About This Project

Quality education depends on many factors,among which teaching emerges as a critical one. According to the UN,quality teachers have positive effects on the socioeconomic status of children 20-30 years down the line. Our research will investigate how pecuniary and non-pecuniary incentives affect teachers effort and students academic performance in a subset of Public Secondary Schools in Lagos,Nigeria,using a “peer pressure” system,where groups of teachers are made to hold each other accountable.

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What is the context of this research?

Lagos is the most populated city in West Africa with 21 million people calling the city their home. The state has 339 Public Junior Secondary Schools and 319 Senior Secondary Schools(LASG 2016), however enrollment rates remain low(about 40%), the percentage of overage students at various levels remains high(at least 30% at any given level)(UBEC 2010). The International Labor Organization(ILO, 2003) has lamented that the teachers’ situation in the school system in the Sub-Saharan region has reached “an intolerable low point”. The State has started to put some efforts into improving education(e.g. Lagos Eko Secondary Education Project) with favorable outcomes. Our study will complement their efforts to improve the quality of education in the state.

What is the significance of this project?

Student learning in developing countries is often substandard (Hanushek & Woessmann 2008),and much research finds a link between student learning and teacher effort/productivity. From a 2005 OECD Report: “The teacher characteristics that are harder to measure,but which can be vital to student learning include the ability to convey ideas in clear and convincing ways;to create effective learning environments for different types of students...” With our project we intend to measure these more elusive features using the teacher effectiveness survey. To measure students’ academic performance we’ll employ a general knowledge test. It is important to note the limited evidence on the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives, hence the potential of our research to contribute to this field of study.

What are the goals of the project?

The goals of this project are to test, empirically, whether inexpensive measures can be applied to improve the quality of education in a system ridden with problems. In particular, we are going to measure whether pecuniary and non-pecuniary group incentives can:

• Improve sense of teamwork and common mission among teachers in treatment schools.
• Increase the levels of teacher effort in treatment schools
• Better the academic performance of students in treatment schools
• Increase retention of teachers in treatment schools
• Suggest a review of the compensation and incentives schemes for public school teachers

Budget

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Each of the budget items will help us to achieve the goal of completing this research. Due to the fact that we will be dealing with 6 schools across Lagos State, we will have to hire some facilitators to assist us, which is where the facilitator costs come in.

The incentives item will cover the cost of the monetary and near monetary incentives for the teachers.

We will be printing and transporting about 3000 teacher effectiveness surveys and 3000 general knowledge tests. The volume explains the high cost of transportation and printing for these items. We have considered taking the digital route for both items but that would be much more costly and unfeasible due to the unpredictable power supply in Lagos.

We also accounted for fuel costs in order to run school generators while the teacher effectiveness surveys and general knowledge tests are being administered, just in case there is no power supply at the time.

Endorsed by

Education is key instrument for development. Will teachers evaluations and incentives help improve the "quality" of education in these Nigerian schools? I am really looking forward to see the results of this experiment! The team of researchers (both grad students at USF) is very well prepared and capable of carry out this research so important for their native country.
School enrollment has increased dramatically in the last decade; however, we are still far to achieve universal primary education. Even when school enrollment is high, quality of education in many LMIC is poor, especially in Africa, and even those enrolled are not learning much. Improving teaching performance may be a path to increase quality of education. This project will generate relevant evidence on whether providing incentives to teachers, a cost-effective approach, results in increased teacher productivity and improved education.

Project Timeline

The project should span over a period of about 2 months, and we will update you if the timeline changes, which as all researchers know, is a very common occurrence in the field.

May 06, 2017

Project Launched

May 25, 2017

Travel to Lagos Nigeria

May 31, 2017

Obtain approval from state ministry of education and schools

Jun 07, 2017

Selection of schools from sample & grouping of teachers

Jun 16, 2017

Baseline surveys and tests

Meet the Team

Simileoluwa Adebajo
Simileoluwa Adebajo
Temitayo Jaiyeola
Temitayo Jaiyeola

Simileoluwa Adebajo

Simileoluwa is a Masters student in Development Economics especially passionate about grassroots development policies in Africa. She feels strongly about the protection and empowerment of the most vulnerable groups in society, and has worked over her career to help these groups. With experience in real estate, consulting, and a knack for research and data analysis, Simi is always ready to work on well identified projects. She has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Babcock University in Nigeria and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in International and Development Economics at the University of San Francisco, California.

Temitayo Jaiyeola

Temitayo is a Masters student in Development Economics that seeks to incorporate his love of the arts into his social science work. He is most passionate about infrastructural and institutional development as means for economic growth. Tayo is also very interested in projects that seek to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged groups in society. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Economics at Babcock University, Nigeria, and he is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in International and Development Economics at the University of San Francisco.


Project Backers

  • 33Backers
  • 100%Funded
  • $3,500Total Donations
  • $106.06Average Donation
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