As in many developing countries, educating the poorest students in Guinea remains a challenge. Often, providing additional funding to schools is not enough to improve learning. The Government of Guinea wanted to improve student learning by enhancing teacher performance in primary schools through an incentive pilot scheme that included a financial reward, social recognition, and teacher training. Researchers evaluated the impact of these incentives on student achievement.
Research area: | Education |
Country: | Guinea |
Evaluation Sample: | 1,550 teachers in 420 French-speaking schools |
Timeline: | 2012 – 2015 (Completed, endline report pending) |
Intervention: | Performance-based incentives, training |
Researchers: | Marie-Helene Cloutier, World Bank |
Partners: | Guinea Ministry of Education; Harvard University; The World Bank |
Teachers are vital to student learning, but the evidence is mixed on how to best motivate teachers in the classroom. This evaluation offers one of the first looks at the impact of giving successful teachers public recognition versus actual material rewards, while testing the usefulness of training for teachers.
Context
Guinea is one of the world’s poorest countries and it is struggling with low primary school enrollment and poor learning, even as the number of teachers has skyrocketed by 40 percent over the past few years. The government is looking for new ways to improve learning by making teachers more effective at what they do. This evaluation, implemented together with the Ministry of Pre-University and Civic Education, provided policymakers with information on programs that might be effective for raising student achievement.