The Effects of the One Laptop per Child Program in Peru

Even though expanding access to technology in schools had no short-term effects, it could still generate longer-term effects. The effects on academics may change over time as teachers and principals learn how to use the technology effectively for instruction. For students, greater exposure to computers over time could change their attitudes, behaviors, and skills (both academic and nonacademic) as they progress through the educational system. Accordingly, our research presents experimental evidence on the long-term effects of expanding access to technology on students’ academic performance, grade progression, and educational trajectories.

Our study examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the OLPC program implemented by the Peruvian government in rural primary schools, using administrative and survey data from 2007 to 2019. We focused on 531 schools that were randomized into treatment and control groups. In 2009, treatment schools began participating in the OLPC program by providing students with XO laptops, a low-cost personal laptop designed for the program. By the end of that year, almost all students in treatment schools had an XO laptop. In 2011, the government began distributing some XO laptops to control schools, increasing the average ratio of XO laptops per student in these schools to 0.4 by 2019. Additionally, this ratio in treatment schools began declining in 2014 as some laptops broke or were lost. Still, a sizable difference in access to XO laptops persisted between treatment and control schools throughout this period, and students in control schools never reached one-to-one computer access. Moreover, all our findings hold when analyzing older student cohorts and earlier years of the program, when differences in computer access between treatment and control schools were larger.

First, our research assesses the effect of the OLPC program on students’ academic performance from 2009 to 2016 using data from annual second-grade national exams. Our findings reveal small effects with no clear changes over time. Specifically, we can rule out positive effects greater than 0.05 standard deviations, providing little evidence that the program improved academic performance. We also used data from annual school censuses and found that the program reduced the fraction of primary students who advanced to the next grade by 1 percentage point between 2009 and 2016.

Second, we assessed the effect of the OLPC program on students’ educational trajectories using data from second‑, fourth‑, and eighth-grade national exams, fifth- and sixth-grade tests that we conducted, and administrative data on students’ progression from primary school to higher education. Our research finds no effects on students’ exam or test scores or on their likelihood of completing primary or secondary school or enrolling in a university. There were small reductions in students’ likelihood of completing primary education on time (2.1 percentage points) and applying to a university on time (2.2 percentage points), but these estimates are not precise enough to rule out no effects on these outcomes. The effect on students’ total years of schooling was also insignificant.

Why did the OLPC program not improve academic performance or educational attainment? We addressed this question using survey data collected from 140 schools in 2013. Teachers in the treatment group were expected to receive a 40-hour training session on operating XO laptops and using them for instruction. Indeed, teachers in treatment schools were 35 percentage points more likely to receive training than teachers in control schools. However, the program had no significant effects on teachers’ digital skills related to using XO laptops, desktop computers, or the internet. Furthermore, the program increased classroom computer use by a relatively small amount.

By contrast, our findings show that the program increased students’ use of XO laptops at home by 20 percentage points, yet it had no effect on students’ use of other computers or the internet. In line with this pattern, the program improved students’ digital skills with XO laptops but had small effects on students’ digital skills for desktop computers and no effects on internet-related skills. Furthermore, the program did not improve students’ cognitive skills, as demonstrated by tests of language and vocabulary, processing speed and working memory, and abstract reasoning.

Overall, the OLPC program led to limited academic use of laptops and generated few benefits beyond basic digital literacy, which partly explains the absence of effects on achievement and attainment. As access to technology in schools and homes continues to expand, the central challenge is often not availability but effective use. While prior evidence from developing countries shows that technology can improve academic outcomes, these gains are often driven by structured interventions, such as after-school programs that combine additional instructional time with guided learning. In contrast, much less is known about how to integrate technology into standard classroom instruction in ways that meaningfully enhance learning. Future research should therefore focus on identifying scalable approaches to embedding technology into everyday teaching practices, including the potential role of advances in artificial intelligence to support more personalized and effective instruction.

Note:
This research brief is based on Santiago Cueto et al., “Laptops in the Long Run: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in Rural Peru,” Journal of Public Economics 252, December 2025.