Choose an allocation rule
Compare simple school and family characteristics: which rules better identify students with insufficient skills?
Pilot: 92 → 116 with the same 200 places
Research 02 / Ukraine · economics of education
More tutoring.
Or better
targeting?
How should Ukraine allocate learning support during wartime when there are not enough tutoring places for everyone?
We study whom to offer a place — and whether better targeting is worth spending part of the teaching budget.
Public data obtained. Initial analysis completed.
SAME 200 PLACES. DIFFERENT REACH.Pilot
200 places.
Who gets support?
An illustrative group of 1,000 students
92
Random allocation
116
Priority for rural schools
Below basic mathematics proficiency Other recipients of offers
+24
offers to students with insufficient basic skills, with the same number of places available
01Why do this research?
Three decisions.
Practical value.
The results can help Ukraine’s education ministry, municipalities and tutoring providers justify how they allocate support.
Account for missing information
Check how incomplete family information changes access to priority, and provide a way to clarify it.
25.43% → 27.29% coverage of need under different treatment of missing data
Set a price limit for screening
Calculate when better information justifies its cost and when the budget is better preserved for tutoring places.
Screening ↔ places a measurable budget trade-off
Preliminary findings and conditional policy choices. The pilot does not measure tutoring’s effect on learning. Results and limits of interpretation ↗
02Explore the initial results
Change the rule.
Compare the reach.
Choose the number of places. All four rules operate at the same capacity.
CAPACITY SCENARIO
How many places can we offer?
Of 200 recipients of offers, how many are below basic mathematics proficiency?
0200 offers
The full gray bar represents 200 offers. The colored portion shows expected recipients below basic proficiency. The black marker is the preliminary 95% confidence interval.
A simple rule is a meaningful benchmark.
At 200 places, the pilot does not establish a statistically significant difference between rural priority and the more complex family-resource index. This does not prove equivalence.
Illustrative group: 1,000 students. Calculations use weighted Ukrainian PISA data; capacities of 100 and 300 are exploratory checks. Chart data ↗
03Is this project worth pursuing?
Yes — as a study of
how to allocate support.
The economic output is a comparison of allocation rules and the maximum justified price of information. Every required data field has been obtained.
7,105students in the verified PISA sample
Open dataofficial OECD data and reproducible code
No interviewsno school contacts needed for the core analysis
Contribution: bring targeting, information costs and missing information into one Ukrainian budget-allocation problem.
Scope: a complete proposal with a pilot. It does not estimate the causal effect of war or learning gains from tutoring. Application to a specific program needs a separate assessment.