Free to choose: Introducing Technology for Foundational Learning in Pakistan

• In Event: Evidence on evidence uptake across the education ecosystem: Parents, teachers, nongovernmental organisations and policymakers

Proposal

We evaluate a large-scale randomized controlled trial in 916 gender-segregated public primary schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwan (KP), Pakistan (24,730 grade 4 students; 2,920 teachers). The intervention embeds an eight-week Targeted Instruction in Pakistan (TIP) program in English, Urdu, and mathematics in the regular school year. The students were sorted according to their baseline tested levels and received the appropriate structured pedagogy curriculum. All treatment schools implemented TIP; additionally, randomly selected subset of schools received a low-cost smartphone application (“techtool”) that reduced administrative burden of classroom management, with some schools mandated ("Mandated") to use the technology and others ("Optional") where teachers were given the option of deciding how, when and if at all to use the technology. Another group of schools ("Paper") implemented TIP without any access to the technology. Pooling all treatment groups, across math, English, and Urdu, the program raised student learning by 0.12 SD after 8 weeks of targeted instruction. Learning gains were greatest when the techtool was offered as Optional (0.15 SD), followed by the Paper-only treatment (0.11 SD), and the Mandated techtool treatment (0.09 SD). The difference between the Optional and Mandated treatments were statistically significant. Schools in KP are gender segregated both in terms of teachers and students. Separating by gender, we find that the Optional vs. Mandated difference is more pronounced in female schools; the gain from Optional treatment is 0.13 SD while it is 0.01 SD for the Mandated treatment. Males show no such difference with both Optional and Mandated treatments, showing similar gains across all treatments. Importantly, the Optional treatment lifted achievement across the entire baseline-ability spectrum, whereas Paper and Mandated treatments primarily benefited higher-performing students. Within females, the Optional group shows a larger effect on the lowest performing students than the other treatments, while the results are more mixed in the male category. Within the Optional schools, 64.6% of teachers took up the techtool. (male: 67.4%, female: 60.6%). As there are many observed and unobserved differences in girls and boys schools and male and female teachers, we cannot say something causal about the choice of technology takeup within the Optional group. We plan on doing this in the future analysis. However, we demonstrate causally that giving choice to female teachers in the use of technology rather than uniformly mandating it leads to better learning outcomes.

Authors

• Tahir Andrabi, Pomona College

• Juan David Baron