Ten-Year Impacts of Burkina Faso’s BRIGHT Program

I. INTRODUCTION MATHEMATICA POLICY RESEARCH
In the first three years of operation, BRIGHT increased enrollment by 20 percentage points,
based on self-reports in the household survey data collected in 2008. To account for the possible
misreporting of enrollment by households, we also directly observed whether or not children
were enrolled in school. By this measure, we observe a comparably large impact—a gain of
16 percentage points (Table I.2). These effects are in line with other educational interventions
that investigate the effects of school construction in developing countries (Duflo 2001; Andrabi
et al. 2013).
The impact in enrollment was also accompanied by large positive impacts on student test
scores, which covered math and French. The impacts on math and French test scores were
approximately 0.40 standard deviations (Table I.2). An impact of this size implies that for a
student who started at the 50th percentile of our sample, attending a BRIGHT school is predicted
to increase his or her test score to approximately the 80th percentile.
Table I.2. Short-term impacts of BRIGHT on enrollment and test scores
Outcomes
Estimated impact
Enrollment (percentage points)
Self-reported enrollment in school 1 20***
Present in school on day of visit 2 16***
Test scores (standard deviations)
Math 0.40***
French 0.37***
Sample size (children) 17,984
Source: Levy et al. (2009)
1
Based on household survey.
2
Based on our visit to the classroom on the day of the school survey.
*** Statistically significant at the 1% significance level.
Finally, the short-term impacts of BRIGHT were positive for both boys and girls. In terms of
enrollment, the impact for girls was about 5 percentage points higher than the impact for boys.
However, the impacts on test scores for girls and boys were statistically indistinguishable. The
larger impact on girls in enrollment is in line with the findings of existing research suggesting
that school construction can lead to higher participation among girls (Burde and Linden 2013).
C. The extension of BRIGHT and its evaluations
1. The BRIGHT program extension
To ensure sustained success of BRIGHT, the government of Burkina Faso extended the
program, using $28.8 million in compact funding. 10 This second phase of BRIGHT was
implemented from 2009 to September 2012 and consisted of constructing three additional
classrooms for grades 4 through 6 in the original 132 villages and continuing the complementary
10
A compact is a multi-year funding agreement between MCC and the government of an eligible country targeting
specific programs that aim to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth.
5