The impact of grants in combination with school-based management trainings on primary education: a cluster-randomized trial in Northern Nigeria

ABSTRACT Grant disbursals and school-based management interventions have received growing attention from policy-makers despite their mixed success at improving educational outcomes. This paper reports results from a large-scale, cluster randomised controlled trial in Sokoto state, Nigeria. School-based management committees received a training and a grant to improve access to and quality of primary school education, especially for girls. One year after implementation, the intervention had no impact on schools’ infrastructure, educational attainment or learning outcomes . Therefore, understanding the context-specific constraints to primary school education is important to avoid spending 100 million USD on a programmewith no discernible impact.