• Girls education

Girls education

This paper evaluates the impact of a Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) programme that gives scholarships to girls making the transition between the last year of primary school and the first year of secondary school in Cambodia. It argues that the scholarship programme has had a large, positive effect on school enrolment and attendance of girls. The impact appears to have been largest among girls who come from poorer households, have parents with less education, and live farther away from a secondary school.

As a result, the JFPR program appears to have dramatically reduced socio-economic gradients in enrolment and attendance. The authors conclude that even in one of the world’s lowest income countries, with weak public sector institutions and relatively low quality schooling, demand-side incentives can effectively increase the school enrolment and attendance of girls. The impact of the programme is also relatively large compared with those found in wealthier countries. This is partly because enrolment rates in low-income countries like Cambodia tend to be much lower than those in middle-income countries. As a result, the scope for improvement, and for potential programme impact, may be larger in the poorest countries.

Question that arise from the study include:

• what is the effect of the scholarship programme on other schooling outcomes, including repetition rates, and measures of performance like test scores?
• how cost-effective is the programme?
• was the scholarship amount set by the JFPR program was “too large” or “too small” to induce a given change in girl enrolment?
  

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