The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools

Publication:
The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools

dc.contributor.author	Aturupane, Harsha
dc.contributor.author	Glewwe, Paul
dc.contributor.author	Wisniewski, Suzanne
dc.date.accessioned	2013-04-25T19:56:54Z
dc.date.available	2013-04-25T19:56:54Z
dc.date.issued	2011-06-24
dc.description.abstract	One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries are not learning these basic skills. This raises the question: What can schools and communities do to increase the learning that takes place in schools? Sri Lanka exemplifies these issues. It has achieved universal primary completion, but many Sri Lankan primary school students perform poorly on academic tests. This paper uses unusually rich data from Sri Lanka to investigate the determinants of academic performance, as measured by achievement tests, of Grade 4 students. At the child and household level, educated parents, better nutrition, high daily attendance, enrollment in private tutoring classes, exercise books, electric lighting, and children’s books at home all appear to increase learning, while hearing problems have a strong negative effect. Among school variables, principals’ and teachers’ years of experience, collaborating with other schools in a ‘school family,’ and meetings between parents and teachers all appear to have positive impacts on students’ scores. Estimates that exclude some of the variables available in the unusually rich data yield different results, which suggests that results based on less complete data are likely to suffer from omitted variable bias. A final section provides recommendations for education policies in Sri Lanka.	en
dc.identifier.citation	Education Economics
dc.identifier.doi	10.1596/13273
dc.identifier.issn	0964-5292
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10986/13273
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	Taylor and Francis
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Education Economics;21(1)
dc.rights	CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO
dc.rights.holder	World Bank
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
dc.subject	education
dc.subject	health
dc.subject	Millennium Development Goals
dc.subject	primary education
dc.title	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools	en
dc.type	Journal Article	en
dc.type	Article de journal	fr
dc.type	Artículo de revista	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication
okr.date.doiregistration	2025-05-06T11:17:27.046502Z
okr.doctype	Publications & Research::Journal Article
okr.doctype	Publications & Research
okr.externalcontent	External Content
okr.globalpractice	Education
okr.journal.nbpages	2-37
okr.language.supported	en
okr.peerreview	Academic Peer Review
okr.region.country	Sri Lanka
okr.relation.associatedurl	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09645292.2010.511852
okr.sector	Education :: Primary education
okr.topic	Education::Primary Education
okr.volume	21(1)