Provide pupils with a personal laptop or tablet? : An examination of one-to-one computing programs effect on pupils’ academic performance in primary school, grade 3

More and more schools worldwide provide their students with an individual digital tool, investments called 1:1 programs. However, there is still limited knowledge about the causal effects of such programs on students’ education outcomes, especially for high-income countries. This paper examines how the implementation of 1:1 programs affects pupils’ average academic performance in primary school (grade 3) in Sweden between 2014/2015-2018/2019. The data is collected from the Swedish National Agency for Education and the Institute for evaluation of labour market and education policy (IFAU) on school level. I use a difference-in-difference design to estimate the effect of 1:1 programs on pupils’ academic performances. The main results in this study indicate that 1:1 initiatives have a small positive effect on student's academic performances in Swedish and mathematics on average, although the effect varies depending on the subtests investigated.