Learning in the Rain: Rainy Days and Academic Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Academic calendars are usually set uniformly nationwide and can often be at odds with local constraints. With such a setting, spatial variation of heavy rainfall will, if not mediated for, affect the quantity and quality of instruction time that each region offers by inducing spatial variation in school closures and absenteeism. One would therefore expect that, under nationwide uniform academic calendar, academic achievement in rainy regions will be lower. In a context where climate change is expected to induce spatial variation of rainfall patterns, this paper combines detailed information on daily rainfall and learning achievements at primary in Sub-Saharan Africa and studies the association between rainfall and academic performances. To identify the effect of variation of instruction times, the identification strategy is rooted in the fact that academic calendars in primary schools of the countries surveyed are the same nationwide and that standardized tests were administered to students on the same day at the beginning and the end of the academic year. Therefore, spatial variation of rainfall creates an exogenous variation of instruction time that is not compensated for before end-of-year exams. Correlating variation of rainfall during academic year to standardized measures of academic performance at the end of school year, and controlling for academic performances at the beginning of the year, our results confirm that academic performance worsens in regions that received more rainy days during the academic term. Further analysis provide evidence that this effect goes through the quantity and quality of instruction time and rules out several alternative stories.