Universal Primary Education Program and Educational Outcomes in Rwanda

Abstract: To evaluate the impact of the” Universal Primary Education” (UPE) policy on primary schooling outcomes in Rwanda, which was adopted in 2003 and consists of free school fees to enroll in primary education, I merge two cross-sectional surveys, being EICV 2000/01 and EICV 2005/06 collected before and after the onset of the UPE respectively. The identification strategy uses linear probability model for completion and attendance in primary education with age and region fixed effect and also with a combination of the use of interaction terms regression. Also given that advanced age at school entry which has been historically associated with early primary school dropout, I check whether the enactment of the UPE leads to delayed enrollment in primary school in Rwanda. I find that UPE has increased overall attendance and especially for the poor children. In contrast, the completion in primary school decreases in the post-UPE but I find no evidence of the UPE effect on poor children to complete primary education. I also find that UPE program has increased late enrolment in primary education and which might be the reason behind the negative effect of the UPE on completion in primary school. In conclusion, I argue that UPE is prone to be a good policy but needs some complementary policies such as free lunch program, subsidizing uniforms to retain children in primary school until they finish. The results are robust to the use of binary logistic regression estimates.