Equivalent Years of Schooling : A Metric to Communicate Learning Gains in Concrete Terms

Evans, David K. ; Yuan, Fei

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: EDUCATION;    IMPACT EVALUATION;    LEARNING OUTCOMES;    LIFETIME EARNINGS;    YEARS OF SCHOOLING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8752
RP-ID  :  WPS8752

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In the past decade, hundreds of impactevaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes ofeducation interventions in developing countries. The impactmagnitudes are often reported in terms of "standarddeviations," making them difficult to communicate topolicy makers beyond education specialists. This paperproposes two approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness oflearning interventions, one in "equivalent years ofschooling" and another in the net present value ofpotential increased lifetime earnings. The results show thatin a sample of low- and middle-income countries, onestandard deviation gain in literacy skill is associated withbetween 4.7 and 6.8 additional years of schooling, dependingon the estimation method. In other words, over the course ofa business-as-usual school year, students learn between 0.15and 0.21 standard deviation of literacy ability. Using thatmetric to translate the impact of interventions, a medianstructured pedagogy intervention increases learning by theequivalent of between 0.6 and 0.9 year of business-as-usualschooling. The results further show that even modest gainsin standard deviations of learning -- if sustained over time-- may have sizeable impacts on individual earnings andpoverty reduction, and that conversion into a non-educationmetric should help policy makers and non-specialists betterunderstand the potential benefits of increased learning.