Speaker
Description
We conduct a field experiment to investigate the effect of an educational technology intervention on the numeracy and literacy skills of children with functional difficulties in a low-income setting with a high disability prevalence. Children with special needs in primary school are recruited through a government screening program at school. After randomization, at the school level, children in the intervention group are offered a computer-assisted-learning mobile app. Eight months post-intervention, we find that the intervention has positive and significant effects on literacy rates, with effect sizes exceeding the median effects reported in prior studies exploring literacy interventions. However, we find no significant effects on numeracy rates. Our disaggregated results shows that the intervention improves lower-order literacy skills and higher-order numeracy skills. On literacy skills, where aggregate effects are positive and significant, both males and females benefit from the intervention. Treatment effects are primarily driven by treatment compliance—whether students accept and use the tablet—rather than by changes in study effort, time allocation, perceptions about schooling, interactions with teachers and peers or in mental well-being. Our findings suggest that EdTech intervention may be effective in improving learning outcomes and that effectiveness is dependent on compliance with the treatment rather than ancillary behavioral or psychological mechanisms.
| Keyword | Education and Health |
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