IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9208.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Primary Education Expansion and Quality of Schooling: Evidence from Tanzania

Author

Listed:
  • Valente, Christine

    (University of Bristol)

Abstract

The rapid increase in primary enrollment seen in many developing countries might worsen schooling quality. I estimate the effect of enrollment growth following the removal of primary school fees in Tanzania and find that it led to large increases in the pupil-teacher ratio and a reduction in observable teacher quality, but rule out a substantial effect on test scores overall. These results are robust to instrumenting enrollment growth using predetermined fertility and migration decisions, and not driven by compositional changes. In urban areas, however, where baseline achievement was higher, test scores deteriorated where enrollment growth was larger.

Suggested Citation

  • Valente, Christine, 2015. "Primary Education Expansion and Quality of Schooling: Evidence from Tanzania," IZA Discussion Papers 9208, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9208.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Shawn Cole & Esther Duflo & Leigh Linden, 2007. "Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1235-1264.
    2. Duflo, Esther & Dupas, Pascaline & Kremer, Michael, 2015. "School governance, teacher incentives, and pupil–teacher ratios: Experimental evidence from Kenyan primary schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 92-110.
    3. Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2007. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 91-136.
    4. Kenneth Y. Chay & Patrick J. McEwan & Miguel Urquiola, 2005. "The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions That Use Test Scores to Rank Schools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1237-1258, September.
    5. Esther Duflo & Pascaline Dupas & Michael Kremer, 2011. "Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1739-1774, August.
    6. Samer Al-Samarrai & Hassan Zaman, 2007. "Abolishing School Fees in Malawi: The Impact on Education Access and Equity," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 359-375.
    7. Johannes Hoogeveen & Mariacristina Rossi, 2013. "Enrolment and Grade Attainment following the Introduction of Free Primary Education in Tanzania," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(3), pages 375-393, June.
    8. Glewwe, Paul & Kremer, Michael & Moulin, Sylvie & Zitzewitz, Eric, 2004. "Retrospective vs. prospective analyses of school inputs: the case of flip charts in Kenya," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 251-268, June.
    9. Adrienne M. Lucas & Isaac M. Mbiti, 2012. "Access, Sorting, and Achievement: The Short-Run Effects of Free Primary Education in Kenya," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 226-253, October.
    10. Paul W. Glewwe & Eric A. Hanushek & Sarah D. Humpage & Renato Ravina, 2011. "School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010," NBER Working Papers 17554, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Sylvie Moulin & Michael Kremer & Paul Glewwe, 2009. "Many Children Left Behind? Textbooks and Test Scores in Kenya," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 112-135, January.
    12. Joshua D. Angrist & Victor Lavy, 1999. "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 533-575.
    13. Deininger, Klaus, 2003. "Does cost of schooling affect enrollment by the poor? Universal primary education in Uganda," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 291-305, June.
    14. Caroline M. Hoxby, 2000. "The Effects of Class Size on Student Achievement: New Evidence from Population Variation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1239-1285.
    15. Louise Grogan, 2009. "Universal Primary Education and School Entry in Uganda," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 18(2), pages 183-211, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Ferreira, 2018. "Does education enhance productivity in smallholder agriculture? Causal evidence from Malawi," Working Papers 05/2018, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    2. Isaac Mbiti & Karthik Muralidharan & Mauricio Romero & Youdi Schipper & Constantine Manda & Rakesh Rajani, 2019. "Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(3), pages 1627-1673.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Valente, Christine, 2019. "Primary education expansion and quality of schooling," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Moshoeshoe,Ramaele Elias, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Free Primary Education on Educational Achievement : Evidence from Lesotho," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9404, The World Bank.
    3. León, Gianmarco & Valdivia, Martín, 2015. "Inequality in school resources and academic achievement: Evidence from Peru," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 71-84.
    4. Miguel Urquiola, 2015. "Progress and challenges in achieving an evidence-based education policy in Latin America and the Caribbean," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 24(1), pages 1-30, December.
    5. Kasper Brandt & Beatrice K. Mkenda, 2020. "The Impact of Eliminating Secondary School Fees: Evidence from Tanzania," DERG working paper series 20-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Development Economics Research Group (DERG).
    6. Alejandro J. Ganimian & Richard J. Murnane, 2014. "Improving Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: Lessons from Rigorous Impact Evaluations," NBER Working Papers 20284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Vegas, E & Ganimian, A. J., 2013. "Theory and Evidence on Teacher Policies in Developed and Developing Countries," Working Paper 104291, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    8. Harounan Kazianga & Leigh Linden & Ali Protik & Matt Sloan, 2015. "Impact Evaluation of Burkina Faso's BRIGHT Program: Design Report," Mathematica Policy Research Reports c0250cd3f27d448ea70d909c3, Mathematica Policy Research.
    9. Park, Albert & Shi, Xinzheng & Hsieh, Chang-tai & An, Xuehui, 2015. "Magnet high schools and academic performance in China: A regression discontinuity design," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 825-843.
    10. Facundo Albornoz & María Victoria Anauati & Melina Furman & Mariana Luzuriaga & María Eugenia Podestá & Inés Taylor, 2020. "Training to Teach Science: Experimental Evidence from Argentina," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 34(2), pages 393-417.
    11. Brudevold-Newman, Andrew, 2021. "Expanding access to secondary education: Evidence from a fee reduction and capacity expansion policy in kenya," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. Delavallade, Clara & Griffith, Alan & Shukla, Gaurav & Thornton, Rebecca, 2017. "Participation, learning, and equity in education: Can we have it all?," IFPRI discussion papers 1627, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    13. Masuda, Kazuya & Yamauchi, Chikako, 2018. "The Effects of Universal Secondary Education Program Accompanying Public-Private Partnership on Students' Access, Sorting and Achievement: Evidence from Uganda," CEI Working Paper Series 2018-4, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    14. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2019. "Understanding development and poverty alleviation," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2019-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    15. Sabrin Beg & Waqas Halim & Adrienne M. Lucas & Umar Saif, 2022. "Engaging Teachers with Technology Increased Achievement, Bypassing Teachers Did Not," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 61-90, May.
    16. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2009. "The Experimental Approach to Development Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 151-178, May.
    17. Eduard Marinov, 2019. "The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 78-116.
    18. Atuhurra, Julius F., 2016. "Does community involvement affect teacher effort? Assessing learning impacts of Free Primary Education in Kenya," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 234-246.
    19. David K. Evans & Arkadipta Ghosh, 2008. "Prioritizing Educational Investments in Children in the Developing World," Working Papers 587, RAND Corporation.
    20. Heath, Rachel & Mushfiq Mobarak, A., 2015. "Manufacturing growth and the lives of Bangladeshi women," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 1-15.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    universal primary education; pupil-teacher ratio; test scores; Tanzania;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    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:iza:izadps:dp9208. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.