Category Archives: Economics

• The uber-cool, sharp, funny and highly relevant Lant Pritchett (definitely on my top-five-academics list) has finally published his book “The Rebirth of Education: From Schooling to Learning” which I have obviously ordered and cannot wait to read properly. I’ve actually read a good chunk of the book already since Lant put the chapters on his site for comment a while ago already (see here for pre-publication chapters and here for chapter one of the book). If you haven’t already watched his entertaining and informative Young Lives presentation, do yourself a favour and go and check it out (here).
• Favorite quote of the week: “There are few policy questions to which improving the quality of education is not a reasonable answer” – well said! Economist article on the value of good teachers
• Peggy Nkonyeni is the new MEC for education in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa’s most populous province). For background information on the appointment see this DailyMaverick story.
• What a week of groceries looks like around the world (via Esther Etkin). Perspective is everything.
• For a laugh watch this video on scaring potential employees 🙂
• Last year Alistair McKay wrote an article reflecting on race and consciousness in a post-apartheid South Africa – I agree with many of his sentiments but would obviously have played up the education side of things had I wrote it myself 🙂 I’m currently thinking of writing an article titled something along the lines of “Why we can’t just bury the hatchet”
• If you feel like going down the rabbit-hole of South African education research Martin Gustafsson’s personal website is a really good place to start. His draft (read: practically final) PhD thesis is somewhere there. It should be published as a book and then shown to all first-year-PhD students once they’ve registered and passed the point of no return. Primarily for intimidation/motivation purposes. I am a huge fan of Martin’s pragmatic-yet-rigorous research and will personally hold a funeral service for the quality of SA education should he decide to leave education research anytime in the near future.
• Quote of the week comes from the introduction to the NSES book (edited by Nick Taylor, Servaas van der Berg and Thabo Mabogoane – not released yet but see here):
• “The systematic study of schooling has long been plagued by acrimonious debates around theoretical foundations and research methods. Our starting point is that the existence of these debates is indicative of the enormous complexity of the field, and that, far from representing the most appropriate approach, each of the contending perspectives provides a partial view and limited but valuable insights into the terrain of schooling. Thus, research studies that utilise multilevel modelling techniques attempt to unravel the many variables that direct and shape teaching and learning, and to understand their relative importance and interactional effects. Within this broad church, the traditions of school effectiveness research and the economics of education bring complementary perspectives to bear. While the former assumes that individual actors, and in particular school principals and teachers, are motivated by altruism and the desire to do the best for the learners in their care, economists assume that actors are motivated largely by self interest. Taken together, these views sound like a good description of human behaviour.”
• For the next 10 days I need to find my productive-panic mode since I have a looming deadline and I am yet to find the rabbit in the hat, let alone pull it out…on the upside it does look like a promising paper looking at learning trajectories and accumulated learning deficits.

I am currently doing some research which draws extensively from the work of Rodrik and Hausmann, particularly their “Growth Diagnostics” approach (see especially page 13). In it they talk about the importance of experimentation to figure out what works, often using China as the example par excellence. For example: “Can anyone name the (Western) economists or the piece of research that played an instrumental role in China’s reforms? What about South Korea, Malaysia or Vietnam? In none of these cases did economic research, at least as conventionally understood, play a significant role in shaping development policy…China owes a great deal of its success to a willingness to experiment pragmatically with heterodox solutions…The process of China’s policy reform consisted of diagnosing the nature of the binding constraints and identifying possible remedies in an innovative, experimental fashion with few preconceptions about what works or is appropriate” (Rodrik, 2009). Rodrik then goes on to apply this notion to Randomized Control Trials (see this excellent document on RCTs for policy):

• “Randomized field experiments, which are legion in this area, have demonstrated considerable success with specific interventions. Importantly, some of these interventions—on school subsidies or remedial education, for example—have been replicated in a number of different contexts (Kremer and Holla, 2009). Still we have very little guidance from this literature on how we proceed to identify education interventions that are most suited to and likely to be most effective in a particular setting. We get even less help on diagnosis in other areas such as reducing corruption or increasing  manufacturing productivity which have received only spotty attention from randomizers. The best among randomized trials in development economics are of course informed by some diagnostic process, but curiously, micro-development economists are often not very explicit about the steps needed to identify the most serious failings in a given context. Nor are they very clear about how one narrows a very large list of potential solutions to a smaller number of interventions most likely to be effective” (Rodrik, 2009: 17).

