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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18214
October 2025
In BRAC We Trust? Comparing Schools for Disadvantaged Students in Dhaka’s Slums

BRAC has over 40,000 schools worldwide. It is widely praised for serving disadvantaged students and for matching or outperforming government schools. Using data that we collected from Dhaka’s slums, we test these claims. We find that BRAC serves the most disadvantaged students in our survey, but contrary to popular belief, BRAC students perform significantly worse than comparable students at other school types when we control for family demographics in a matching procedure. Anticipating our need to control for selection, we collected data on family demographics and the child’s fluid intelligence; since the latter affects both types of school and student performance, it unambiguously should be included in the propensity score. Once we control for fluid intelligence, the performance difference with other NGO schools disappears. The gaps between government and JAAGO schools have narrowed, but they still remain large and statistically significant.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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