Multiple years of schooling required to achieve improvements in learning: The evaluation conducted in early 2011, approximately one year after completion of school construction, found a 4.3 percentage point positive impact on primary school enrollment, but no impact on attendance or on math and French test scores. The present evaluation, conducted in late 2013, found statistically significant impacts on enrollment, attendance, and math test scores. These results suggest that it may take more than one year of schooling in Niger for an improvement in learning to manifest. Because children stay in school longer in IMAGINE villages than in non-IMAGINE villages, they have more of a chance to learn, which would be consistent with the improvements in test scores after three years, when there were none after one year.
Lesson Learned