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Working with the Mexican Ministry of Education, this study piloted a scalable program to reduce high school dropout rates by focusing on socio-emotional skill development and mathematics tutoring. The intervention was evaluated through a randomized field experiment with more than 5,000 youths at 20 upper secondary schools in Mexico City. An intention-to-treat analysis finds some evidence that exposure to the Opportunities and Development to Avoid Risks Program increases socio-emotional skills, but no evidence that it improves math outcomes or future attendance. Likely explanations for these 0 results include low take-up and other process factors, which are document qualitatively, as well as heterogeneous treatment effects. In particular, an inverse-probability-weighted matching model is suggestive of an effect whereby some students participate actively in the program and drop out of school less often, while other students choose not to participate when given the option and actually drop out more as a result.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy --- Dropout Rate --- Education --- Education Policy --- Educational Attainment --- Educational Policy and Planning --- Educational Sciences --- Enrollment --- RCT --- Secondary Education

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As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of critical dimensions. This paper presents one-year schooling impacts from a conditional cash transfer experiment among teenage girls and young women in Malawi, which was designed to address these shortcomings: conditionality status, size of separate transfers to the schoolgirl and the parent, and village-level saturation of treatment were all independently randomized. The authors find that the program had large impacts on school attendance: the re-enrollment rate among those who had already dropped out of school before the start of the program increased by two and a half times and the dropout rate among those in school at baseline decreased from 11 to 6 percent. These impacts were, on average, similar in the conditional and the unconditional treatment arms. Although most schooling outcomes examined here were unresponsive to variation in the size of the transfer to the parents, higher transfers given directly to the schoolgirls were associated with significantly improved school attendance and progress - but only if the transfers were conditional on school attendance. There were no spillover effects within treatment communities after the first year of program implementation. Policymakers looking to design cost-effective cash transfer programs targeted toward young women should note the relative insensitivity of these short-term program impacts with respect to conditionality and total transfer size.

Dropout from school --- Dropout rate --- Education --- Education for All --- Enrollment rate --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Literacy --- Low educational attainment --- Lower levels of education --- Number of dropouts --- Population Policies --- Poverty Monitoring and Analysis --- Primary Education --- Primary level --- Reading --- Rural Education --- School attendance --- School children --- School dropouts --- School enrollment --- School fees --- School girls --- School year --- Schooling --- Schools --- Secondary school --- Tertiary Education

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School closures due to COVID-19 have left more than a billion students out of school. This paper presents the results of simulations considering three, five and seven months of school closure and different levels of mitigation effectiveness resulting in optimistic, intermediate and pessimistic global scenarios. Using data on 157 countries, the analysis finds that the global level of schooling and learning will fall. COVID-19 could result in a loss of between 0.3 and 0.9 years of schooling adjusted for quality, bringing down the effective years of basic schooling that students achieve during their lifetime from 7.9 years to between 7.0 and 7.6 years. Close to 7 million students from primary up to secondary education could drop out due to the income shock of the pandemic alone. Students from the current cohort could, on average, face a reduction of USD 355, USD 872, or USD 1,408 in yearly earnings. In present value terms, this amounts to between USD 6,472 and USD 25,680 dollars in lost earnings over a typical student's lifetime. Exclusion and inequality will likely be exacerbated if already marginalized and vulnerable groups, like girls, ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities, are more adversely affected by the school closures. Globally, a school shutdown of 5 months could generate learning losses that have a present value of USD 10 trillion. By this measure, the world could stand to lose as much as 16 percent of the investments that governments make in the basic education of this cohort of students. The world could thus face a substantial setback in achieving the goal of halving the percentage of learning poor and be unable to meet the goal by 2030 unless drastic remedial action is taken.

Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Dropout Rate --- Early Childhood Development --- Economics of Education --- Education --- Education for All --- Health and Poverty --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Learning Loss --- Learning Outcomes --- Pandemic Impact --- Primary Education --- Public Health Promotion --- School Closure --- Secondary Education

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As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of critical dimensions. This paper presents one-year schooling impacts from a conditional cash transfer experiment among teenage girls and young women in Malawi, which was designed to address these shortcomings: conditionality status, size of separate transfers to the schoolgirl and the parent, and village-level saturation of treatment were all independently randomized. The authors find that the program had large impacts on school attendance: the re-enrollment rate among those who had already dropped out of school before the start of the program increased by two and a half times and the dropout rate among those in school at baseline decreased from 11 to 6 percent. These impacts were, on average, similar in the conditional and the unconditional treatment arms. Although most schooling outcomes examined here were unresponsive to variation in the size of the transfer to the parents, higher transfers given directly to the schoolgirls were associated with significantly improved school attendance and progress - but only if the transfers were conditional on school attendance. There were no spillover effects within treatment communities after the first year of program implementation. Policymakers looking to design cost-effective cash transfer programs targeted toward young women should note the relative insensitivity of these short-term program impacts with respect to conditionality and total transfer size.

Dropout from school --- Dropout rate --- Education --- Education for All --- Enrollment rate --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Literacy --- Low educational attainment --- Lower levels of education --- Number of dropouts --- Population Policies --- Poverty Monitoring and Analysis --- Primary Education --- Primary level --- Reading --- Rural Education --- School attendance --- School children --- School dropouts --- School enrollment --- School fees --- School girls --- School year --- Schooling --- Schools --- Secondary school --- Tertiary Education

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Parents and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds value differently school characteristics, but the reasons behind this preference heterogeneity are not well understood. In the context of the centralized school assignment system in Mexico City, this study analyzes how a large household income shock affects choices over high school tracks exploiting the discontinuity in the assignment of the welfare program Oportunidades. The income shock significantly increases the probability of choosing the vocational track vis-a-vis the other more academic-oriented tracks. The findings suggest that the transfer relaxes the financial constraints that prevent relatively low-ability students from choosing the schooling option with higher labor market returns.

Academic ability --- Academic achievement --- Academic quality --- Academic year --- Access to university --- Achievement --- Achievement standards --- Assignment mechanism --- Average treatment effect --- Career --- College --- College education --- Curriculum --- Dropout rate --- Economic development --- Economics of education --- Education --- Education for all --- Education institutions --- Education level --- Education programs --- Educational modalities --- Educational outcomes --- Effective schools & teachers --- Elite schools --- Employment --- Enrollment --- Ethnic composition --- Exam --- Fees --- Geographic distribution --- Grade levels --- Graduate --- Graduation rate --- Grants --- High school --- High school level --- High school students --- High schools --- Higher education --- Human capital --- Information technology --- ITS --- Labor markets --- Learning --- LET --- Literature --- Low-income students --- Lower secondary --- Lower secondary school --- Middle school --- Middle schools --- Ministry of education --- Mobility --- Number of students --- Number of students per teacher --- Open access --- Parental education --- Pedagogical methods --- Primary education --- Public education --- Public school --- Public schools --- Returns to education --- Scholarships --- School attendance --- School census --- School completion --- School curriculum --- School days --- School facilities --- School infrastructure --- School level --- School principals --- School program --- School programs --- School quality --- School students --- School supplies --- School vouchers --- School year --- Schooling --- Secondary education --- Secondary enrollment --- Secondary school --- Secondary schooling --- Skills --- Statistics --- Student ability --- Students --- Students per teacher --- Study --- Teacher --- Teachers --- Technical education --- Technical schools --- Technical track --- Tertiary education --- Tertiary level --- Test scores --- Training --- Tuition --- Tuition costs --- Tuition fees --- University --- University degree --- University programs --- Upper secondary --- Upper secondary education --- Upper secondary level --- Vocational education --- Vocational school --- Vocational schools --- Vouchers --- Workshops