How can post-primary education be improved through rigorous evidence? Lessons from J-PAL’s seven-year Post-Primary Education initiative

• In Event: Poster Session Group 2
  In Poster Session: How can post-primary education be improved through rigorous evidence? Lessons from J-PAL’s seven-year Post-Primary Education initiative

Proposal

In 2013, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) launched the Post-Primary Education Initiative (PPE) to fund randomized evaluations that examine mechanisms to improve student attendance and performance in post-primary education. At the time, little research existed that could help education stakeholders effectively identify and address the specific barriers restricting the delivery of quality, relevant, and equitable post-primary education, even as 124 million children and adolescents were out of school and many more who were in school were struggling to learn. Since then, PPE has allocated more than US$12 million across 154 studies in 34 countries, contributing to global knowledge on secondary, tertiary, and vocational education in low- and middle-income countries.

Priority areas for research included demand-side concerns like student and parent knowledge of returns to education, as well as supply-side concerns like curriculum, pedagogy, EdTech, private schools, vocational instruction, teachers, and governance. Much of the research also centered around two cross cutting themes: gender and marginalized populations. In each of these issue areas, PPE-funded evaluations have contributed to the knowledge base that existed in 2013. For instance, the number of PPE evaluations on vocational/entrepreneurial education has risen from 1 to 23, and the number of pedagogy-focused studies has increased from 2 to 22.

As the PPE initiative wraps up, J-PAL is developing a review of evidence to summarize emerging lessons generated by PPE-funded evaluations about how to improve post-primary educational outcomes. This poster presentation will aim to share some of the emerging lessons from the evidence summary and from the initiative more broadly.

This poster presentation will allow for conversation and dialogue across a range of issue areas. Topics of focus will include methods to improve school participation, like an evaluation in Peru that informed students of the returns to education and subsequently found increased attendance, and a similar initiative in the Dominican Republic that resulted in improved enrollment and test scores. Other areas of discussion will include ways that EdTech can close learning gaps, methods to strengthen girls’ empowerment, and evaluations that have measured the overall long-term benefits of secondary education.

In comparing the relative benefits of these interventions, we will discuss the cost-effectiveness of various tools to improve learning, as well as their effectiveness at increasing gender parity, boosting daily attendance, and preventing dropout. From girls’ empowerment programs in Sierra Leone to technology-aided instruction in India, this presentation will engage comprehensively with how rigorous evidence-based research can enhance policymakers’ toolkits to improve student learning.

Author

• Samuel Wolf, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL at MIT)