1 The relative effectiveness of regular and ‘para ’ teachers in India by

While the use of contract (para) teachers provides a low-cost way to increase schooling access, relieve multi-grade teaching and reduce class-sizes, it raises the quality concern that these less trained teachers may be less effective in imparting learning. This paper attempts to estimate the causal para teacher effect on student achievement using school fixed effects, value-added, and saturated models of the education production function, using bespoke data from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. We find a weakly significant positive para teacher effect in UP, where accountability is highest, and an insignificant positive effect in Bihar, where accountability is weaker. These effects are robust to controls for observed teacher effort. Using a saturated model we conclude para-teachers are more effective when pupils ’ are of low SES, and that renewable contracts make male teachers more effective