Koranic Schools in Senegal : A real barrier to formal education?

This paper studies the substitution between formal education and informal religious education for Senegalese households. We use the timing of the opening of formal schools to estimate whether Koranic and formal education systems compete for the children’s time. Adapting the diff-in-diff strategy in Duflo (2001), we assess the effect of school openings on Koranic and formal schooling. Our estimates show that formal school openings increase formal education attainment, especially in rural areas. Incidentally, this result highlights the lack of primary schools in rural areas : an additional primary school increases the probability to start primary school by 13 percentage points around this school. We then estimate that an additional formal school decreases the time spent in Koranic schools. This proves that, while both school systems are independent in terms of organization and pedagogical content, they still compete for the children’s time. This might increase the opportunity cost of formal primary school, and can narrow the political consensus around universal primary education.