Niger NECS Impact Evaluation Report
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Associated Project
Niger: Education and Community Strengthening Impact Evaluation
Prepared for:
Millennium Challenge Corporation
Key Findings
- In villages where NECS was combined with IMAGINE infrastructure investments, primary school enrollment increased 10.3 percentage points, attendance increased by 13.6 percentage points, and local language test scores improved by about 0.21 standard deviations.
- Primary school enrollment increased by 9.5 percentage points, attendance increased by 11.1 percentage points, and local language test scores increased by 0.15 standard deviations in villages that received only services through the NECS project.
- The improvements in school infrastructure and school resources and the girl-friendly features of the schools created under the IMAGINE project have largely been sustained.
- A cost-benefit analysis found that the improvements in enrollment and local-language reading skills came at a higher cost compared with other education programs implemented in other countries.
The NECS project included a package of activities designed to increase access to high quality education and to improve reading achievement in local languages for primary school children in Niger. The project was funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and was implemented by Plan International and partners from 2012-2016. In some villages, NECS was implemented in new school buildings that were constructed under the IMAGINE project, which was implemented from 2008-2010. Mathematica conducted a randomized control trial evaluation to estimate the impacts of NECS alone (NECS-only) and NECS in combination with IMAGINE (NECS & IMAGINE) on key educational outcomes for primary school–age children (6 through 12 years).
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