IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2017-13.html

Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students’ educational attainment

Author

Abstract

This paper presents experimental evidence on the impact of a role model on secondary school student exam performance in Uganda. Students preparing to take their national exams were in dividually randomised to see either a movie featuring a potential role model, Queen of Katwe, or to see a placebo movie. I find that treatment with the role-model movie leads to lower secondary school students being less likely to fail their maths exam a week later: 84% of those who watched Queen of Katwe passed the exam, whereas only 73% of those who didn’t passed. This effect is strongest for female and lower ability students. For upper secondary school students, treatment with Queen of Katwe 1 month before their exams results in an increase in their total exam score of 0.13 standard deviations. This study highlights the power of a movie role model as an alternative way to improve secondary school students’ educational attainment, particularly of the worst performing students.

Suggested Citation

  • Emma Riley, 2017. "Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students’ educational attainment," CSAE Working Paper Series 2017-13, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2017-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cd39bf4f-be54-4587-8f8d-9ea500f512a1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2017-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.