Financial incentives increase students' motivation to learn, according to a University of Pennsylvania (USA) research conducted with 40,000 students from 88 Mexican high schools. The goal was primarily to determine what can be changed to improve the Education. Jere Behrman, professor at the American campus , presented the work at the IV Development Weekorganized by the Navarra Center for International Development of the University of Navarra at IESE Business School in Madrid.           

To do this, the students were divided into four groups. Those in the first group were offered economic incentives in exchange for obtaining good results in mathematics or improving their performance in mathematics subject. In the second group, the incentives were given to teachers if they managed to increase their students' performance. In the third, incentives were given to the entire educational community -teachers, students and school management- both for their individual work and for the performance of the rest. For the fourth group there were no economic incentives.

Motivate the entire educational community

While the first of the three groups increased their mathematics scores in the report PISA to the level they would have had if they remained in school for three more years, in the second group the results were barely perceptible. The third group, on the other hand, experienced an improvement in their mathematics performance equivalent to twice the improvement of the first group.

From agreement with Professor Behrman, motivating the entire educational community was the most effective measure because "students need to be motivated in order for the teacher to reach them". Rewards were associated with the level of individual and collective improvement, and grew with the Degree of increased school performance. It was better rewarded to move from a low level to a high or very high level than from an average level.

From agreement with Professor Behrman, the reason why if peers did well the student received more money has to do with two potential synergies: "In one case, just because of the effect that creating a learning environment can have on class that encourages work from everyone. And a second synergy also arises when students help each other." 

Valuing teachers socially

Regarding the incentives that can contribute to improving Education, the U.S. expert stated that, as his study has shown, "the best way to make something positive happen is to give a reward for doing well". He considered that it is not just a matter of acquiring more material means such as blackboards, books or computers, or of improving teachers' training : "The empirical evidence sample that none of these policies have much effect; their benefits are almost non-existent".

However, sample is cautious about extrapolating the findings to other countries, as an equivalent effect might not be obtained, and argues that "the most sensible thing to do" is to test and evaluate the results.

In any case, he said that, while there may be differences between nations, there is something shared by those with the best results in mathematics with very different educational systems, such as South Korea or Finland: "Both Education and teachers are highly valued socially".

Jere Behrman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), has worked at the World Bank, the Inter-American Bank development and the United Nations Development Program development. He made these statements on the framework of the fourth edition of Development Week, a congress on Economics of development organized annually by NCID.

This group of research belonging to Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra seeks scientific solutions -viable and sustainable- to situations of extreme poverty in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To achieve this, it focuses on three lines: the quality of public and private institutions in each nation, technology transfer and migration.