# 1. Introduction

Teacher effort appears to be low in many developing countries. This can be seen in high rates of teacher absenteeism (Bold et al 2016, Chaudhury et al 2006, Kremer et al 2005, Banerjee and Duflo 2006) and low rates of actual teaching, even when the teacher is in school (Bold et al 2016, Chaudhury et al 2006). Using data from unannounced visits in seven Sub‐Saharan African countries, Bold et al (2017) find that students receive only about two hours and fifty minutes of teaching per day— this is just over half the scheduled time. This is largely because teachers, even when in school, are not teaching. In some contexts, these rates change slowly. For instance, rates of teacher absence in Uganda were 27 percent in 2002‐03 and 30 percent in 2013 (Bold et al 2017).

One open question is: do teachers exerting low effort believe that their effort is low? In this paper we provide suggestive evidence on this question using data from a randomized survey experiment in Ugandan secondary schools. We focus on a sample of 350 secondary school teachers in Uganda working in public‐private partnership (PPP) schools.<sup>1</sup> These teachers were given detailed self‐ administered questionnaires on beliefs about their performance and working conditions. To elicit potential self‐belief biases, the framing of these perception questions was randomized within schools. Teachers were randomly divided into two groups. In one group, the respondent was asked to provide information about him/herself: we call this the ‘self‐assessment’ group. In the other group, the respondent was asked to provide information about ‘most other teachers in the school’: we call this the ‘social‐assessment’ group.

This experiment was designed to reveal the extent of divergence between teachers’ self‐beliefs and their beliefs about other teachers in their school. Systematic positive divergence on specific questions implies that on average, teachers see themselves more favorably than they see the other teachers in the same school. We call this tendency high‐relative self‐regard (HRS). We find evidence of HRS around perceptions of ability and effort and job‐satisfaction. On the other hand, perceptions around support structures and quality of student engagement do not appear to be subject to HRS. We also find that teachers who are less experienced and who appear to exert less actual effort are more likely to exhibit HRS. In addition, incidence of HRS is lower in owner‐managed schools and better performing schools.

These results align with broader behavioral literature. The tendency to consider oneself more favorably than peers ‐ or ‘above average’ to peers ‐ is widely documented (Kruger 1999, Alicke et al. 1995, Alicke, 1985). Epley and Dunning (2000) find that people generally think of themselves as more ‘charitable, cooperative, considerate, fair, kind, loyal and sincere than the typical person’ (p. 861; see also Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004, for a review). The Dunning‐Krueger effect ‐ the cognitive bias wherein people of low ability assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is ‐ is well‐established in psychology. A particularly influential study in this area has been Svenson (1981) wherein the vast majority of subjects rate their driving skills as ‘above average’. These findings have been replicated numerous times in various countries and with respect to different outcomes. In one study, 37% of one firm’s professional engineers placed themselves among the top 5% of performers at the firm (Zenger 1992). In a survey of high school seniors, 25% rated themselves in the top 1% in their ability to get along with others (College Board 1976‐1977). When asking a sample of entrepreneurs about

> 1 Private schools that receive per‐capita funding for eligible low‐income students from the government of Uganda.

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