3/28/24, 11:56 PM Can India improve its public schools?

Research says yes

Human Development

Can India improve its public schools?

Research says yes
26 June, 2020

Articles

Naveen Kumar
University of California, San Diego
navkumg@gmail.com

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An important policy question is whether the quality of public schools can be improved enough to
effectively increase student outcomes. This article examines the effects of a natural experiment to
create high-quality public schools in India, called ‘model schools’. It finds that attending model
schools increases students’ test scores in core disciplines, and the probability of obtaining an A or
A+ in grade 10 by 20 percentage points.

The learning levels of children in public schools in developing countries is abysmally low. For
instance, in 2018, more than half of grade 5 public-school children in India could not read at
grade 2 level (ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) Centre, 2019). In response to the low
quality of public schools, developing countries have implemented policies that subsidise
private school attendance. However, evidence on whether private schools improve student
test scores is mixed, and many children still rely on public schools (Urquiola 2016). In India
alone, 65% of the school children (120 million students) attend public schools.

Thus, an important question for public policy is whether the quality of public schools can be
improved enough to effectively increase student outcomes. In recent research (Kumar 2020), I
exploit a natural experiment in education policy in India to provide the first piece of evidence
on short- and longer-term effects of creating high-quality public schools.

A natural experiment: The ‘model’ schools programme

The model schools programme, launched in 2009, established public schools that have a
superior infrastructure, high accountability, English as the default medium of instruction, and
contract teachers. The objective was to start one exceptionally good public school in each
educationally backward block (EBB) that could serve as an archetype for traditional public
schools to emulate. A block is considered to be educationally backward if its female literacy
rate was below the national average, and its gender gap in literacy was above the national
average in 2001. I look at all the 74 model schools in Karnataka, a southern state of India, where
model schools start at grade 6 and end at grade 10.

The challenge of measuring school quality

Students may select schools based on certain unobservable characteristics that contribute to
educational achievement, such as own ability, parents’ education, and income. Hence, any
difference in student achievement in model schools or private schools could be due to either
school quality or family characteristics. Therefore, isolating the effect of the school alone is
difficult.

The model schools’ admission structure allows me to overcome this school selection challenge
discussed above. Admission into a model school in Karnataka is determined through an
entrance exam. The entrance exam is conducted at the block level; hence, students residing in

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a particular block compete for the model school in that block. Moreover, students can apply to
attend a model school under eight caste categories (SC, ST, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, C1, GM)1, and
admission is based on their within-category performance.

Each model school can admit up to 80 students in total. Using the admission lists prepared by
the examination authority, the principal of each model school admits students in descending
order, based on their entrance exam score and caste category. The nature of the selection
process creates a cut-off for each caste category within each model school. As a result of this
admission process, nearly identical students are either admitted to or rejected from a model
school. For example, if a school's cut-off score under the Scheduled Caste (SC) category is 70
points, a SC category student who scored 70 can attend the model school, but a SC category
student who scored 69 cannot.

I determine the causal effects of attending a model school by comparing the outcomes of
students who scored barely above and barely below the admission cut-off score within their
block and caste category.

I assemble three restricted student-level administrative datasets to track the students who
appear for the model school entrance exam in grade 5 at two future points: grade 10 and pre-
university. With a dataset of over 63,000 students from 74 model schools across three cohorts,
I am able to investigate three dimensions of schooling outcomes: (A) academic achievement as
measured by test scores and final grades; (B) educational attainment indicators using years of
schooling; and (C) career choice using choice of major in pre-university.

Findings
With regards to academic achievement, attending a model school increases math test scores
by 0.38 standard deviations (SD)2 (6.8 out of 100 points), science test scores by 0.26 SD (4.1
points), and social science test scores by 0.26 SD (4.7 points) on average ( all statistically
significant). Attending a model school also increases the probability of obtaining an A or A+
grade in grade 10 by a statistically significant 20 percentage points.

