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Incentives to teach badly: After-school tutoring in developing countries

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  • Jayachandran, Seema

Abstract

Schools in developing countries frequently offer for-profit tutoring to their own students. This potentially gives teachers a perverse incentive to teach less during school to increase demand for their tutoring. Through this mechanism, the market for tutoring can adversely affect student learning, especially for students who do not participate in tutoring. I model and present empirical evidence on these effects, using survey and test score data from Nepal. The evidence suggests that when schools offer for-profit tutoring, teachers teach less during the regular school day. As a consequence, performance on the national secondary-school exam appears to suffer among students with a low propensity to enroll in tutoring. An implication is that discouraging teachers from tutoring their own students or reducing entry barriers for third-party tutors could increase student achievement.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayachandran, Seema, 2014. "Incentives to teach badly: After-school tutoring in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 190-205.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:108:y:2014:i:c:p:190-205
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.02.008
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education; School quality; Teacher incentives; Tutoring;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets

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