Professor of Applied Econometrics Robin Lumsdaine of Erasmus School of Economics contributed to impactful research, helping children in impoverished and undeveloped countries learn. The research consists of a well-conducted randomised controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of 49 villages in rural parts of the West African country, the Republic of Guinea Bissau. The study enrolled 2,112 children in their pre-primary year who were tracked over a four year period. The intervention yielded transformative learning gains among children who would otherwise be unlikely to ever achieve literacy and numeracy. The study was funded by Effective Intervention, a UK registered charity.
Background
Guinea Bissau is often considered a “failed state” in which public services, including government-provided schools, are frequently low-quality and unreliable. The official education system comprises three levels: nine years of compulsory, basic education, followed by three years of elective secondary school and then higher education. A 2010 nationally representative survey of schools, families, and children across Guinea Bissau found substantial enrolment in school. Unfortunately, these high enrolments did not translate to learning. Fewer than one third of these children could recognize a single digit number or read a single, simple Portuguese word (Boone et al., 2014).
Study Design
The purpose of this cluster-randomised trial is to improve the supply of education by evaluating the effectiveness and cost of providing quality education to teach children basic skills such as spelling, writing and arithmetic. In villages randomly selected to receive the intervention, non-governmental primary schools provided four years of schooling (pre-primary through third grade) in place of government-provided or other existing schooling in the community. Teachers in the programme schools were assisted at the start by a local adult who spoke the most prominent language in the village. Furthermore, the teachers were monitored through classroom observations. The intervention focused on teaching Portuguese language acquisition in the pre-primary year, and the national curriculum in grades 1-3.
‘Our research provides evidence that particularly needy areas may require more collaborative, dramatic interventions in education than those usually considered’
Findings
While the study was unblinded to participants – naturally, it was impossible to prevent parents from knowing whether or not they were in a village that was receiving materials and teaching support – the research team that conducted the surveys and tested the children were not given information on which villages were in the control or experimental group. Our analysis found that children receiving the intervention scored 58.1 percentage points better (!) than controls on early grade reading and math tests, demonstrating that the intervention taught children to read and perform basic arithmetic, from a counterfactual condition of very high illiteracy.
This has great policy implications: Our research provides evidence that particularly needy areas may require more collaborative, dramatic interventions in education than those usually considered, but that such interventions hold great potential for increasing education levels among the world’s poorest people.
Next step: a replication of this research project in another country
Already in an early stage, our working paper attracted the attention, amongst others, of the evidence-based policy team of American philanthropy, Arnold Ventures. The team, which continuously monitors and reviews the evaluation literature in international development, assessed the paper as ‘excellent’, regarding the standards with which the research was conducted. A next step in the research would be to conduct a replication RCT in another country, where primary education is also low-quality and unreliable, in order to (hopefully) confirm the results and establish that they generalise to other settings: a longer-term follow-up of this study would be desirable to see whether students’ learning gains persist once they leave the programme schools at the end of third grade.
‘We found that children receiving the intervention scored 58.1 percentage points better than controls on early grade reading and math tests’
By having conducted this research, I hope to contribute to the feeling of urgency that children in failed states really need help. Moreover, these results offer hope and positivity: by investing in good education materials and teachers, we could really make a difference in developing countries. This way of offering support is one of the most effective ways to lend a helping hand.
About Robin Lumsdaine
Robin Lumsdaine, who obtained her PhD at Harvard University, is a Professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business. Since 2016 she is Professor of Applied Econometrics at Erasmus School of Economics through a cooperative arrangement with American University. She has held many other positions, for instance Senior Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. She began her academic career as Assistant Professor at Princeton University.
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References:
Boone, Peter, Ila Fazzio, Kameshwari Jandhyala, Chitra Jayanty, Gangadhar Jayanty, Simon Johnson, Vimala Ramachandran, Filipa Silva, and Zhaoguo Zhan. 2014. “The Surprisingly Dire Situation of Children’s Education in Rural West Africa: Results from the CREO Study in Guinea-Bissau (Comprehensive Review of Education Outcomes).” In African Successes, Volume II: Human Capital, 255–280. University of Chicago Press.