Improving the Quality of Rural Primary Schools: An Evaluation of a Computer Aided Learning Program in South India

Governments of developing economies are increasingly adopting computer-assisted learning (CAL) to supplement traditional learning strategies to raise achievement levels in primary schools. In India, as in many other developing economies, the Government believes that the promotion of CAL can help reduce persistent problems of low achievement, high drop out rates and low attendance which plague the elementary school system, particularly in rural areas. However, there are few studies which do so in the context of the rural areas of developing economies, which are characterized by conditions that are likely to minimize the effectiveness of computer aided learning strategies. Yet most governments still adopt CAL in rural areas. Little is known about whether CAL strategies in rural areas are effective in enhancing student achievement. This paper provides empirical evidence on one such program, a CAL program introduced by a non-governmental organization, the Byrraju Foundation, in cooperation with the state government of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, in India. Our evaluation is based on a two year panel of school-level data merged with child-level data on test scores, with multiple observations on test scores for each child within each year. We find that the CAL program significantly improved average test scores for mathematics, but not for language.