Returns to secondary schooling in Ghana
As progress is made towards universal primary school enrolment, and millions of children around the world complete primary schooling and hope to move on to a secondary school, an important question for policy-makers is emerging: how quickly to expand access to secondary education? Some have argued that secondary education is likely to have a much larger impact than primary education on long-run earnings, health, fertility, gender equality, and civic and political participation. But expanding secondary education is a significantly more expensive undertaking than providing free primary education.
In collaboration with the Ghana Education Service, we examine the medium and long-term impacts of secondary school for a cohort of students in Ghana who earned admission into a senior secondary school but could not afford to pay the fees. We do this by identifying a sample of 2,068 students who took the BECE in April 2007 or 2008, and gained admission into a senior secondary school for September 2008, but was unable to join because of financial distress. Out of these 2,068 students, 682 have been selected through random assignment to each receive a 4-year scholarship to attend the senior secondary school they were admitted to.
Between 2009 and 2018, we will keep track of all 2,068 students and conduct follow-up surveys with them, and the households that they reside in, every three years. The follow-up surveys will include questions on health, labor market outcomes, and fertility and marriage. This will enable us to measure the medium and long-term effects of acquiring secondary education on multiple aspects of life and well-being.
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School enrollment has been steadily increasing around the world in the past decade, but there remains much to be done to improve children’s access to quality education. The IPA projects in this sector seek to understand what works and what doesn't to increase school attendance, educational quality, and achievement in the developing world.
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