Inclusivity, Gender, and Learning Gains: Are Online Education Platforms the Answer?

While school enrollment has seen gains globally over the last few decades, some 260 million still remain out-of-school. Digital solutions to overcome enrollment and learning gaps have become increasingly popular, but evidence around ed-tech solutions is limited. We experimentally evaluate learning outcomes from an online after-school learning platform. We find a 22% gain in assessment scores of students who availed the platform relative to those who did not have access to the platform. We also study the effects of income and gender. We find that the platform does not distinguish by income: poorer students do no worse than rich students, and that girls are at no disadvantage relative to boys. Our results then carry deep implications for leveraging at-home technology to reduce gender gaps in education in highly unequal and under-resourced contexts where girls’ mobility remains a primary constraint to enrollment.