Can Targeted Allocation of Teachers Improve Student Learning Outcomes? Evidence from Malawi

• In Event: Strategic and Targeted Solutions to School Staffing Problems

Abstract

Teachers are one of the most important inputs for learning, but in many low-income countries but they are poorly distributed between schools, with schools in remote areas experiencing severe understaffing while those close to towns and large villages are comparatively overstaffed. This paper discusses the case of Malawi, which has struggled to improve the distribution of teachers as a result of overly broad policies and bureaucratic discretion, which teachers exploit to resist posting to remote schools. Beginning in 2017, Malawi introduced new evidence-based policies and procedures to improve the equity and efficiency of the distribution of teachers, through stricter guidelines for the deployment of newly hired teachers to districts and to schools. In this paper, we assess the extent to which the allocations of newly deployed teachers to schools over the period 2017-2019 were aligned with the need according to the new rules; the impact of these allocations on school staffing; and the impact of improvements in staffing on student outcomes.

The first part of the analysis finds that the impact of these policies on the allocation of teachers has been highly variable between the country’s districts, with the most successful deploying 75 percent of teachers according to the rules and the least successful just 22 percent. In addition, allocation of teachers according to need is highly variable over time, with the quality of both national allocations of teachers to districts, and district-level allocations of teachers to schools, highly variable over a three year period.

The second part of the analysis confirms that, despite the weak and inconsistent level of adherence to the rules, the reformed policies did lead to improvements in school staffing. Schools which were allocated newly deployed teachers experienced rapid reductions in pupil-teacher ratios. However, these effects were blunted by ongoing movements of existing teachers within the system.

The third part of the analysis uses administrative data to identify the impacts on student learning of reductions in pupil–qualified teacher ratios as a result of the new teachers. In order to use administrative data, we use repetition rates - decided based on student performance on standardized tests - as a proxy for learning outcomes. The findings show that schools that moved from having more than 90 pupils per qualified teacher to a ratio below 90 experienced reductions in lower primary school repetition rates of 3-4 percentage points. However, similar impacts on dropout are not observed.

Authors

• Salman Asim, The World Bank
  Presenting Author

• Ravinder Casley Gera, World Bank
  Non-Presenting Co-Author