Overview of the Evaluation
The impact evaluation sought to answer three key questions:
(1) What was the impact of the program on school enrollment?
(2) What was the impact of the program on test scores?
(3) Were the impacts different for girls than for boys?
In this particular case, to estimate the program’s impacts, we assessed how children in BRIGHT villages fared relative to how they would have fared had BRIGHT not been implemented. This assessment is important because even in the absence of BRIGHT, it is likely that enrollment would have increased in the 132 villages in which it was implemented. School construction and enrollment both were increasing in the period prior to the implementation of BRIGHT, and the government of Burkina Faso launched a program, Plan Decennal de Developpement de l’Education de Base (PDDEB) for the period 2002-2011 PDDEB’s goals include increased access to schooling and the promotion of girls’ education. Moreover, during 2007–2008, the total number of children enrolled in school rose in the 10 provinces in which BRIGHT was implemented—in the 132 BRIGHT villages and the remaining villages as well.
Hence, our ability to assess the program’s success turns on the issue of whether, and the extent to which, we can ascertain what part of the improvement in educational outcomes in the 132 BRIGHT villages was due to the program itself and what part would have happened even if the program had not been implemented.
Summary of Results
In general, the main conclusions are that BRIGHT had about a 20 percentage point positive impact on girls’ primary school enrollment, and had positive impacts on Math and French test scores for both girls and boys. The evaluator was unable to separately estimate the impact of each component of the intervention (schools, textbooks, etc.)