What Matters for Learning in Malawi? Evidence from the Malawi Longitudinal School Survey

by Asim, Salman; Casley Gera, Ravinder

• ISBN13: 9781464820526
• ISBN10: 146482052X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-03-29
• Publisher: World Bank Publications

Summary

Based on data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of primary schools, teachers, and students in Malawi, "What Matters for Learning in Malawi" presents a comprehensive picture of conditions, practices, and learning outcomes in a low-income country. Since the introduction of free primary education in 1994, Malawi has achieved rapid expansion in access to school, but the resulting rapid growth in enrollments has outstripped the increase in resources and the system's capacity to deliver learning. The result is an education system with widespread overcrowding and large disparities in conditions, access, and learning outcomes between schools. Employing data from more than 500 schools, 4,000 teachers, and a gender-balanced random sample of more than 13,000 grade 4 students, the report provides a robust regression analysis of the school, teacher, and student-level characteristics that prevent students from learning. The analysis reveals a strong relationship between the remoteness of a school's location and inequities in school conditions, including the availability and condition of infrastructure, teaching and learning materials, finance, staffing, and supervision. Large class sizes limit the effectiveness of even skilled and highly motivated teachers, while schools with high proportions of students with illiterate parents, students speaking minority languages, over-age students, and particularly, students with poor mindsets achieve lower learning outcomes. A chapter dedicated to girls' learning shows that student-level characteristics account for the majority of variation in learning outcomes, and of these characteristics, gender is associated with the biggest inequities. The report introduces a new Disadvantage Index (DI) as a tool to understand the ways in which multiple dimensions of disadvantage at the school level interact and to model the impact of investing in low-cost classrooms and additional lower-primary teachers at the most disadvantaged schools.