Summary: We theorize that knowledge constraints or matching failures may limit the adoption of innovative products by low-cost private schools, even for those committed to improving student learning outcomes. We study the impact of providing private schools with access to education support products and services (ESPS) products such as curricular development, school assessments, and teacher training; and investigate whether the adoption of these products can improve student learning outcomes. We see significant heterogeneity in results depending on the manner in which we outreach to schools, finding that involving teachers in the ESPS process results in particularly enhanced take-up of educational products and the greatest improvements in school performance.

An Ongoing Study: Education Support Products and Services

Tahir Andrabi

Jishnu Das

Asim Khwaja

Citation: Andrabi, Tahir, Jishnu Das, and Asim Khwaja. 2022. “Education Support Products and Services Project“. Ongoing study.

In Pakistan, despite rapid growth in the number of low-cost private schools, these schools often fail to make investments in products that can improve the quality of student learning outcomes. Past LEAPS research has shown that even when schools invest in “hard” infrastructure such as rooms, desks, and other physical infrastructure; they do not invest in “soft” infrastructure that may improve learning, such as textbooks and teacher training. Using a randomized control trial involving 815 schools, we aim to evaluate whether connecting private schools with providers of education support products and services (ESPS) products can lead to increased investment in educational goods and improved school performance. We invite treatment schools to educational ‘melas’ (trade fairs) where providers of ESPS goods were connected with representatives from schools in the low-cost private-school sector to showcase their products. We subsequently evaluated adoption rates of educational goods among attending schools, and investigated the extent of improvements in school-level outcomes.

Our main research questions include:

  1. What factors limit the adoption of educational products by private schools? - We seek to evaluate whether there are information barriers, knowledge constraints, or market-level matching failures that prevent schools that are otherwise dedicated to improving learning outcomes from investing in educational materials. Schools may be unaware of how to invest in educational products, or producers of these products may not believe that low-cost private schools are interested in acquiring their goods.

  2. Can educational ‘melas’ facilitate the creation of a market for educational products and enable increased adoption of educational products? - We organize trade fairs to connect providers of educational products with schools, and look to analyze whether such events can facilitate increased school investment in ESPS materials.

  3. Do schools that acquire educational products at a mela demonstrate improved learning and financial outcomes? - We evaluate whether schools that acquire ESPS products show improved financial success, student learning performance, or reduced closure.

  4. How can we best incentivize mela attendance and product acquisition for schools that attend melas? - We perform sub-experiments to evaluate whether involving school teachers or parents in the mela outreach process leads to heterogeneity in the impacts of intervention.

Study Design and Research Questions

Preliminary Findings

Analysis of the results of this intervention are ongoing. Our preliminary findings include:

  1. Educational ‘melas’ connecting suppliers of ESPS products with private schools seem to result in schools acquiring educational materials: We find that educational melas alleviate the information constraints and matching frictions that prevent schools from investing in ESPS products; resulting in increased take-up of these materials.

  2. Textbooks are a particularly popular category of ESPS product among low-cost cost private schools: From the educational melas, we observe that the vast majority of ESPS product take-up is that of high-quality textbooks from Oxford University Press.

  3. ESPS products seem to improve school performance: We find that treatment schools that acquire ESPS products show reduced incidence of closure and increased test score results.

  4. Involving teachers in the ESPS acquisition process seems to benefit take-up: We find significant heterogeneity in product take-up depending on which stakeholders we reach out to - schools where we also performed outreach targeted at teachers show particularly enhanced take-up of ESPS materials. These schools also seem to show greater improvements in test scores. We theorize that outreach aimed at teachers enhances their voice as key stakeholders in school management and the child learning process.