Beyond the Paycheck – Motivational tools for public school teachers

Policy Context

A motivated and high-performing bureaucracy is central to improving public service delivery, economic growth, and development. This is especially a challenge in the education sector where low effort of public school teachers remains a critical concern across several low- and middle-income countries (Bold et al., 2017). This includes Punjab Pakistan, where progress in learning outcomes has remained a challenge.

The state of Punjab employs approximately 300,000 teachers responsible for educating nearly 11 million children. But despite a multifold increase in the education budget since 2010 and several educational reforms (such as a merit-based recruitment strategy and intensive monthly and annual school monitoring systems), progress in learning outcomes have remained slow. As a result, government debates have renewed their focus on understanding and targeting the determinants of teacher motivation as a possibly cost-effective way to improve student learning. Teacher quality and effort is widely seen as one of the main explanations for low student learning outcomes in the province. As a result, the government conducted a Teacher Motivation survey in March 2017 across 8,400 teachers in 3,100 randomly selected schools in Punjab. Descriptive statistics from the survey highlighted that more than 70% of the teachers value non-financial drivers such as employer recognition, community recognition, and professional development opportunities. This called for a deeper exploration into the role of non-financial incentives for improving teacher effort.

Study Design

In this pilot study, researchers explored the following two questions:

1. Can non-financial incentives, such as employer recognition, improve teacher effort?  If yes, what are the main channels through which such incentives operate?

2. Are these non-financial incentives more or less impactful for teachers who are already intrinsically motivated, or have certain other personality traits?

To study these questions, the researchers designed a randomized controlled trial in collaboration with the teacher training academy in Punjab. The researchers randomly assigned 650 school teachers attending a routine training at the academy to be recognized in 3 different ways for their performance during the training. The treatments were designed to influence different channels of employer recognition – private self-esteem, peer-esteem, and potential career benefits. In the Private arm, teachers were recognized privately; in the Peer arm, teachers were recognized in front of peers and colleagues; and in the Career arm, teachers were recognized privately but the career benefits of recognition were made salient. The researchers find that the average impact of each approach is zero, but the impact was positive for teachers who were intrinsically motivated.

Results and Policy Lessons

Using learnings from this pilot, the researchers improved and amended the design of the intervention to a second phase, which was implemented once again in collaboration with the Punjab teacher training academy across 7 districts of Punjab with 3,394 teachers. The results of the second phase of the study are available here.