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Teacher quality and student performance in Nigerian primary schools: An empirical analysis of service delivery indicators
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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en
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59
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This study examines the relationship between teacher quality and student performance in Nigerian primary schools, with a focus on fourth-grade students. Using data from the 2013 Service Delivery Indicators survey, I employed a within-student across-subject variation to analyse math and English scores of students and teachers. To provide more reliable findings, I restricted the sample to schools having only one fourth-grade class, as this approach minimizes the bias emerging from non-random sorting.
The initial findings of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression revealed a statistically significant positive effect of teacher content knowledge on student achievement, with a 1 SD increase in teacher knowledge being associated with an increase of 0.143 SD in student test results. However, as this relationship cannot be interpreted as causal due to unobserved factors, I used a first-differenced model to account for student-fixed effects. The findings of this method revealed a statistically insignificant relationship, with a coefficient size of 0.014 SD. Being in line with existing literature from developing countries, my results highlight that teacher quality alone does not play a determinant role in student learning outcomes, especially in low-income settings.
Further analysis revealed heterogeneity in the effects, where teacher content knowledge having a stronger effect on students whose mother tongue was English and those with higher non-verbal reasoning scores. Additionally, urban schools showed stronger relationship compared to rural schools, perhaps due to better learning environment and more exposure to the language of instruction (English) outside of the classroom. These findings suggest that certain student and school characteristics impact on student performance more than teacher content knowledge, which is generally poor, with only 2.7% of Nigerian public school teachers having the minimum knowledge about the subject they teach. This makes the learning environment less efficient and highlights the need for carefully targeted policy interventions to improve student results in primary schools.