The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa

In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this p...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Bold, Tessa, Filmer, Deon, Molina, Ezequiel, Svensson, Jakob
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2019
Subjects:	TEACHER TRAINING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT HUMAN CAPITAL EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT TEACHER KNOWLEDGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE EDUCATION POLICY AND PLANNING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY EDUCATION
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/149531557254443590/The-Lost-Human-Capital-Teacher-Knowledge-and-Student-Achievement-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31673

id	okr-10986-31673
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-316732022-09-19T12:17:01Z The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa Bold, Tessa Filmer, Deon Molina, Ezequiel Svensson, Jakob TEACHER TRAINING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT HUMAN CAPITAL EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT TEACHER KNOWLEDGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE EDUCATION POLICY AND PLANNING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY EDUCATION In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect of teacher subject content knowledge on student learning when panel data on students are not available. The paper shows that data on test scores of the student's current and the previous year's teachers, and knowledge of the correlation structure of teacher knowledge across time and grades, allow estimating two structural parameters of interest: the contemporaneous effect of teacher content knowledge, and the extent of fade out of teacher impacts in earlier grades. The paper uses these structural estimates to understand the magnitude of teacher effects and simulate the impacts of various policy reforms. Shortfalls in teachers' content knowledge account for 30 percent of the shortfall in learning relative to the curriculum, and about 20 percent of the cross-country difference in learning in the sample. Assigning more students to better teachers would potentially lead to substantial cost-savings, even if there are negative class-size effects. Ensuring that all incoming teachers have the officially mandated effective years of education, along with increasing the time spent on teaching to the officially mandated schedule, could almost double student learning within the next 30 years. 2019-05-10T15:24:12Z 2019-05-10T15:24:12Z 2019-05 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/149531557254443590/The-Lost-Human-Capital-Teacher-Knowledge-and-Student-Achievement-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31673 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8849 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Kenya Mozambique Nigeria Senegal Tanzania Togo Uganda
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	TEACHER TRAINING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT HUMAN CAPITAL EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT TEACHER KNOWLEDGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE EDUCATION POLICY AND PLANNING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY EDUCATION
spellingShingle	TEACHER TRAINING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT HUMAN CAPITAL EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT TEACHER KNOWLEDGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE EDUCATION POLICY AND PLANNING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY EDUCATION Bold, Tessa Filmer, Deon Molina, Ezequiel Svensson, Jakob The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
geographic_facet	Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Kenya Mozambique Nigeria Senegal Tanzania Togo Uganda
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8849
description	In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect of teacher subject content knowledge on student learning when panel data on students are not available. The paper shows that data on test scores of the student's current and the previous year's teachers, and knowledge of the correlation structure of teacher knowledge across time and grades, allow estimating two structural parameters of interest: the contemporaneous effect of teacher content knowledge, and the extent of fade out of teacher impacts in earlier grades. The paper uses these structural estimates to understand the magnitude of teacher effects and simulate the impacts of various policy reforms. Shortfalls in teachers' content knowledge account for 30 percent of the shortfall in learning relative to the curriculum, and about 20 percent of the cross-country difference in learning in the sample. Assigning more students to better teachers would potentially lead to substantial cost-savings, even if there are negative class-size effects. Ensuring that all incoming teachers have the officially mandated effective years of education, along with increasing the time spent on teaching to the officially mandated schedule, could almost double student learning within the next 30 years.
format	Working Paper
author	Bold, Tessa Filmer, Deon Molina, Ezequiel Svensson, Jakob
author_facet	Bold, Tessa Filmer, Deon Molina, Ezequiel Svensson, Jakob
author_sort	Bold, Tessa
title	The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
title_short	The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
title_full	The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
title_fullStr	The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
title_full_unstemmed	The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
title_sort	lost human capital : teacher knowledge and student achievement in africa
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2019
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/149531557254443590/The-Lost-Human-Capital-Teacher-Knowledge-and-Student-Achievement-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31673
_version_	1764474875228979200

The Lost Human Capital : Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa

Similar Items