve the equity and efficiency of the allocation of teachers to schools. The analysis finds that adherence to these policies has been highly variable between the country’s districts, with the most successful deploying 75 percent of teachers according to the rules and the least successful just 22 percent. Using administrative data, the paper identifies the impacts on student repetition rates of reductions in pupil–qualified teacher ratios as a result of the new teachers. The findings show that schools that moved from having more than 90 pupils per qualified teacher to a lower ratio experienced reductions in lower primary school repetition rates of 2–3 percentage points. However, similar impacts on dropout are not observed.

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Learning Loss as a Result of COVID-19 :

Research

Evidence from a Longitudinal Survey in Malawi

School closures from COVID-19 have resulted in large learning losses, from 0.05 to 0.17 standard deviations in high income countries, equivalent to two to six months of lost learning. However, the extent of primary-level learning loss in low-income countries remains unclear, studies lack information on individual students’ learning trajectories, and most do not include students who dropped out. This paper uses representative survey data from Malawi that includes unique longitudinal data on individual students (grade 4 at baseline), including those who dropped out, at three points in time: pre-COVID; 1–12 months before the seven-month school closures; and 14–20 months after schools reopened. Across math, English, and Chichewa, the local language, the average learning loss amounts to 18 months (78 points, 0.78 standard deviations), significantly higher than the loss documented in high income contexts. Decomposing this loss, the findings show that students lost 0.25 standard deviations of existing knowledge during the closure, and a further 0.23 standard deviations in foregone learning compared to the expected trajectory had schools remained open. Further loss comes from a slowdown in learning after schools reopened, with students gaining 7 points’ less new knowledge in math per 100 days, the majority of which is not explained by increased dropout. Our findings are relevant for other low-income and lower-middle income contexts: remote learning during school closure was in general ineffectual, necessitating urgent action to remediate lost learning; and children who dropped out had the highest learning losses and now require out-of-school learning opportunities.

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What Matters for Learning in Malawi?

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What Matters for Learning in Malawi? Evidence from the Malawi Longitudinal School Survey

I’m delighted that What Matters for Learning in Malawi? Evidence from the Malawi Longitudinal School Survey, eight years in the making, is now published.

Since the introduction of free primary education in 1994, Malawi has achieved rapid expansion in access to school, but the resulting rapid growth in enrollments have outstripped the increase in resources and capacity of the system to deliver learning. The result is an education system with widespread overcrowding and large disparities in conditions, access, and learning outcomes between schools.

“What Matters for Learning in Malawi? Evidence from the Malawi Longitudinal School Survey” presents one of the most comprehensive pictures ever presented of conditions, practices, and learning outcomes in a low-income country. Using data from a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of more than 500 schools; 4,000 teachers; and a gender-balanced, random sample of more than 13,000 grade 4 students, this book presents a robust analysis of the school-, teacher-, and student-level characteristics that prevent students from learning. The analysis reveals a strong relationship between the remoteness of a school’s location and inequities in school conditions, including the availability and condition of infrastructure, teaching and learning materials, finance, staffing, and supervision. Large class sizes limit the effectiveness of even skilled and highly motivated teachers. Poor learning outcomes are also evident in schools with high proportions of students who have illiterate parents; speak minority languages; are older than the typical age for their grade; and, particularly, have a poor mindset. A dedicated chapter focused on girls’ learning shows that student-level characteristics account for the majority of variation in learning outcomes; of those characteristics, gender is associated with the biggest inequities.

The book introduces a new Disadvantage Index (DI) as tool to understand the ways in which multiple dimensions of disadvantage at the school level interact, and it models the impact of investing in low-cost classrooms and additional lower primary teachers at the most disadvantaged schools. What Matters for Learning in Malawi? will be of interest to researchers, educators, and policy makers who have an interest in improving learning outcomes in low-income countries and populations.

Read What Matters for Learning in Malawi?

Practical solutions to problems of education finance in Africa

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Many low and middle income countries in sub-Saharan Africa face an education financing crisis. This financing challenge exacerbates the ongoing learning crisis, itself deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic and myriad conflicts. Education spending in many African countries is inadequate, inefficient, and inequitably invested, leaving schools and students struggling to provide basic schooling to an adequate standard.

Adequacy: demand for good quality education is growing at a much faster rate than the resources available. The number of school-age children in Africa is set to increase by 63 million (14 percent) by 2030, and if countries are to achieve universal education, approximately another 100 million children currently out of school must also be brought into the system. Furthermore, per-student expenditure remains too low, meaning that further investment is needed if countries are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 by providing quality education to all children.

Efficiency: much of the existing expenditure on education is wasted. Inefficient procurement methods and poor allocation of resources mean that much public expenditure is not directed in such a way as to maximize learning. The ongoing learning crisis means that resources are invested in teaching without students actually learning, and high rates of repetition mean that money is spent teaching the same students the same curricula again and again. Rough estimates suggest that Africa’s education spending is much less efficient than those in other regions, with as much as 30-40 percent spending effectively wasted.

