This study uses school-level data from Young Lives in Peru to investigate the effect of Quechua-medium instruction on academic achievement. We find that Indigenous children who attend Quechua-medium schools achieve 0.429 standard deviations higher scores in mathematics compared to Indigenous children who attend Spanish-medium schools. There is no evidence that these effects are caused by quantitative or language achievement acquired prior to entering school. Our findings suggest that Quechua-medium education for children of Quechua speaking parents may play a role in ameliorating the Indigenous test score gap.

Highlights

Indigenous children in Quechua schools score 0.429σ higher in mathematics than Indigenous children in Spanish schools. There is no evidence that these effects are caused by quantitative or language achievement acquired prior to entering school. There is no evidence that students in Quechua schools have lower performance on Spanish tests than those in Spanish schools.

Keywords: Bilingual education; Peru; Education production function

Article written using Young Lives data by authors from Yale University and Macalaster College, MN. Available to download from the journal website.

Reference

Disa Hynsjö and Amy Damon (2016) ‘Bilingual education in Peru: Evidence on how Quechua-medium education affects indigenous children's academic achievement’, Economics of Education Review 53: 116–132