Haiti Education Service Delivery Support

Across the developing world, policy makers are looking for ways to increase teacher accountability and ensure that all students are getting the education they need to succeed in life. But what’s the best way to protect against teacher absenteeism in countries where inspection systems are already overburdened and have little funding? Answering this question and ensuring that teachers come to school is critical to improving student learning.   

Context

In Haiti, policy makers are looking for ways to increase teacher accountability in the education sector, especially in the country’s large and mostly unregulated low-cost private school system. Nearly 90 percent of primary and secondary schools are private and some 20 percent of schools across the country reported a teacher absence in the previous week. Researchers worked with the Ministry of Education to implement a program that used cell phone cameras and wireless internet connections to verify teacher attendance.

Intervention/evaluation

Researchers used a randomized control trial design to create a sample of 100 treatment schools and 100 control schools among a list of 1,682 eligible schools in the north and northeast part of the country. In the treatment group, school directors were provided with a cell phone that had a built-in camera and was connected to the internet.  The school directors were asked to photograph each teacher before and after school each day, and the daily photos were supposed to be remotely analyzed by state inspectors. Cell phone minutes were provided to school directors and state inspectors as incentive to take, send, and process the pictures. The photos were date and time stamped so that they could not be manipulated digitally, and the evaluation field coordinator periodically spot-checked the database to verify the consistency of submitted photos with the original photo on record for teachers. The control groups received no treatment.

Results

For a summary of the impact evaluation results, please read the policy note “Can Smartphones Make Schools Better?”.