GS evaluation 1 | Page 15

Each dot in the above graphs represents a unique student. For a few students, the attendance is 100%. That’s because in that case no maximum/required number of attendance days was given and thus the highest scoring student in that particular class has been set as a benchmark at 100%.

We estimated the relationship between attendance and performance (grades) for the current program, separately for boys and girls. For reasons of comparison, using historic data on the students, we also estimated the same relationship for when they were in grade 1-7.

For all grades, on average, a higher attendance score is associated with a higher performance score – and girls seem to be outperforming boys in this respect. In both grades one to seven, and in grades eight to ten, the attendance coefficient for girls is higher than for boys.

For boys in grade one to seven, an increase in attendance by 1% is associated with a 0.40% increase in performance (p<0.001). For girls in grade one to seven, an increase in attendance by 1% is associated with a 0.53% increase in performance (p<0.001).

For boys in grade eight to ten, an increase in attendance by 1% is associated with a 0.39% increase in performance (p<0.001). For girls in grade eight to ten, an increase in attendance by 1% is associated with a 0.50% increase in performance (p<0.001). So if attendance increases for instance, for girls from 25% to 75% of the time, the performance in terms of grades increases by 25% -- a major increase. While – as the figure shows – the variance is quite high, indicating that other important factors contribute to performance as well, the average impact of attendance is nevertheless high.

In sum, the pattern appears to be very consistent, across grades and across boys and girls, that attendance increases performance. However, it appears to be so even more for girls than for boys. It seems that they get more out of class attendance – at least as measured in terms of their grades. This is a very interesting result and suggests further exploration using qualitative research to get to the root cause of it – and perhaps to support /improve it further (or, indeed, to uncover which other factors are important for performance, in view of the high variance). Potential explanations for the relatively strong average effect of attendance are that girls pay more attention in class (and so benefit more from class participation) or that the (female) teachers serve more as a role model for girls than for boys.

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