Quantifying the benefits of digitalizing and centralizing teacher applications and assignment

Teachers are the most important and expensive input when it comes to improving the quality of education. In many Latin American countries, the decentralized way in which teachers are assigned is extremely costly and inefficient and lacks objectivity. This document advocates the implementation of digital centralized teacher assignment systems as more efficient, equitable, objective, and cost-effective. Using administrative data from Ecuador, this study estimates that the implementation of digital centralization could have an annual impact of over USD 17 million. This figure takes into account the direct implementation costs, the savings generated by the transition, and the learning gains achieved by improving the assignment of better-quality teachers and reducing the number of empty vacancies. These results confirm that this policy is not only efficient, but also cost-efficient.