In the past decade, hundreds of impact evaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes of education interventions in developing countries. The impact magnitudes are often reported in terms of "standard deviations," making them difficult to communicate to policy makers beyond education specialists. This paper proposes two approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness of learning interventions, one in "equivalent years of schooling" and another in the net present value of potential increased lifetime earnings. The results show that in a sample of low- and middle-income countries, one standard deviation gain in literacy skill is associated with between 4.7 and 6.8 additional years of schooling, depending on the estimation method. In other words, over the course of a business-as-usual school year, students learn between 0.15 and 0.21 standard deviation of literacy ability. Using that metric to translate the impact of interventions, a median structured pedagogy intervention increases learning by the equivalent of between 0.6 and 0.9 year of business-as-usual schooling. The results further show that even modest gains in standard deviations of learning -- if sustained over time -- may have sizeable impacts on individual earnings and poverty reduction, and that conversion into a non-education metric should help policy makers and non-specialists better understand the potential benefits of increased learning.
Details
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Author
Evans,David, Yuan,Fei
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Document Date
2019/02/19
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Document Type
Policy Research Working Paper
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Report Number
WPS8752
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Volume No
1
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Total Volume(s)
1
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Country
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Region
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Disclosure Date
2019/02/19
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Disclosure Status
Disclosed
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Doc Name
Equivalent Years of Schooling : A Metric to Communicate Learning Gains in Concrete Terms
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Keywords
net present value; years of schooling; standard deviation; evaluation study; school year; development policy; open access; estimation method; individual earnings; lifetime earnings
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Citation
Evans,David Yuan,Fei
Equivalent Years of Schooling : A Metric to Communicate Learning Gains in Concrete Terms (English). Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8752 Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/123371550594320297/Equivalent-Years-of-Schooling-A-Metric-to-Communicate-Learning-Gains-in-Concrete-Terms