A wide angle view of learning: evaluation of the CCE and LEP programmes in Haryana, India

National educational surveys in India have consistently shown that the vast majority of students fail to attain grade-level competencies at the end of five years of primary schooling.

This evaluation by Esther Duflo, James Berry, Shobhini Mukerji and Marc Shotland compares the impact of the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) scheme and the Learning Enhancement Programme (LEP), as well as a combination of the two approaches, on student achievement in the state of Haryana in India.While the CCE aims to provide teachers and students with broad-based and frequent feedback on performance, the LEP offers tools and allocates time within the school day to enable teachers to focus their teaching at each child’s competency level.

The impact evaluation finds that students in CCE schools did not perform significantly better than their peers in control schools. In contrast, the LEP had a large, positive and statistically significant effect on students’ basic reading abilities. Combining CCE and LEP had no significant effect on student test scores relative to the LEP alone.