Over the 30 months in which attendance was tracked, teachers at program schools had an absence rate of 21 percent, compared to 44 percent baseline and the 42 percent in the comparison schools. Absence rates stayed low after the end of the proper evaluation phase (the first fourteen months of the program), suggesting that teachers did not change their behavior simply for the evaluation.

Also, there was a measureable improvement in the education imparted to students:

A year into the program, test scores in the treatment schools were 0.17 standard deviations higher than in the comparison schools. Two and a half years into the program, children from the treatment schools were also 10 percentage points (or 62 percent) more likely to transfer to formal primary schools, which requires passing a competency test.

See the full paper for details. I don’t have information about the costs of this program. But I am guessing that it isn’t much more than the cost of one camera per school.

The program was run by Seva Mandir so if you are really interested, I’d think that contacting them for details would be a good idea.

Om Prakash Arya