Now there is much to be said on the application of this kind of logic to South Africa’s education system. If you speak to people who actually know what is going on in South Africa, you will be surprised how much they will admit to not knowing. Should we switch from mother-tongue instruction to English at grade four or grade six, or just go straight-for-English and teach in English from grade one? What is the best method of improving teacher quality in South Africa? Short in-service courses at an academic institution, teacher knowledge tests with incentives, or on-the-job training and coaching (as just a few examples)? What is the best method of raising academic achievement in Grade R and Foundation Phase? Is it graded-readers in an African language? Standardized tests? Teacher training (what training?)? In all of these instances we really don’t know what the answer is, and these are not trivial questions – they are of the utmost importance.

One of the biggest problems is that we are not willing to experiment and figure out what works. Randomized control trials (RCTs) could help us answer these questions by taking a sample of schools (say 300) and randomly allocating 100 to receive graded readers in an African language, 100 where the teachers receive teacher training and coaching, and 100 as a control (against which the ‘impact’ of the other two can be measured). This would help us answer one of the questions above. (Incidentally this is one of the few – perhaps only – RCTs that have been proposed in South Africa for education (by Stephen Taylor et al, currently on the drawing board and looking for funding I think).

One of the reasons why we have so few RCTs underway in South Africa is that RCTs are quite expensive, sometimes between R5-10 million, but not always. This is where we need to take a small diversion and emphasize that when you are spending in excess of R200 000 000 000 (R200bn+) on education, as we do in South Africa, allocating at least R150m per year for about 25 RCTs annually is really just common sense. At the moment I think there is only one RCT looking at education underway in South Africa (looking at the impact of Khan Academy here in the WC), at least that I am aware of. These impact evaluations would allow us to definitively answer questions which we really don’t know the answers to, and without RCTs, may never know the answer to. Unless we can be given the freedom and finances to experiment with reasonable proposals (and implement and test them according to high standards) we will never be able to figure out what works. Experimenting on a small scale (a few hundred schools at a time) and figuring out what works first, before going to scale, is much more sensible and cost-effective than simply rolling out untested policies which is basically our modus operandi at the moment.

The need for experimentation in South African education cannot be overstated. The Department, Presidency and Treasury all need to put their money where their mouth is and get the ball rolling on RCTs – especially in education!!

Some other useful links:

• “Test, Learn Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomized Controlled Trials” – excellent document developed for UK policy makers to help them understand the need for evaluating policies.
• JPAL Africa are one of the major organizations that do RCTs, along with IPA
• Experimenting with Khan Academy in Diepsloot (Report) (not the one I mentioned above but still interesting!).

• “There’s more to life than being happy” – Thought-provoking Atlantic article on the differences between happiness and meaning.
• JPAL 2013 – Review of Youth paper – summarizing the research work that JPAL does on Youth around the world.
• “The challenge of education and learning in the developing world” – important overview (this was published in Science nogal) from the JPAL crew about education and learning.
• Personalized learning in the US – one of the impacts of ‘Race to the Top’ grants.
• Schleicher on “Transforming education into better jobs and better lives” – sensible as usual.
• Interview with Jonathan Clark (UCT) on the gaps in quality schooling in SA.
• Chris Blattman talking sensibly about the “new” development economics.
• News is bad for you – confirming my long-held view that overexposure to traditional news is bad for you…
• Recently I was part of an Equal Education Solidarity Visit which aimed to raise awareness about the state of South Africa’s most under-resourced schools. See this M&G article.

