Randomized evaluation of markets for impact in the Ghana and Sierra Leone basic education sectors

The governments of Ghana and Sierra Leone have each designed an outcomes fund mechanism to improve student access, retention, and learning. Part of the rationale is to create a ‘market for impact’. The hope is that service providers with good insights into how to drive learning for all children will bid to win contracts and implement their ideas in schools (and with communities). By incentivizing outcomes—rather than inputs, as is typical in many programs in the social sector—implementation is not fixed. Providers can innovate over time in search of improved implementation and better outcomes. The design is a geographic-lot-based, school-level cluster RCT. The unit of randomization is the school. There is one treatment group in each country: ‘included in the project’. Using WWHGFE funding, the study will evaluate impacts on schooling inputs and student academic learning. J-PAL funding will enable the examination of students' holistic skills.