School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010
School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010
Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, materials and teachers, but it is unclear how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of schooling and the skills they learn. This chapter examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education and economics literatures, to investigate which school and teacher characteristics have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Out of 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as having sufficient quality, and setting higher bar in terms of econometric methodology yields 43 “high quality” studies. Results are also shown for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially for “high quality” studies. The few variables with significant effects – availability of desks, teachers’ subject knowledge, and teacher absence – are unsurprising and thus provide little policy guidance.
Keywords: Education, developing countries, years of schooling, time in school, student learning, school characteristics, teacher characteristics
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