Why Building Schools Isn’t Always the Best Way to Improve Education

Helping children learn is one of the most widely shared moral priorities in the world. For many people, that instinct translates into a simple plan: build more schools. Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that focusing charitable and philanthropic resources on school construction alone is often not the most effective way to improve education or reduce poverty.

This article examines why building schools is emotionally appealing but frequently overrated as an intervention, and explores alternative strategies that research indicates can generate far greater educational and economic benefits per dollar spent.

Why Education Matters So Much

Before questioning any education project, it is worth emphasizing that education itself is extraordinarily valuable.

• Higher earnings and productivity: The World Bank estimates that each additional year of schooling increases individual earnings by about 9% on average worldwide, with even larger gains in low-income countries.
• Better health and lower poverty: More schooling is associated with better health outcomes, lower child mortality, and a reduced risk of being in poverty as an adult.
• Macro-economic growth: Countries with more educated populations tend to have faster economic growth and more resilience to shocks, especially in a knowledge-driven global economy.
• Social and civic benefits: Education supports political participation, social cohesion, and gender equity, particularly when girls’ access to schooling improves.

In other words, finding ways to cost-effectively improve learning is not a minor concern: it is one of the most powerful levers for long-run human welfare. The key question is not whether education matters, but which specific interventions within education do the most good.

The School-Building Intuition—and Its Limits

Building schools seems like a straightforward, tangible solution. Photographs of new classrooms, bricks, and smiling children resonate deeply. However, modern data on global education and learning suggest that lack of buildings is often not the primary constraint anymore.

Enrollment Has Surged, Yet Learning Gaps Remain

Over the past several decades, school participation has increased dramatically worldwide. Primary school enrollment now covers the vast majority of children, and large numbers continue into lower secondary education. Yet:

• In 2023, an estimated 244 million children and young people were still out of school globally across primary and secondary levels.
• Many children who do enroll complete several years of schooling without mastering basic reading or numeracy; these learning deficits are widespread in low- and middle-income countries.
• The COVID-19 pandemic deepened these problems, with international reading scores declining by more than a year of schooling between 2016 and 2021, and projected losses in lifetime earnings of up to US$21 trillion for this generation of students.

These findings indicate that access is only part of the problem. The world has moved from a crisis of enrollment toward a crisis of learning quality.

When Buildings Are Not the Binding Constraint

In many contexts today, unused or under-filled classrooms exist alongside serious shortages in trained teachers, learning materials, or effective pedagogy. International assessments show that even where school infrastructure is adequate, a large share of students lack basic competencies.

Consequently, investing large sums in additional physical schools can deliver relatively small marginal gains compared to interventions focused directly on teaching, learning, or targeted support for disadvantaged students.

How to Think About Impact in Education

To compare school-building against other options, it is helpful to make impact more concrete. A practical framework looks at interventions through three lenses:

• Reach: How many learners does the intervention affect?
• Effect size: How much does it improve learning outcomes or long-term life outcomes per learner?
• Cost: How much does it cost to achieve those gains?

An intervention is high impact when it improves learning substantially, for many students, at relatively low cost. Using this logic, a number of alternative strategies often outperform school-building projects.

Evidence on What Works Better Than Bricks

Research in education economics and development over the last two decades has identified several classes of interventions that tend to deliver larger learning gains per dollar than simply building additional schools, especially in low-income settings where basic infrastructure already exists in many communities.

1. Strengthening Teaching and Instruction

A consistent finding across both high- and low-income countries is that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement. Effective strategies include:

• Ongoing instructional coaching: Regular, targeted feedback for teachers tied to classroom practice can significantly raise learning outcomes when well designed.
• Aligning instruction with student skill levels: Approaches that group or support children based on their current learning level (rather than age alone) have produced substantial improvements in basic literacy and numeracy in multiple countries.
• Providing essential learning materials: Textbooks, structured lesson guides, and simple assessments can help teachers teach more effectively, especially in large classes.

These interventions typically utilize existing school buildings but focus on what happens inside the classroom rather than adding more classrooms.

2. Targeted Support for Disadvantaged Students

Even in systems with widespread school access, children from low-income families, rural areas, or marginalized groups face higher risks of dropping out or learning little while enrolled. Research on school finance and targeted programs shows that directing more resources to these students can generate large benefits.

• Equitable funding formulas: When public funds are distributed so that schools serving disadvantaged students receive more per pupil, graduation rates and adult earnings improve noticeably, especially for low-income children.
• Cash transfers and fee reductions: Financial support tied to school attendance or performance can keep vulnerable children in school and reduce pressure to work or marry early.
• Remedial and catch-up programs: Structured remediation, especially in the early grades, can prevent permanent learning deficits among students who start behind.

These approaches intervene at the points where children are most likely to be excluded or left behind, rather than assuming that a new building automatically leads to learning.

