NOVAFRICA News: New Blogpost on How Free Secondary Education Affects Siblings’ Schooling

NOVAFRICA has released a new blogpost, authored by Constança Costa, MSc in Economics student at Nova SBE and member of the NOVAFRICA Student Group, exploring how free secondary education can change the relationship between siblings’ educational outcomes.

The blogpost discusses the study “Sibling Spillovers and Free Schooling” by Wayne Sandholtz and João R. Ferreira, which examines the effects of Tanzania’s removal of secondary school fees on children’s educational opportunities within the same family.

Using Tanzanian school and examination records, the study finds that abolishing secondary school fees improved younger siblings’ educational outcomes, removing previous disadvantages in school progression and increasing examination scores. The findings highlight how reducing education costs can ease household financial constraints and generate positive spillover effects across siblings.

Read the full NOVAFRICA blogpost here.

Read this NOVAFRICA working paper here.

Read the full article published in The Review of Economics and Statistics here.