The Effect of Village-Based Schools: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Afghanistan

Introducing community-based schools in villages reduced the average distance from a student’s home to school from three miles to less than half a mile. This reduction in distance not only significantly increased enrollment rates and academic performance among all children, but also eliminated the gender gap in enrollment and reduced the test score achievement gap between boys and girls by one-third in just a year.

• Introducing community-based schools increased formal school enrollment by 34.9% for boys and 50.2% for girls.
• Enrollment rates and test scores were strongly affected by decreasing the distance from school. Community-based schools reduced the average distance to school from 2.9 miles to 0.3 miles.
• There was a sizeable increase in test scores: girls’ test scores increased by 0.63 standard deviations and boys’ test scores increased by 0.38 standard deviations. Larger increases in test scores were observed in math than in language.
• Enrollment drops considerably, by 13.2% for boys and 19% for girls, for each additional mile a child has to walk to school.

Proximity to schools has a dramatic effect on children’s academic participation and performance and has great potential for closing the gender gap in education in rural areas.

The study evaluates the Partnership for Advancing Community-based Education in Afghanistan (PACE-A) program, which was implemented in rural, northwest Afghanistan. This program uses a sequential rollout design to provide community-based primary schools and teacher training to villages that are underserved by traditional schools. The researchers randomly selected groups of villages into the treatment and control groups. The treatment group, comprised of 13 villages, received the program first in 2007, while the control group of 18 villages received the program in 2008.

The researchers conducted two rounds of surveys in fall of 2007 and in spring of 2008. Researchers asked parents about their children’s current educational status as well as parental preferences or expectations for school attendance. They also directly tested children on their math and language skills.