Developing countries have made large investments in expanding access to technology with the aim of improving children’s educational outcomes. Notwithstanding these substantial public and private investments, the evidence on their educational impacts has been ambiguous with a mix of positive effects (Muralidharan et al. 2019, Araya et al. 2019), null effects (Beuermann et al. 2015, Piper et al. 2016), and even negative effects (Linden 2008, Malamud and Pop-Eleches 2011).[1]However, with a few notable exceptions (Lakdawala et al. 2023, Yanguas 2020) most of the evidence is based on short-term estimates.
One highly publicised initiative that provided personal laptops to students in developing countries was the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) programme, which was implemented in over 40 countries. A large-scale experimental evaluation of the OLPC programme in Peru found no effects on academic achievement or enrolment in primary school after 15 months of programme implementation (Cristia et al. 2017). Here, we report on an experimental study that builds on this earlier work by examining the long-term effects of the OLPC programme in Peru (Cueto et al. 2024). To do this, we utilised a range of administrative and survey data to follow a new sample of students in 531 schools over 10 years.
Despite the absence of impacts on short-term academic achievement, expanding access to technology in schools could generate impacts on longer-term outcomes along two separate dimensions. On the one hand, there may be long-term effects on schools if teachers and principals need time to learn how to use technology effectively for pedagogical purposes.[2] On the other hand, there could be long-term effects on students as they progress through the educational system. Greater exposure to computers could lead to changes in students’ attitudes, behaviours, and a broad range of skills with larger effects on later educational outcomes. Thus, in this study, we examine the long-term effects of expanding school access to technology on both the academic performance of schools over time and students’ educational trajectories as they progress from primary to tertiary education.
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