Lowering Barriers to Remote Education: Experimental Impacts on Parental Responses and Learning by Laia Navarro-Sola

Join us for the latest Applied Economics Research Seminar Series event, Autumn Term 2022.

Laia Navarro-Sola from the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University will present this seminar on Lowering Barriers to Remote Education: Experimental Impacts on Parental Responses and Learning.

Abstract

We conduct a randomized controlled trial with households of secondary school students in Bangladesh to investigate how parents adjust their investments in response to three educational interventions: an informational campaign about an educational phone application, an internet data subsidy, and one-on-one phone learning support. We find that offering an educational service in a context where other barriers to take-up exist can still trigger parental educational investments by acting as a signal or nudge. These behavioural changes result in lasting learning gains concentrated among richer households, reflecting that the relevant behaviour change-increased tutoring investment-is easier for them to implement. In contrast, when interventions do increase take-up, they have the potential to narrow the socioeconomic achievement gap. We observe that increased usage of the targeted educational service limits parental behavioural responses. This implies that learning gains in these cases are directly caused by the potential effectiveness of the services adopted. In our setting, remote one-to-one teacher support improves learning among students from poorer households, whereas receiving the free data package jointly with the app information has no impact on learning.

The seminar will begin with a presentation and will end with a Q and A session.

It will be held in Economics Common room at 2pm on Thursday 20th October. This event is open to all levels of study and is also open to the public. To register your place and gain access to the webinar, please contact the seminar organisers.

This event is part of the Applied Economics Research Seminar Series.