Preventing Excess Female School Drop Out inMozambiqueConditional Transfers and the RespectiveRole of Parent and Child in Schooling Decisions

Damien de Walque (World Bank Development Research Group)

Christine Valente (Department of Economics, University of Bristol)

IGC Workshop, Maputo, July 6, 2015

Mozambique• Low levels of H capital: lowest mean

adult years of education (1.2 years) in 2012

• High Fertility rates: 5.9 children per woman in 2011

Only 12% girls finish EP2!

To ↓ Excess Female Drop-out

Use a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) to provide rigorous

Mozambique-specific evidenceon several unanswered questions

Transfers conditional on what?

Does conditionality on pure attendance make sense?

Unanswered Questions

The Randomized Control Trial

Randomization across primary schools

A

B

CSample of 200 schoolsIn ManicaProvince

Girls Treatment-Tokens

Parents Treatment- Money

information Treatment- certificate of exemplaryattendance

Control Group

- end of semester

event

EligibilityWithin schools:

Only girls age 12-15 or their parents receive treatment

Among girls:Only poor girls are selected, based on rapid initial assessment+crosscheck

Relevant Steps• Focus groups interviews: May 2014 qualitative

evidence on how the program could be perceived by girls/parents

• Funded by IGC

• Mini-pilot (4 schools): December-August 2015 (4 schools)tells us if the design is correct but no statistically significant and policy relevant results.

• Funded by IGC & WB

• Full scale RCT(200 schools): Sep 2015 EVIDENCE• Funded by IGC & WB +…

Mini-pilot (4 schools over 2 school trimesters)

• Baseline survey conducted in December 2014-15 in partnership with Intercampus

• Intervention announced in 4 schools (one control group and three intervention groups).

• Attendance spot checks conducted by Magariro and ongoing.

• Ceremonies for giving attendance incentives (money, tokens or certificates) planned for the end of July.

“Results” from baseline survey

• Not really “results” since very small sample (not statistically significant).

• We did the pilot in 4 schools in 3 districts:• Gondola (Chipindaúmwe locality), • Guru (Sanga locality)• Mossurize (Gotogoto and Mabada

localities)

Census of eligible households

• First, we conducted a census of all households in the 4 localities in order to select households who:• included girls age 12-15 • and corresponded to the definition

of poverty (type of roof, construction material, source of sanitation and energy, ownership of radio, television or bicycle)

Census of eligible households

• We interviewed 231 households in December 2014 and January 2015.

• We ended up selecting 46 households who satisfied the 2 conditions.

Baseline survey

• We administered a full baseline survey to the 46 households in January and February 2015.

• The main objective was to test our survey questionnaire and not to provide a statistical analysis, given the small sample.

• The questionnaire includes a household roster, am education module (including some cognitive and achievement tests), a health module and a household consumption and income module.

Mini-pilot intervention

• After the baseline survey, we announced the 4 different types of interventions in each of the 4 schools.

• We did this in April-May 2015, just before the start of the 2nd school trimester.

• In June, we conducted attendance checks, including spot checks and collection of attendance records.

Example of attendance recordsNome da rapariga Nr de

faltas

Maria Felix 4

Ozia Samuel 3

Doca Albano 5

Celina Evaristo 2

Cecai Artur 6

Rosa Manuel 7

Esperanca Victor 8

Maria Afonso 1

Nessai Bernardo 6

Rosaria Borge 3

Florencia Orlando 4

Ana Amosse 4

Diva Amosse 5

Esta Robat 8

Safira Martinho 8

Rut Blanton 4

Maninha Raimundo 3

Camal Mateus 2

Elisa Bernardo 5

Fina Cussanganissa 5

Sarita Justino 6

Mery Nembo 2

Next steps for mini-pilot

• Other round of spot checks• Ceremonies for giving attendance

incentives (money, tokens or certificates) planned for the end of July.

• End line survey in September 2015

17

Full scale study (196 schools)

baseline data

collection

Sep/Oct 2015

Sep/Oct 2016

Post intervention

data collection

& Evaluation

RCT IMPLEMENTATION- Transfers based on

85% attendance recorded (trimestral)

- Results based on spot checks by NGO

(trimestral)

Follow-up Evaluations(depending on funds)

Afterwards