Equal Access to Education: An Evaluation of the Roma Teaching Assistant Programme in Serbia

This paper investigates the effects of a remedial education programme –the Roma Teaching Assistant Programme – targeting the socially excluded and marginalized Roma ethnic minority in Serbia. By using first-hand collected data, we find evidence that children exposed to the programme went more to school. We do not find an effect on dropouts or marks for all grades. An examination of heterogenous effects suggest that children in the first grade benefitted more from the programme as compared to their older peers through lower dropouts and better grades. Overall, our results suggest that well-targeted remedial education programmes can be successful in boosting outcomes of low performers.