Young Development Economists Webinar Series (YoDEV) – Andrea Guariso (Trinity College Dublin), March 18th at 2:30 p.m. (CET) 

Andrea Guariso (Trinity College Dublin)  on “Supporting Learning In and Out of School: Experimental Evidence from India” (with Martina Björkman Nyqvist), jointly organised by the Department of Economics and Management of Università di Pavia, Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca e Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano. The webinar will be held on Thursday, 18th March 2021 at 2:30 p.m. (CET) via Zoom. Click here in order to connect. For further information on the Young Development Economists Webinars, you can visit our website.

Abstract: Two challenges faced by many primary school children in developing countries are the gap between their actual knowledge and the level targeted by teachers in class, and the lack of support for their studying and learning activities outside of school hours. In this paper we study an innovative education program implemented in India that tackles both these challenges by combining an in-school pedagogical intervention with the creation of out-of-school study groups. We rely on an experimental design to assess the effectiveness of the full program as well as of the in-and-out of school components separately. Our results show that the full program significantly increased test scores in both mathematics and language. However, when implemented in isolation, the two components did not have any impact on learning. Our analysis reveals the importance of the timing of the intervention and provides evidence of inputs substitution taking place in the schools. Overall, the findings prove the effectiveness of a multidimensional approach that supports the children’s learning process both in and out of school.