Long-Lived Consequences of Rapid Scale-Up ? The Case of Free Primary Education in SixSub-Saharan African Countries

Across six Sub-Saharan African countries, grade 4 students of teachers who were hired aftera free primary education reform perform worse, on average, on language and math tests—statistically significantly so inlanguage—than students of teachers who were hired before the reform. Teachers who were hired just after the reform alsoperform worse, on average, on tests of subject content knowledge than those hired before the reform. The resultsare sensitive to the time frames considered in the analysis, and aggregate results mask substantial variation acrosscountries—gaps are large and significant in some countries but negligible in others. Analysis of teacher demographicand education characteristics—including education level or teacher certification—as well as teacher classroom-levelbehaviors reveals few systematic differences associated with being hired pre- or post-reform.