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.

Ask the Scientists

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