Eliminating School Fees in Low-Income Countries: A Systematic Review
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Abstract
Background: Low educational attainment in the developing world can be attributed in part to the private costs associated with sending children to public school. School fee abolition policies are supported by many development organizations and aid agencies and have been spurred worldwide by initiatives such as Education for All, the Millennium Development Goals, and the School Fee Abolition Initiative.
Purpose: We conducted a systematic review to identify and synthesize the available evidence to respond to the question, What is the evidence of the impact of the elimination of school fees in low-income developing countries?
Setting: Studies included in the review evaluated interventions implemented in low-income countries.
Intervention: Eligible studies had to meet the following criteria: the evaluation took place in a low-income developing nation as defined by the World Bank at the time of the intervention; the evaluation assessed the impact of eliminating primary or secondary public or private school fees. With the intent to conduct meta-analysis, we focused on identifying randomized controlled trials (RCT) or quasi-experimental (QED) evaluations with some evidence that the groups being compared are equivalent.
Research Design: Systematic review; narrative synthesis
Data Collection and Analysis: We identified eligible experimental and quasi-experimental studies through extensive searching, including hand searches, examining grey literature, and contacting experts in the field. Outcomes coded included impacts on primary and secondary school enrollment, gender parity in enrollment, dropout, achievement, and educational quality indicators. Although we intended to quantitatively synthesize the results from the impact evaluations in a meta-analysis, given the small number of studies that met our inclusion criteria and the variation among the studies, we elected to provide the results in a narrative fashion.
Findings: The findings of this systematic review highlight the need for more rigorous and longitudinal empirical research regarding the effects of various types of school fee elimination policies in low-income developing nations—particularly on the effectiveness of targeting policies to the most vulnerable groups, effects on education quality, and the extent to which fee abolition policies can be sustainable.
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