Paying Community Teachers: Impact of the Payer and Transfer Mechanism

Context and Issue

Despite nearly universal primary school enrollment in Chad, student performance remains poor, and dropout rates are high due to inadequate teaching quality. Many teachers lack subject knowledge and training, while classrooms are overcrowded. Contract teachers, vital in rural areas, often face delayed payments and lower salaries. The Chadian government is implementing a new payment system, including mobile phone transfers, to address these issues, with an evaluation to gauge its impact on teacher performance and student learning.

Solution

The quality of teachers significantly influences students' success, and there is increasing evidence that enhancing accountability and motivation among teachers can enhance student achievements. A fundamental aspect of this intervention was to ensure teachers are adequately compensated and receive their payments promptly.

Impact

The project intervention is the process of an ongoing intervention that aims to understand the impact of different approaches for paying teachers and whether this can boost teaching quality and student learning. There are no published results for this particular intervention.

The teacher payment intervention in Chad aims to improve teacher accountability, motivation, and ultimately student learning outcomes by ensuring timely and reliable salary payments, particularly for contract teachers in rural areas who often face delays and lower wages. While this initiative has strong potential for scalability and replication in other low-income and fragile contexts, its success hinges on effective implementation, transparent monitoring, and sustained government commitment. Scaling the intervention within Chad requires expanding mobile payment systems, strengthening administrative oversight, and addressing logistical challenges in remote areas to ensure all teachers receive timely compensation. For replication in other countries, context-specific adaptations are needed, particularly regarding financial infrastructure, teacher contract policies, and government capacity to manage large-scale digital payment systems. However, a major barrier remains the lack of formal evaluation and public reporting, as the project has been ongoing since 2016 without documented results on its impact. Without systematic data collection and impact assessment, it is difficult to determine whether timely payments alone significantly improve teaching quality and student performance. For the initiative to be successfully scaled and replicated, transparent evaluation mechanisms, policy alignment, and financial sustainability strategies must be established to ensure long-term improvements in Chad’s education sector and beyond.