2.2.2 Timeline of research and intervention activities

within each private contractor, but not across contractors. We gave a list of “counterparts” to each contractor based on their location preferences, so that each list had twice the number of schools they were to operate. Two contractors, Omega Schools and Bridge International Academies, required schools with 2G connectivity. Additionally, each contractor submitted to the government a list of the counties they were willing to work in. Note that Bridge International Academies had first pick of schools. Once each contractor approved this list, we randomized the treatment assignment within each pair.27

Private contractors did not manage all the schools originally assigned to treatment. After contractors visited their assigned schools to start preparing for the upcoming school year, two treatment schools turned out to be private schools that were incorrectly labeled in the EMIS data as public schools. Two other schools had only two classrooms each. Of these four schools, two had originally been assigned to More Than Me and two had been assigned to Street Child. Contractors did not operate in these schools and we treat them as non-compliant, presenting results in an intention-to-treat framework. Replacement schools were provided to these contractors, presenting them with a new list of counterparts and informing them, as before, that they would operate one of each pair of schools (but not which one). Contractors approved the list before we randomly assigned replacement schools from it. However, we do not use this list as our main sample since it is not fully experimental.28 Omega Academies opted not to operate two of their assigned schools, which we treat as non-compliance. Rising Academies opted not to operate one of their assigned schools (which we treat as non-compliance), and was given one non-randomly assigned school in exchange (which is outside our sample). Bridge International Academies is managing two extra demonstration schools that were not randomized and are thus not part of our sample. Therefore, the set of schools in our analysis is not identical to the set of schools actually managed by PSL contractors. Figure 4b shows the original treatment assignment. Appendix L contains a complete list of the schools related to the PSL program, and Table L.1 summarizes the overlap between schools in our main sample and the set of schools actually managed by PSL contractors.

Treatment assignment may change the student composition across schools. Thus, to prevent differences in the composition of students from driving differences in test scores, we sampled 20 students (from K1 to grade 5) from enrollment logs from 2015/2016, the year before the treatment was introduced. We associate each student with his or her “original” school, regardless of what school (if any) he or she attended in subsequent years. The combination of random treatment at the school level with sampling from a fixed and comparable pool of students allows us to provide clean estimates of the program’s intention-to-treat (ITT) effect on test scores, uncontaminated by selection.

2.2.2 Timeline of research and intervention activities

We conducted the baseline survey in September/October 2016 and the follow-up survey in May/June 2017. A second follow-up survey will take place in March/April 2019 conditional on continuation of the project and preservation of the control group. See Figure A.1 in Appendix A for a timeline of intervention

students per book; whether the school has a permanent building; whether the school has piped water, a pump or a well; whether the school has a toilet; whether the school has a staff room; whether the school has a generator; and the number of enrolled students. 27There is one threesome due to logistical constraints in the assignment of schools across counties, which resulted in one extra treatment school. 28We analyzed results for this “final” treatment and control school list, and they are almost identical to the results for the “original” list—perhaps unsurprisingly, given that they only differ by four pairs of schools. Results for this final list of treatment and control schools are available upon request.

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