Publication: The Impact of Sri Lanka’s School-Based Management Program on Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and Student Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
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Published
2021-12
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1943-9342 (print)
1943-9407 (online)
1943-9407 (online)
Date
2023-08-08
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Education is widely accepted as a key determinant of economic and social development. Developing countries have made substantial progress in increasing school enrollment rates in the last 50 years, but in many countries’ students are not learning the skills that the curriculum sets as the goals of their education. One policy that has been advocated by experts and international development agencies is school-based management. This paper investigates the effectiveness of a school-based management policy recently introduced in Sri Lanka, the Program for School Improvement (PSI). The PSI established new management structures and provided training and support services in order to: (a) devolve decisions for a range of activities to the school level; (b) increase the participation of parents and the local community in the work of the school; and (c) focus schools’ efforts on student learning. To evaluate the effectiveness of the PSI on measures of school performance, a randomized controlled trial was conducted. Overall, the data show some evidence of changes in the behavior of both principals and teachers in the PSI schools, but most of the observed behaviors did not change. Turning to student learning as measured by test scores, there are also no statistically significant effects, although the (imprecisely) estimated impact on math scores (0.21 standard deviations) is moderately large.
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Publication An Assessment of the Impacts of Sri Lanka’s Programme for School Improvement and School Report Card Programme on Students’ Academic Progress(Taylor and Francis, 2014-12-03)This paper examines two education programs in Sri Lanka: the Programme for School Improvement (PSI), which decentralizes decision-making power, and the School Report Card Programme (SRCP), which was designed to provide parents and other community members with information on the characteristics and performance of their local schools. Using a difference in differences identification strategy, it finds the following results. First, the PSI program significantly increased Math and English reading test scores among Grade 4 students, but not first language (Sinhalese or Tamil) test scores. However, PSI has had no effect on any test scores of Grade 8 students. In contrast, the SRCP had no significant impacts on any test scores in either grade, and further inquiries revealed that the SRCP was never really implemented. Second, the paper examined the impact of both programs on teacher and school principal variables. Overall, few effects were found, and in some cases effects were found that one would associate with reduced school quality. On a more positive note, the PSI program does appear to have led schools to form School Development Committees (SDCs), as the program stipulates, to establish a list of school priorities and to implement projects funded through local fundraising.Publication The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools(Taylor and Francis, 2011-06-24)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.Publication School-Based Management and Learning Outcomes(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)A school-based management program was implemented Mexico in 2001 and continued until 2014. This national program, Programa Escuelas de Calidad, was considered a key intervention to improve learning outcomes. In 2006, the national program was evaluated in the Mexican state of Colima, being the first experimental evaluation of the national program. All schools were invited to participate in the program; a random selection was performed to select the treatment and control groups among all the applicants. An intent-to-treat approach did not detect any impact on learning outcomes; a formal school-based management intervention plus a monetary grant was not enough to improve learning outcomes. First, the schools in the evaluation sample, control and treatment, were schools with high learning outcomes. Second, these schools had experienced some years of regular school-based management practices before the evaluation. A difference-in-difference design is used to identify heterogeneous effects of the program on learning outcomes. The difference-in-difference approach shows that the intensity of treatment increased test scores during the first year of the intervention.Publication An Alternative Estimate of School-Based Management Impacts on Students’ Achievements : Evidence from the Philippines(Taylor and Francis, 2014-04-14)This paper aims to estimate the impact of school-based management (SBM) on students’ test scores in the Philippines. Estimation results using double differencing (DD) combined with propensity score matching show that SBM increased the average national achievement test score by 4.2 points over three years. The increase in mathematics was 5.7 points. The triple differencing procedure using the pre-intervention period as the baseline provides even larger impact estimates: 8.6 and 11.4 points for average and mathematics scores, respectively. These impacts are larger than the estimate previously reported from the Philippines, probably due to the fact that the sample schools had learned about SBM implementation from experiences accumulated in other provinces that introduced SBM earlier. The empirical results also show that schools with experienced principals and teachers are eager to introduce SBM.Publication An Impact Evaluation of Sri Lanka's Policies to Promote the Academic Performance of Primary School Students through School Improvement and Report Card Programs(Washington, DC, 2011-05)The Government of Sri Lanka's Education Sector Development Framework and Program (ESDFP) initiated a major development innovation for primary and secondary education for the period 2006-2010. Their strategy was organized around four key themes: improving equitable access to basic and secondary education; improving the quality of basic and secondary education; enhancing the economic efficiency and equity of resource allocation; and strengthening service delivery (Ministry of Education, 2007). Under each theme there were a number of key development initiatives. Among these, the program for school improvement, through which the government sought to introduce school-based management, constituted an important innovation. A smaller intervention, the school report card program, was also introduced to inform schools on their performance. The World Bank supported the ESDFP through a programmatic sector-wide operation, the Education Sector Development Project (ESDP), and a range of analytical activities of key initiatives. The Program for School Improvement (PSI) was a central element of the World Bank's support under the ESDP. The World Bank undertook an impact evaluation of the PSI, as part of its analytical assistance to this program. This report presents the findings of this assessment, and comprises five sections. First, there is a concise description of school-based management. Second, there is a discussion of the PSI and School Report Card Program (SRCP) in Sri Lanka. Third, the analytical framework and results of the impact evaluation are discussed. Fourth, the findings and results of the analysis are discussed. Fifth and finally, a set of recommendations are presented for the future of the PSI and the SRCP.
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