Student Participation
MIT’s [Massachusetts Institute of Technology ]Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a network of 59 affiliated professors around the world who are united by their use of Randomized Evaluations (REs) to answer questions critical to poverty alleviation. J-PAL’s mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is based on scientific evidence.
Their current work in the Education field has focussed on the vexed issues surrounding student participation.
Their ongoing [and updated] research suggests that there is strong evidence from randomized evaluations on the effectiveness of the different strategies that have been used to promote student participation.
From their research:
Achieving universal enrollment in primary school, and high attendance among those enrolled, has been a major policy focus in developing countries for the last decade. There is now considerable evidence from randomized evaluations on the effectiveness of the different strategies that have been used to promote student participation. Parents are sensitive to the cost of school and even small subsidies can improve participation. But the most cost-effective approaches of those examined here are providing families with information about the higher wages earned by those who complete school, and addressing health problems such as intestinal worms and chronic anemia.
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