Developing Systems to Reduce Student Absenteeism in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Argentina

We propose to conduct a randomized evaluation of a system that tracks student absences and notifies parents when students miss school in secondary public schools in the Province of Salta, Argentina. The system includes an online platform, to which staff members at each school upload absences; and it is linked to a database of parents’ contact information, so that the system automatically sends them a text message with the number of schooldays missed by their sons and daughters each week. We are piloting the system in 10 schools in the capital city of Salta. We plan to evaluate the system across 202 urban and semi-urban schools (101 treatment, 101 control) in the second half of the 2019 school year, focusing on grade 12 students (last year of secondary school).

We will also collect additional data to get at potential mechanisms of impact of a texting intervention to reduce absenteeism in the Province of Salta, Argentina. To do so, we propose to: (a) collect and process daily data on student absenteeism for the 2019 school year; (b) administer surveys of students at the end of the academic year; and (c) conduct and process focus groups with parents.