Encouraging Teacher Attendance through Monitoring with Cameras in Rural Udaipur, India
Over the past decade many developing countries have expanded primary school access, energized by initiatives such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which calls for achieving universal primary education by 2015. However, these improvements in school access have not been accompanied by improvements in school quality. Poor learning outcomes may be due, in part, to high absence rates among teachers, who often lack strong incentives to attend work. There have been relatively few rigorous studies evaluating successful interventions to address absenteeism, so little is known about how reduced absenteeism impacts other educational outcomes. If teachers are incentivized to show up to school, is that all they do- or once there do they teach? Do financial incentives undermine their other motivation to teach well?
Despite booming economic growth and an improved educational infrastructure in many regions in India, primary education is lagging in many remote and marginalized communities. Sixty-five percent of surveyed children enrolled in grades 2 through 5 in government primary schools could not read a simple paragraph, and 50% could not do simple subtraction or division. Teacher absenteeism, a pervasive problem in these schools, may contribute to these poor educational outcomes. Disciplinary actions are rarely undertaken against absent teachers: in a survey of 3,000 Indian government schools, only one principal reported a teacher having been fired for poor attendance.1 This may account for the extremely high rate of teacher absence in India: in schools examined by this study, teachers attended classes only 60% of the time, and much of the time when they were in class they were not teaching.
This evaluation estimates the effect of incentives on teacher attendance and of increased teacher attendance on students' attendance and abilities in math and language. Seva Mandir, a local NGO, worked with researchers to randomly select 57 of their informal education centers for the intervention, and 56 for a comparison group. Ordinarily, teachers were paid a salary of Rs. 1,000 (about US$22) per month, for 21 days of teaching. In the intervention schools, each teacher was guaranteed a base pay of Rs. 500, and was rewarded with Rs. 50 for each complete day taught. Thus, a monetary incentive was attached to teacher attendance. When these incentives were implemented, monthly pay ranged from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,300.
In order to monitor teacher attendance, Seva Mandir gave each teacher a camera, along with instructions to have one student take a picture of the teacher and the class at the start and close of each school day. The camera's timestamp feature allowed Seva Mandir to determine when and for how long the teacher was at school. This technological monitoring was a relatively cost-effective method to monitor teacher attendance, since visits by monitors were reduced from daily to once every three weeks.
Impact on Teacher Attendance: The program resulted in an immediate and long lasting improvement in teacher attendance rates in treatment schools. Over the 30 months of the study, teachers at program schools had an absence rate of 21%, compared to 44% at baseline and 42% in the comparison schools. Absence rates stayed low after 14 months of the program, suggesting that teachers did not change their behavior simply for the evaluation – their response was almost entirely due to the financial incentives.
Impact on Education: Teachers who were at school were just as likely to be teaching in treatment compared to comparison schools- they did not just show up for the picture and go home. Student attendance on days the teacher was there was similar in both groups, meaning that students in the treatment group received more days of instruction simply because their teachers were more likely to be at school. A year into the program, test scores in the treatment schools were 0.17 standard deviations higher than in the comparison schools. Two and a half years into the program, children from the treatment schools were also 62% more likely to transfer to a formal primary school, which requires passing a competency test. These outcomes are hopeful. Increasing teacher attendance improves educational outcomes, and cost-effective incentive programs like this could potentially improve the opportunities for children in developing countries such as India.
Cost-Effectiveness: Expressed in terms of cost per outcome, this program cost approximately 11 cents for each additional instruction day per child, $60 per additional school year, and $3.58 per 0.10 standard deviations of increased test scores. Thus, the camera program is a relatively cost-effective program, both in terms of increasing instruction time and in terms of increasing learning.
Replicability in Formal Settings: The question arises as to whether the program can be instituted for regular teachers in government schools. Teachers in government schools are often more politically powerful than teachers in informal or private schools. Thus, it may prove difficult to institute a system in which government teachers would be monitored daily and their pay linked to attendance. However, the above evidence suggests that if teacher attendance can be improved this should flow through into improved test scores.
1 Chaudhury, Nazmul, Jeffrey Hammer, Michael Kremer, Karthik Muralidharan, and F. Halsey Rogers. “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol.20:1 (Winter 2006): pages 91-116.
