The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools

One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample ev...

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Main Authors:	Aturupane, Harsha, Glewwe, Paul, Wisniewski, Suzanne
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Taylor and Francis 2013
Subjects:	education health Millennium Development Goals primary education
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13273

id	okr-10986-13273
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-132732021-04-23T14:03:07Z The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools Aturupane, Harsha Glewwe, Paul Wisniewski, Suzanne education health Millennium Development Goals primary education One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries are not learning these basic skills. This raises the question: What can schools and communities do to increase the learning that takes place in schools? Sri Lanka exemplifies these issues. It has achieved universal primary completion, but many Sri Lankan primary school students perform poorly on academic tests. This paper uses unusually rich data from Sri Lanka to investigate the determinants of academic performance, as measured by achievement tests, of Grade 4 students. At the child and household level, educated parents, better nutrition, high daily attendance, enrollment in private tutoring classes, exercise books, electric lighting, and children’s books at home all appear to increase learning, while hearing problems have a strong negative effect. Among school variables, principals’ and teachers’ years of experience, collaborating with other schools in a ‘school family,’ and meetings between parents and teachers all appear to have positive impacts on students’ scores. Estimates that exclude some of the variables available in the unusually rich data yield different results, which suggests that results based on less complete data are likely to suffer from omitted variable bias. A final section provides recommendations for education policies in Sri Lanka. 2013-04-25T19:56:54Z 2013-04-25T19:56:54Z 2011-06-24 Journal Article Education Economics 0964-5292 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13273 en_US Education Economics;21(1) CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Taylor and Francis Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Sri Lanka
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	education health Millennium Development Goals primary education
spellingShingle	education health Millennium Development Goals primary education Aturupane, Harsha Glewwe, Paul Wisniewski, Suzanne The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
geographic_facet	Sri Lanka
relation	Education Economics;21(1)
description	One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries are not learning these basic skills. This raises the question: What can schools and communities do to increase the learning that takes place in schools? Sri Lanka exemplifies these issues. It has achieved universal primary completion, but many Sri Lankan primary school students perform poorly on academic tests. This paper uses unusually rich data from Sri Lanka to investigate the determinants of academic performance, as measured by achievement tests, of Grade 4 students. At the child and household level, educated parents, better nutrition, high daily attendance, enrollment in private tutoring classes, exercise books, electric lighting, and children’s books at home all appear to increase learning, while hearing problems have a strong negative effect. Among school variables, principals’ and teachers’ years of experience, collaborating with other schools in a ‘school family,’ and meetings between parents and teachers all appear to have positive impacts on students’ scores. Estimates that exclude some of the variables available in the unusually rich data yield different results, which suggests that results based on less complete data are likely to suffer from omitted variable bias. A final section provides recommendations for education policies in Sri Lanka.
format	Journal Article
author	Aturupane, Harsha Glewwe, Paul Wisniewski, Suzanne
author_facet	Aturupane, Harsha Glewwe, Paul Wisniewski, Suzanne
author_sort	Aturupane, Harsha
title	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
title_short	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
title_full	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
title_fullStr	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
title_full_unstemmed	The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools
title_sort	impact of school quality, socio-economic factors and child health on students’ academic performance : evidence from sri lankan primary schools
publisher	Taylor and Francis
publishDate	2013
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13273
_version_	1764423063382786048

The Impact of School Quality, Socio-Economic Factors and Child Health on Students’ Academic Performance : Evidence from Sri Lankan Primary Schools

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