Helping Schools Survive: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Financial and Educational Support to Private Schools
Low-cost private schools have increased educational access in low-income countries, but frequent school closures lead to costly disruptions in children’s schooling. We provide experimental evidence from Pakistan that both school loans and educational products and services (EPS) are (a) commercially viable products and (b) substantially and similarly improve school survival rates. Moreover, loans decrease closure rates more for schools with larger initial enrollments and lower baseline test scores, while EPS show no such differential impact. These results demonstrate how financial and educational input constraints can significantly affect school survival while underscoring that the fungibility of entrepreneurial support matters.
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