• Powerful video about the effects of bullying (very moving – a must watch) (thanks @ClintClark)
• Lovely NYT article “Investments in education may be misdirected” – citing James Heckman (who I hero worship) “The angry, worried debate over how to improve the nation’s mediocre education — pitting the teachers’ unions and the advocates of more money for public schools against the champions of school vouchers and standardized tests — is missing the most important part: infants and toddlers.” (thanks @JohanFourie)
• Insanely talented kids playing the Violin/Cello – see here. I was very moved by watching this – humans are awesome (from Chris Blattman)
• Nice infographic about Christianity around the world (thanks @DariusMeadon)
• What Americans keep ignoring about Finland’s school success
• Tyler Cowen writes a wonderful NYT article about Economics “A profession with an egalitarian core“, I include one quote of his on emigration: “There is an overriding moral issue. Imagine that it is your professional duty to report a cost-benefit analysis of liberalizing immigration policy. You wouldn’t dream of producing a study that counted “men only” or “whites only,” at least not without specific, clearly stated reasons for dividing the data.So why report cost-benefit results only for United States citizens or residents, as is sometimes done in analyses of both international trade and migration? The nation-state is a good practical institution, but it does not provide the final moral delineation of which people count and which do not. So commentators on trade and immigration should stress the cosmopolitan perspective, knowing that the practical imperatives of the nation-state will not be underrepresented in the ensuing debate:”
• UNESCO guide “Practical tips for teaching multigrade classes“
• After a relaxing weekend with the cool cats from Cape Town I was reminded about a couple interesting websites I’d forgotten about for a while – number27.org (think computer scientist meets fine artist), vine (like 6 second video for Twitter – not sure if this is a fad or the shiz), Kiva.org (only the easiest way to lend small amounts of money to people on the other side of the globe!)

• The chart above comes from the Learning Metrics Task Force which aims to specify “What every child should know“- think of it as a simplified version of Common Core (which is for America). Amandla! More power to them!
• “Has expanded access to education in Africa had a negative effect on learning?” Blog post by my friend and co-author Stephen Taylor.
• Tuesday (26 Feb) marked the first meeting of the RESEP education reading group (RESEPERG) where we discussed: Pritchett:& Beatty 2012 “The negative consequences of overambitious curricula in developing countries” – really important conceptual paper showing that the large learning deficits we see in developing countries can partially be explained by a mismatch between the curriculum and where students are actually at – the former usually being much more advanced than the latter. “The usual question is “why are students so far behind the curriculum?” but the more telling question is “why is the curriculum so far ahead of the students?” – worth a read!
• What most schools don’t teach – why everyone should learn to code (features Gates, Zuckerberg and a couple others).
• Unnerving 6 minute infographic video showing the extent of income inequality in the U.S (astounding!) – we need something like this for SA [which, for the record, is even more unequal than the US].
• Great overview of all the cross-national assessments of educational achievement around the world (2012 PDF)
• I love humans and animals. French artist gives Caddisfly larvae gold and jewels to build their protective cases. See article here.

Nice 2.5 minute video explaining the trends in income inequality in OECD countries (click the picture) . Some useful links from Save the Children:

• “Last week, Save the Children published an important paper on inequality and development entitled Born Equal – How reducing inequality could give our children a better future (PDF).  It follows concerns about high levels of income inequality raised in some unlikely quarters: both the International Monitary Fund in a recent paper (PDF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a publication have registered anxiety.”

I wrote an article for this week’s Mail & Guardian with the original title “The Emperor has no clothes on” which subsequently got changed to “Back to the real basics” which is perhaps less obscure but far less sexy. Nevertheless I am quite attached to the analogy from Anderson’s fairy tale and I am committed to using it with reference to the SA education system at some point in the future. The article is available on the M&G website here, and in PDF version here. There is also a nice article from The Mercury “Lack of accountability hitting pupils hard” which quotes some of my research. All in all it was a good week…

See excerpt below from Lewin and Little below (NOT Romney)

“Some have argued that low price private schools make a significant contribution to increased access to education by the poor but the evidence for this is often partial and incomplete and fails to demonstrate that such schools generate additional school places rather than provide a choice for those who would otherwise go to government school. It is also clear that those households with little or no cash income are unlikely to be able to afford the costs of the fees necessary to support unsubsidized private schooling…However the analysis shows that it is only households in the top two quintiles of income where the probability of attending private schools begins to increase. Private schools do indeed offer a choice for the relatively wealthy but have little or no impact on the access to education of the poor. The development of private schools has resulted in richer households opting out of the government schools removing the possibility of influential community voices being heard who have a stake in government schooling. It appears that these developments are neither pro-poor nor equitable and that it is clear that the state remains the provider of last resort” (Lewin & Little, 2011: 335).