81457
                  enGender Impact: The World Bank’s Gender Impact Evaluation Database



School-Based Management and Educational Outcomes: Lessons from a Randomized Field
                                  Experiment
      Author(s)            Moussa Blimpo, David Evans
      Contact              devans2@worldbank.org

      Country              The Gambia

 Organizing Theme          Voice and Agency, Education and Skills

       Status              Completed

Intervention Category      School Management

       Sector              Education
                           Education systems in developing countries are often centrally managed in a top- down
                           structure. In environments where schools have different needs and where localized
                           information plays an important role, empowerment of the local community may be
                           attractive; however, gains from local information may be offset by low level of
                           administrative capacity. This research evaluates the effectiveness of a comprehensive
                           school-based management and capacity building program called Whole School
                           Development (WSD). The WSD program provided a grant and a comprehensive school
                           management-training program to principals, teachers, and representatives of the
                           community. In order to parse out the effect of the grant, a second intervention consisted of
                           the grant only with no training (Grant-only). A third group, which also serves as control
      Abstract             group, received neither. We randomly assigned 273 Gambian primary schools to each of
                           the three groups. Three to four years into the program, we find that the WSD intervention
                           led to a 21% reduction in student absenteeism and a 23% reduction in teacher absenteeism,
                           with no impact on learning outcomes measured by a comprehensive test. We found that,
                           the effect of the WSD program on learning outcomes is strongly mediated by the baseline
                           local capacity measured by adult literacy. This result suggests that, in villages with high
                           literacy, the WSD program may yield gains on students' learning outcomes. However, in
                           villages where literacy is low, it could potentially have a negative effect. We present
                           additional results to explore other determinants of the success of this type of interventions
                           in low-income countries. We found no effect of the Grant-only intervention relative to the
                           control on test score or on participation.
 Gender Connection         Gender Informed Analysis

 Gender Outcomes           Gender disaggregated enrollment, school performance, school attendance

     IE Design             Clustered Randomized Control Trial (Clustered at school level)
                           The intervention had three different treatment arms. In the Whole School Development
                           program, schools, principals, representatives off teachers and communities received
                           training in school leadership, management, community participation, curriculum
    Intervention
                           management, teacher professional development, and teaching and learning resources.
                           Through this training, the schools' stakeholders developed a school management plan.
                           Additionally, the Ministry of education provided each school a grant worth $500.


   Last updated: 14 August 2013                                                                       1
                   enGender Impact: The World Bank’s Gender Impact Evaluation Database


  Intervention Period       2008-2011
                            The sample was comprised of 273 schools. 8958 students were tested at baseline. In each
                            school, 40 students were randomly to take a written test. 10 out of these 40 were then
   Sample population
                            randomly selected for an orally administered reading comprehension test and an additional
                            survey.
                            There were three different treatment arms: 90 schools received the WSD treatment and a
Comparison conditions
                            grant, 94 students received just a grant, and 89 schools served as the control group.
    Unit of analysis        School level, Student Level and Teacher Level

   Evaluation Period        2008-2011
                            The intervention had no impact on learning outcomes in Math or English. However, the
                            intervention led to a significant reduction in student absenteeism by 21% and teacher
        Results             absenteeism by 23%. There was no effect of the grant-only intervention on test scores or
                            participation. The program had stronger impacts in areas with high literacy levels at
                            baseline. The impact of the program on enrollment was similar between genders.
Primary study limitations
                            World Bank Africa Program for Education Impact Evaluation, Education Program
    Funding Source
                            Development Fund
                            Blimpo, M. P., & Evans, D. K. (2011). School-based management and educational
      Reference(s)
                            outcomes: Lessons from a randomized field experiment. Unpublished manuscript.
    Link to Studies         http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/Blimpo-Evans_WSD-
                            2012-01-12.pdf
       Microdata




    Last updated: 14 August 2013                                                                     2