for fiscal year 2010–11 include early expenses for administering a third phase of entry into the program, which we also could not separate out. Given this, for the cost-effectiveness calculation, we simply treat nonsubsidy costs to be fully assigned to phase-1 program schools. In addition, in July and August 2010, Sindh experienced major floods, and some schools were damaged or their operations were disrupted. SEF incurred costs helping to rehabilitate schools and restore school operations. The assignment of total non-subsidy costs to phase-1 schools raises costs used in the cost-effectiveness calculation. The natural disaster also raises costs relative to what could be expected in more normal times. These two factors would work to bias downwards the cost-effectiveness of the program.

All program costs are calculated in present value terms in 2011 US dollars following the method proposed by Dhaliwal et al. (2013). SEF conducted its last unannounced monitoring activity before the follow-up survey in February 2011. In that activity, for phase-1 program schools, SEF found 28,827 children enrolled based on school registers, and 18,820 children in attendance based on a head count. Enrollment counts obtained from school registers may not be reliable if, for example, the registers are not updated regularly or schools perceive it is in their interest to inflate their enrollment counts. Assuming a 20-percent studentabsence rate in rural, remote Sindh, we estimate an enrollment of 23,525 children, which we presume to be more accurate. Although the evaluation period runs over three fiscal years, program schools operated for 1.5 school years over the period. Depending on the year type (fiscal, school) and child (enrolled, attending), the annual program cost per student ranges from a low of $77 to a high of $184.

Program impacts on school enrollment and total test scores were 30 percent and 0.6 standard deviations, respectively. Using the low and high values of annual cost per student, we estimate cost-effectiveness values of 16 percent to 39 percent in school enrollment and 0.3 to 0.8 standard deviations in total test scores, both per $100 spent. Program cost-effectiveness values associated with test scores appear to be at the lower end of the range of similarly estimated cost-effectiveness values for 14 education interventions reported by Evans and Popova (2016), only superior to a conditional cash transfer program in Africa.

Since the program impacts are measured with imprecision, following Evans and Popova (2016), we also estimate cost-effectiveness values at the lower and upper bounds of the 90-percent confidence intervals around the impacts. At the lower bound, we estimate cost-effectiveness values (associated with the alternative annual cost per student values) of 11 percent to 27 percent in school enrollment and 0.2 to 0.5 standard deviations in total test scores, per $100 spent. At the upper bound, we estimate cost-effectiveness values of 22 percent to 52 percent in school enrollment and 0.5 to 1.1 standard deviations in total test scores, per $100 spent.

While the program had large impacts on school enrollment and test scores, these impacts were accompanied by relatively large expenditures. Both the large impacts and expenditures are arguably due to the type of intervention: introducing new schools. Most of the other interventions with comparable cost-effectiveness 13