Snilstveit et al. (2016) also suggest that remedial education programs (tailored tutoring programs to under-performing students from poor families) may be a promising avenue for (potentially large) improvements in learning although stress that more evidence is needed. They find limited benefits of computer assisted learning interventions or provision of classroom items on learning (although note that many successful learning interventions include material provision so it may be that material provisions are successful at improving learning when accompanied with other interventions). Interventions that improve incentives for teachers have limited effects on student attendance and enrollment and mixed effects on learning. They suggest hiring additional teachers may have beneficial effects on student performance, although such interventions may be met with resistance from existing teachers if interventions create existing job security concerns.

Finally, there exists evidence to suggest that interventions that create more girl-friendly environments in schools (e.g., girl-friendly infrastructure, gender-sensitivity training, rules that accommodate religious practices in conservative areas) can improve educational outcomes. <mark>Kazianga et al. (2013) find that a “girl-friendly” primary school expansion program led to large gains in girls’ educational attainment and learning in Burkina Faso. Notably, this intervention included the provision of separate latrines for girls and sought to place more female teachers in schools with gender-sensitivity training. While we cannot separate out the effects of school construction from “girl-friendly” school improvements, this is at least suggestive that girlfriendly improvements in schools may lead to gains in attendance and learning. Similarly, Meyersson (2014) finds that Islamic political control in some municipalities in Turkey in the early 1990s (just a few years before the basic education reforms, discussed in Section A.1.8, were introduced in 1997) led to an increase of three percentage points (a 20% relative increase) in high school completion among females aged 15-20. The author argues that the effect is through the adoption of pragmatic policies that relaxed the constraints on the ‘poor and pious,’ such as a ban on headscarves, mixed classes, and a strongly secular curriculum. There is also some suggestive effect of a small reduction in teen marriages in the longer run (17 years after the election used for the regression discontinuity design).</mark>

# **A.1.2.** _<u>Construction of Schools</u>_

A common policy to improve access to schools has been to construct more schools, thereby reducing the distance to and cost of attending school. Well-identified studies on school construction programs have found positive effects of such programs on educational attainment and, in addition, some have found such programs to reduce and/or delay fertility. For example, in the context of Indonesia, Akresh et al. (2021) find that men and women exposed to a large school construction program in the 1970s had higher educational attainment, with these benefits passed onto the next generation (with larger impacts for daughters). They do not find effects of this program on age at first marriage but do find that women exposed to the program had fewer children on average.<sup>16</sup> Ashraf et al. (2020a) examine school construction programs

> 16 An earlier paper on this intervention by Duflo (2001) found effects of increased attainment for boys born between 1950-72.

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