TY - JOUR AU - Boone, Peter AU - Fazzio, Ila AU - Jandhyala, Kameshwari AU - Jayanty, Chitra AU - Jayanty, Gangadhar AU - Johnson, Simon AU - Ramachandrin, Vimala AU - Silva, Filipa AU - Zhan, Zhaoguo TI - The Surprisingly Dire Situation of Children's Education in Rural West Africa: Results from the CREO Study in Guinea-Bissau (Comprehensive Review of Education Outcomes) JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 18971 PY - 2013 Y2 - April 2013 DO - 10.3386/w18971 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18971 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18971.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Peter Boone London School of Economics E-Mail: pb@effint.org Ila Fazzio Effective Intervention Madrid, Spain E-Mail: if@effint.org Kameshwari Jandhyala Delhi, India E-Mail: kameshwarij@gmail.com Chitra Jayanty Bissau Guinea E-Mail: cj@effint.org Gangadhar Jayanty Bissau, Guinea Bissau E-Mail: gj@effint.org Simon Johnson MIT Sloan School of Management 100 Main Street, E52-562 Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: 617/290-9618 Fax: 617/253-2660 E-Mail: sjohnson@mit.edu Vimala Ramachandran K 21 HAUZ KHAS ENCLAVE, THIRD FLOOR NEW DELHI 110016 INDIA Tel: 919811077638 E-Mail: erudelhi@gmail.com Filipa Silva Effective Intervention Bissau, Guinea-Bissau E-Mail: filipa.n.r.silva@gmail.com Zhaoguo Zhan 914 Maple Hill Drive Erie, PA 16509 E-Mail: zhanzhg@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn M1 - published as Peter Boone, Ila Fazzio, Kameshwari Jandhyala, Chitra Jayanty, Gangadhar Jayanty, Simon Johnson, Vimala Ramachandran, Filipa Silva, Zhaoguo Zhan . "The Surprisingly Dire Situation of Children's Education in Rural West Africa: Results from the CREO Study in Guinea-Bissau (Comprehensive Review of Education Outcomes)," in Sebastian Edwards, Simon Johnson, and David N. Weil, editors, "African Successes, Volume II: Human Capital" University of Chicago Press (2016) M3 - presented at "African Development Successes Conference", July 18-20, 2010 AB - We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of children were able to add two single digits, and just 19% were able to read and comprehend a simple word. Our unannounced school checks found 72% of enrolled children in grades 1-4 attending their schools, but the schools were poorly equipped. Teachers were present at 86% of schools visited. Despite surveying 351 schools, we found no examples of successful schools where children reached reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy for age. Our evidence suggests that interventions that raise school quality in these villages, rather than those which target enrollment, may be most important to generate very sharp improvements in children's educational outcomes. ER -