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Cameroon’s education sector receives a great attention from the State as well as development partners. But it remains greatly affected by funding below the projections from the recent Sector Strategy (2013) and perfectible management of available resources. The report of the Sector Review (2014) highlights funding that is far from the commitments made by the public authorities, and a low budget allocated to basic education. This situation leads to an imbalance both in the distribution of educational resources and in the ability to access quality education. This study highlights the impact of performance-based financing (PBF) on certain indicators of the quality of education. Does the PBF improve certain parameters of the quality of education in the primary schools in the Kadei Division, East region of Cameroon? It is presented not only as a government policy, but also and above all as an innovative tool for the management of organizations, which relies on the purchase of performance. The improvement of the indicators of the quality of education in certain schools in the Kadei Division makes it possible to be interested in two groups of schools with identical characteristics (Pilot schools in which PBF has been implemented, and control schools where it has not been done). The data collection was done using the questionnaire, and the highlighting of the results thanks to the Propensity Score Matching which is an impact evaluation technique. For the sake of efficiency in data collection, objective-oriented sampling was associated with quota sampling, drawn from a population made up of 248 schools including 218 public schools, 17 private schools, 13 municipal schools. But also 52 nursery schools including 45 public and 7 private. The results obtained show that the PBF implemented in 2012 in the Kadei Division has a positive and significant impact of 10% on student enrolment, school dropout, program coverage, possession of textbooks, school infrastructure, on girl/boy parity, and finally on the school results of pupils. However, these same indicators in the control schools did not change during this period. This evidence reflects the influence of this management approach in schools, even if some aspects of its operationalization remain perfectible.

Accepted: 2024-12-03T13:37:50Z