Evaluation of Educational Incentives Program in Peru “Performance Commitments”

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Results Based Financing – Theory and practice of linking financing to results in education administrative management

Proposal

This report presents a comprehensive evaluation of the nation-wide educational incentives
program “Performance Commitments” in Peru. The program targets the Executing Units (ExU) responsible for administering the budget at the school district level for primary and secondary education. It has been in place since 2014, affecting over 82,000 educational institutions in the 26 regions of Peru. We provide insights on the determinants of fulfillment of the incentives program among ExU, and on the causal impact of this program on educational outcomes.

In the analysis of determinants, we estimate the drivers of the Rate of Achieved Commitments (RAC) of the ExU, using a managerial model of public institutions. We found that the management commitments are mainly determined by the scale of operations of the ExU (number of schools and students), the complexity of operations (physical characteristics of the schools), and the ExU human and financial resources (budget per student and the tenure of the ExU director). In the case of the outcome commitments, we found that a managerial model does not explain the outcomes commitments RAC (learning and attendance). Then, the most significant determinants are macroregional fixed-effects, which should be accounting for omitted variables related to the supply and demand factors of the educational market.

Using a quasi-experimental methodology, we estimate the causal impact of the program
incentives on educational outcomes. We found that the program has had statistically and
economically significant effects on outcomes in reading comprehension and math on 2nd grade students. The increase in scores ranges from 4 percent to 16 percent of a standard deviation for Reading Comprehension, and the proportion of students in the two highest achievement levels for Reading Comprehension is increased between 4 and 6 percentage points.

This evaluation provides some lessons learned and recommendations for the implementation of RBF incentives for sub-national education management teams.

Authors

• Geraldine Garcia Medina

• Gabriel Ugarte, Ministry of Social Development and Family