In terms of educational attainment indicators, attending a model school increases the

probability of passing grade 10 by an insignificant 5.3 percentage points, and increases the
probability of joining pre-university college by a statistically significant 11.9 percentage points.
However, model schools have no statistically significant effect on the probability of choosing
either science, arts, or commerce as a major in pre-university education.

Whom does it affect the most?

Given the explicit concerns about the disparity in access to quality schooling, an important
question is whether these effects vary by caste, gender, or student aptitude. Preliminary
results suggest that there is little variation by caste. This is due to the absence of substantial
caste differences in entrance exam scores and a lack of sample size within certain caste
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categories. For gender, I find that model schools improve the outcomes of girls as much as
they do for boys. For student aptitude, the results show that model schools have a similar
positive effect for students across the ability distribution.

Potential change mechanisms

Using administrative data on school characteristics, interviews, personal visits to schools, and
anecdotal evidence, I attribute the large significant positive effects of attending a model
school to the following three factors.

Contract teachers: Teachers are hired on a contract structure as opposed to being

employed as permanent civil workers. As evidence suggests, this alters incentives, and
leads to teachers exerting higher effort levels (Duflo et al. 2015).

School governance: School governance, which holds schools accountable for performing
their daily functions, is improved. This complements the teacher contract structure,
leading to the proper functioning of public schools (Mbiti et al. 2019).

English as medium of instruction, and infrastructure: Having English as the default medium
of instruction as opposed to a regional language, along with improved infrastructure can
influence student psychology in a positive way. There is well-documented evidence
suggesting high returns to learning in English (Azam and Chin 2011).

Implications for policymakers

The evidence found in my study is also of relevance to policymakers.

The ambitious model schools scheme is yet to be either fully implemented or adopted by
all state governments. For instance, 12 out of 21 states with EBBs did not have functional
model schools as of 2016.

Karnataka is planning on introducing an English-medium track in 1,000 traditional public

schools in the 2019-20 academic year. In a separate policy, the Karnataka government is
establishing 173 ‘Karnataka Public Schools’ that start in grade 1 and go through grade 12,
framed after the design of model schools.

Back of the envelope calculations show that the per-pupil annual expenditure in the model
schools is comparable to that of the traditional public schools.

With 75% (about 1 million) of schools being public schools, and 65% (approximately 120 million)
of children who are in school attending a public school, quality of schooling in India is a first-
order policy issue (Muralidharan 2018). For the past 15 years, improving the quality of
education has been at the core of the erstwhile Planning Commission of India. Uncovering the

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effects of improved public schools prior to their national or state-wide implementation can be
vital to their success.

Notes:

1. SC - Scheduled caste, ST - Scheduled tribe, OBC - Other Backward class (2A, 2B, 3A, 3B,
C1), and GM - General merit.

2. Standard deviation is a measure that is used to quantify the amount of variation or

dispersion of a set of values from the mean value (average) of that set.

Further Reading
Aser Centre (2019), ‘Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2018’, Provisional, 15 January
2019.

Azam, M, A Chin and N Prakash (2011), ‘The Returns to English-Language Skills in India’,
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Discussion Papers 4802.

Duflo, Esther, Pascaline Dupas and Michael Kremer (2015), “School governance, teacher
incentives, and pupil–teacher ratios: Experimental evidence from Kenyan primary schools”,
Journal of Public Economics, 123:92-110. Available here.

Kumar, N (2020), ‘Public Schools Can Improve Student Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural
Experiment in India’, Job Market Paper.

Mbiti, Isaac, Karthik Muralidharan, Mauricio Romero, Youdi Schipper, Constantine Manda
and Rakesh Rajani (2019), “Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education:
Experimental Evidence from Tanzania”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(3):1627-
1673.

Muralidharan, K (2018), ‘Reforming the Indian School Education System’, 12 December 2018.

Urquiola, M (2016), ‘Competition Among Schools: Traditional Public and Private Schools’, in
EA Hanushek, S Machin and L Woessmann (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education,
Volume 5, Chapter 4, Elsevier.alue (average) of that set.

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