# II. Child Tracking and Attrition

We track and test all children in our Grade 3 roster in Year 1 across the follow-up rounds and also newly enrolled children in the grades being tested each round. The initial roster in Year 1 included 13,735 children across all 804 schools, public and private, that offered Grade 3 instruction. Of the total children, we tested 12,110 children in 2004; the other children were absent the day of the test. All children (tested and non-tested) were tracked and retested in 2005 in whatever grade they were enrolled in at the time. All children were tracked between surveys since children could: (a) drop out; (b) remain in the same school and be promoted; (c) remain in the same school and not be promoted; (d) switch schools within the village and be promoted/not promoted (in which case they would be tested in another school); or (e) switch to non-sample schools (usually due to household migration). Although close to 1,750 children out of the tested 12,110 children were no longer in the same class-school combination that they would have been in if they did not switch schools and followed the natural grade progression, we were able to determine the status of all but 530, giving us a tracking rate of over 96 percent throughout the LEAPS project survey period.

This tracking exercise was undertaken to understand the types and level of attrition that occur in educational interventions. Attrition can often be a serious issue in low-income countries both because children may drop out between testing rounds and because of high student absence on a day-to-day basis.<sup>4</sup> Of the total 13,735 children, we have test scores in both years for 9,888 children (72 percent). Of the 12,110 children tested in the first year, we were able to retest 82 percent in the second year. Absenteeism, rather than dropouts, was the main reason for children not being tested. In both rounds, the rate of absenteeism is 12 percent, which is reassuring since it suggests that neither round is an outlier. Since 9 percent of the children drop out or are lost between the two years (and therefore with probability 1 cannot be retested), the expected fraction of (first round class roster) children for whom we have two test scores is (0.88*0.88*0.91=) 71 percent, which is very similar to the 72 percent actually obtained.

Furthermore, we are unable to detect any difference in the attrition rate across treatment and control villages (Online Appendix Table IIA), and unable to detect any differences in child or parental characteristics and child test scores for attriters in the treatment and control groups (Online Appendix Table IIB, Columns 1-2). Separating attriters into those who were absent on the day of the test, those who definitely dropped out, and those who left the village or whose status we were unable to confirm shows that within each of these three types of attriters, the children who were not tested look similar on a host of baseline characteristics (including test scores) in the treatment and control groups. Similar attrition rates and the similarity in baseline characteristics of attriters across treatment and control groups suggest that attrition in our sample is uncorrelated to the intervention.

4 Nationwide surveys in Pakistan and India (ASER Pakistan, 2012; ASER India, 2012) show student attendance ranging from 70-79 percent on any given day.