Information and Advocacy Campaigns in Support of Girls' Education Increase Math Performance and Enrolment

We evaluate a large, randomized UKaid Girls' Education Challenge project in rural Zimbabwe, where the staggered rollout of the project allows us to isolate the impact of intervention components specifically intended to improve individual and community-wide knowledge of and support for girls' education. Such advocacy and information campaigns are often included as components of major development projects, but previous work has been unable to isolate their importance and effectiveness separately from the broader projects. We show that advocacy and information campaigns increased mathematics performance and school enrolment. Expanding the program beyond information provision to provide resources and update curriculum corresponded to improvements in literacy, but did not correspond to any additional improvements in mathematics and enrolment beyond what was observed following the information campaign alone.