3. Using Data and Assessments to Drive Improvement

Countries that systematically measure learning and use those data to inform policy are better able to identify what is working and where support is needed. International and national assessments, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and national exams, reveal wide performance disparities and highlight the importance of system-level reforms.

• Transparent reporting: Publicly available data, as compiled by agencies like the National Center for Education Statistics in the United States, allow policymakers and the public to see where schools and regions are struggling.
• Evidence-driven reforms: Countries use assessment results to redesign curricula, teacher preparation, and accountability systems, aiming to improve teaching and learning rather than just inputs.

Philanthropic projects that help governments and NGOs build capacity for data collection, analysis, and evidence-based decision-making may yield more enduring improvements than one-time infrastructure grants.

When Building Schools Still Makes Sense

The argument is not that school construction is never valuable. There remain settings where building or rehabilitating schools is both morally urgent and empirically justified—particularly where children must travel unsafe distances, where overcrowding is extreme, or where conflict and disasters have destroyed existing facilities.

In such cases, school-building can be part of a high-impact package if:

• There is clear evidence that a lack of physical access is the primary barrier to enrollment.
• Complementary investments in teachers, materials, and management are planned, not just walls and roofs.
• Costs per student served compare favorably with alternative interventions in the same context.

The central message is nuance: building schools may be appropriate in some contexts, but it should not be treated as the default or highest-impact use of education funding everywhere.

Applying an Effective Altruism Lens to Education

Effective altruism—a framework for choosing actions that help others as much as possible using evidence and reason—offers a structured way to prioritize among education projects. From this perspective, donors and policymakers are encouraged to ask:

• How big is the problem? For example, how many children lack basic literacy, and where are the largest learning deficits?
• How neglected is the issue? Are major donors already financing certain kinds of programs, while others remain under-resourced?
• How tractable is the intervention? Is there strong evidence that this type of program can be effectively implemented in the target context?

When education interventions are compared systematically using these criteria, projects that focus on foundational skills, teacher quality, and targeted support for disadvantaged students frequently rise to the top, while generic school-building efforts without a clear theory of change often perform less well.

Practical Guidance for Donors and Advocates

For individuals, foundations, or organizations eager to improve global education, rethinking the default of funding school construction opens up a range of more impactful options.

Questions to Ask Before Supporting a School-Building Project

• Is lack of a nearby school the main reason children are out of school, or are there other barriers (costs, safety, gender norms, conflict)?
• How many additional students are expected to enroll because of the new building, and how will this be measured?
• What plans exist for staffing, teacher training, and providing learning materials over the long term?
• What is the expected cost per additional child achieving basic literacy or completing primary school, and how does this compare with other interventions?

Alternative Ways to Support High-Impact Education

Instead of—or in addition to—funding construction, donors can consider:

• Backing organizations that deliver proven remedial education or tutoring at scale.
• Supporting policy and advocacy work that leads governments to adopt more equitable funding formulas or evidence-based reforms.
• Funding the development and evaluation of new instructional approaches, especially in contexts that have been under-studied.
• Contributing to initiatives that strengthen education data systems and transparent monitoring of learning outcomes.

These options may be less visually striking than a photograph of a newly built school, but they can translate into vastly more learning and life opportunities for children.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: Does this mean building schools is always a bad idea?

No. School-building can be valuable where children have no reasonable physical access to education or where facilities are dangerously inadequate. The argument is that building should not be the automatic choice, and that in many places other interventions produce more impact per dollar.

Q2: How can a donor tell which education charities are effective?

Look for organizations that measure learning outcomes, publish independent evaluations, and can explain how their work fits into existing public systems. Strong charities usually have transparent data on costs, scale, and demonstrated effects on skills, not just enrollment or infrastructure.

Q3: Isn’t any help better than none, even if it is just a building?

Given limited resources, the real choice is rarely between helping or not helping, but between different ways of helping. Choosing more cost-effective interventions can mean enabling education for many more children with the same budget.

Q4: What role should governments play versus private donors?

Governments are primarily responsible for funding and running education systems, especially recurrent costs like teacher salaries. Private donors can achieve outsized impact by piloting innovative models, filling gaps for the most marginalized, and supporting reforms that governments later adopt at scale.

Q5: How did the COVID-19 pandemic change the calculus?

The pandemic highlighted that merely enrolling children in school is not enough: long closures led to large learning losses and widened inequalities. This has increased the urgency of interventions that rapidly rebuild foundational skills and support the most disadvantaged learners, rather than focusing mainly on infrastructure.

Written by

Sneha Tete

• Integrated M.A. in Applied Linguistics, University of Hyderabad
• 5+ years in editorial, instructional, SEO, and research-based writing

Sneha is a relationships and lifestyle writer with a strong foundation in applied linguistics and certified training in relationship coaching. She brings over five years of writing experience to theskillvault,  crafting thoughtful, research-driven content that empowers readers to build healthier relationships, boost emotional well-being, and embrace holistic living. Her writing and insights reflect the belief that beauty, happiness, and wellness…