Evaluation of public policies to support education: the case of Morocco

This thesis is aimed at assessing the impact of public policies to support education in Morocco. Morocco is an interesting case-study as their educational investments are high but inequalities between urban and rural areas persist; repetition rate remains high and transition to secondary education – low. In this study we assess how two programs (program of school supplies provision “One million schoolbags” and subsidized food provision “Canteens program”) affect these outcomes among main target groups of the programs – rural area student of primary and lower secondary levels of education. To assess impact of programs, this study makes use of quasi-experimental research design and Propensity score matching (PSM) to ensure that the found treatment effect is causality and not simply correlation. Certainty in causality of observed effect is maximized only if a counterfactual outcome is approximated good enough by the selected control group which is the main goal of PSM. Further, treatment effects are found by using logit models and calculating average marginal effects to observe effect distribution between gender and education cycle. We have rejected the null hypothesis of no impact for effect of One million schoolbags program and both programs on repetition and have concluded that participation has considerably increased probability to repeat the grade for program beneficiaries. Ability to benefit from free school supplies and subsidized meals next year even in case of repetition gives beneficiaries reassurance which might decrease fear of repetition and desire to exert maximum efforts for academic success. Effect of programs on transition to college was positive (it increased the probability to transit), but estimations were statistically non-significant most likely due to small sample size.