The effects of school quality on dropout rates in Mali and student achievement in Senegal

International community's commitment to achieve universal primary education triggered an increase in primary school enrollment in the developing world. Unfortunately, this increase in quantity (the number of students) led to the emergence of very big class sizes, multigrade, and double-shift schooling. Accordingly, this study fills a hole in the literature by investigating the impact of multigrade classrooms and doubleshifts on the dropout rate in Mali. Simultaneously, it also examines the impact of not completing the curriculum required on student test scores. Some surprising and interesting results show that schools that have libraries are less expected to have dropouts compared to schools that do not. I also found strong evidence that schools that do not collect fees on a consistent basis are likely to have higher dropout rates compared to schools that do.