Equity: poor targeting of resources means that students do not benefit from existing spending. Expenditure on basic education is inadequate compared to tertiary levels, despite basic education having vastly larger enrollment. Investment in teachers, infrastructure, and teaching and learning materials are all frequently unfairly distributed between schools and regions, and inequitable formulas for school grants mean that finance is not well matched to need.

These challenges require not just careful analysis, but practical solutions. Analyses such as the World Bank’s Public Expenditure Reviews routinely identify the scale and dimension of these challenges, but often struggle to provide specific and feasible recommendations or practical examples of how challenges have been tackled successfully in other countries.

How can countries address these challenges? A new series of case studies, written by a team at the World Bank with the support of the Education Finance Research Grants from Africa trust fund, provides concrete examples of countries which have effectively addressed severe financing challenges. The case studies are intended to provide country-level policymakers with positive examples of solutions to some of the most pervasive problems in education finance. Although not every example will be replicable in all other countries, the case studies demonstrate the potential for significant improvement in the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of education financing through concerted effort and policy reform.

In Sierra Leone, we report on the Government’s success in raising education expenditure to fund a rapid expansion of free education. Through increased public expenditure and a reallocation of funding from defense and other sectors towards education, the Government achieved a 50 percent increase in real education expenditure in four years, supporting a 58 percent increase in enrollment.

In Cote d’Ivoire, we report on an alternative method of increasing the adequacy of education funding – mobilization of private sector finance. Through an innovative partnership with philanthropic foundations and the cocoa industry, the Government has mobilized more than US$100 million – equivalent to more than five percent additional education expenditure – to test and scale up a series of interventions to improve enrollment and learning outcomes in primary schools.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, we report on the Government’s efforts to introduce reliable and equitable school grants, often a challenge in countries with a history of conflict, fragility and violence (FCV). By 2010, following multiple conflicts, the education system was debilitated and severely underfunded, leaving households carrying much of the cost burden of education. The Government introduced a simple block grant, available to both state and non-state schools, as part of a doubling of public spending on education. Having been successfully embedded in the system, the grant is now being expanded and reformed with a more equitable formula.

In Mozambique, we explore the Government’s success in driving down the cost of teaching and learning materials. In 2011, uncompetitive procurement practices led to low quality and high-cost workbooks and textbooks, with high distribution furthering the cost challenge. With the support of the World Bank and Global Partnership for Education-supported Education Sector Support Project, the Government moved to acquire the licenses for its workbooks and textbooks, gradually bringing production in-house to prevent the payment of annual licensing fees for additional books, and reformed the distribution system, leading to a decrease of more than one-third in unit costs and two-thirds in distribution costs.

Finally, in Tanzania, we report on the Government’s success in using results-based finance to drive improvements in the distribution of teachers between schools. Teachers account for the majority of spending on basic education, but in many African countries this expensive resource is inequitably distributed with teachers clustered in schools close to towns and large villages. Results-based incentives as part of the World Bank-supported Education Program for Results, gave incentives to Local Authorities to rationalize the distribution of teachers between schools, leading to a rapid decline in clustering of teachers and an increase in the share of schools with adequate staffing, crucial during a period of rapid expansion of enrollment.

The case studies provide valuable insights into how carefully designed reforms, backed by political leadership, can address some of the most chronic challenges in education finance – helping ensure all Africa’s children can fulfil their potential.

Ensuring the Adequacy of Education Finance through Domestic Resource Mobilization : The Case of Sierra Leone

Increasing the Adequacy of Education Finance through Private Sector Resource Mobilization – The Case of Côte d’Ivoire

Ensuring Equitable Financing of Schools in FCV Contexts : The Case of Democratic Republic of Congo

Ensuring Efficient Provision of Teaching and Learning Materials : The Case of Mozambique 

Addressing Inefficient Distribution of Teachers Between Schools : The Case of Tanzania (With Malawi and the Gambia)

Learning loss from Covid in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi

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Emerging evidence demonstrates that the Covid-19 pandemic and associated closures of schools have been correlated with substantial loss in learning. In Malawi, the Government closed all public schools for a total of 7 months. Employing data from the three rounds of the Malawi Longitudinal School Survey (MLSS) on the same students, twice prior to school closures, and once after reopening of schools, we produced the first comprehensive picture of students’ learning profiles before and after Covid-imposed school closures in a low-income country.

We found that, on average across English, Math and Chichewa (the main language of instruction), students’ learning was 97 points (0.8 standard deviations, s.d.) below where we would project if the pandemic had not taken place (on a difficulty-adjusted scale with 500 as the mean). This is the equivalent to around two years of lost learning in total at pre-pandemic levels.

Of the total 97 points of learning loss, 40 (0.3 s.d., almost one year’s learning) points occurred during the closure of schools. The remainder – 57 points (0.48 s.d., more than one year’s learning) – is the result of a slow-down in learning after schools reopened. If this trend continues, we may see a growing gap in learning over time with students affected by Covid falling further behind their expected trajectories of learning. In Malawi, where learning levels were already low before the pandemic, this will have severe consequences for human capital development.

See the full post on the World Bank’s Education for Global Development blog.