Overcoming Inequality: Challenges for Equitable Education in Three Developing Countries

Equitable Access and Progress in Secondary Schools in India: A Policy Imperative for Sustainable Development (Renu Singh) While access to primary education in India has reached almost universal levels, access to and... [ view full abstract ]

Equitable Access and Progress in Secondary Schools in India: A Policy Imperative for Sustainable Development (Renu Singh)

While access to primary education in India has reached almost universal levels, access to and completion of secondary schooling are characterised by inequities along dimensions including socio-economic background, urban/rural location and other indicators of marginalisation. To date, attention has focused somewhat on primary schooling and evidence remains sparse at secondary level, while there is increasing attention in policy debates to the need to improve capacity and equity in the secondary school system.
We employ data from the Young Lives study to examine the extent and nature of inequity in access to and progression through secondary schooling in Andhra Pradesh. Longitudinal data on 1,000 young adults aged 19 in 2013 provide detailed information on schooling trajectories. We find that gaps along axes of caste, gender, SES and location characterise trajectories despite the implementation of policies such as the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA, 20009) intended to universalise secondary education during the period of the study. Moreover, inequities are particularly acute in the later grades, which are especially crucial with respect to the determination of labour-market outcomes, contributing to the persistence of income and livelihood inequalities. Policies to address these inequalities are essential for equitable and sustainable development in a context where the skills gained from completed secondary-level education are gaining increasing importance following rapid economic development. We explore the policy implications of our findings for education system reform in Andhra Pradesh.

Reproducing Inequality: Family Background and Schooling in Peru (Santiago Cueto & Alejandra Miranda) Peru has made significant strides towards the universalisation of access to primary schooling, while evidence suggests that... [ view full abstract ]

Reproducing Inequality: Family Background and Schooling in Peru (Santiago Cueto & Alejandra Miranda)

Peru has made significant strides towards the universalisation of access to primary schooling, while evidence suggests that universal access may be insufficient to address the country’s notable inequalities in terms of schooling outcomes and their wider benefits. Inequalities are determined early-on, owing to wide disparities of access to quality pre-schooling, especially along the lines of household income and urban/rural location. Moreover, while free primary schooling is available, variation in school quality in terms of school infrastructure and resources, ‘opportunities to learn’ and pupil learning gains are significant. Accordingly, the benefits of universal basic education are not extended equally to pupils across the range of social and economic backgrounds.

This paper makes use of data on 2,000 pupils aged 13 in 2013 from the Young Lives longitudinal study in Peru. We examine the extent to which family backgrounds of children at age one are associated first with preschool attendance and its duration and second with the quality of primary schooling accessed by the same pupils 12 years later. Further, we explore the impact of both family background and school quality on the evolution of educational skills during this period. We consider the extent to which primary schooling disrupts or reproduces initial patterns of inequality along the lines of poverty, location of residence and ethnicity and examine the indicators of school and teacher quality matter most for children’s learning progress. Implications for recent programmes and priorities are considered.

Delivering Equitable Outcomes: Educational Effectiveness in Ethiopia (Zoe James) In low resource settings especially, effective allocation of resources is essential to ensure that policies to expand educational access and... [ view full abstract ]

Delivering Equitable Outcomes: Educational Effectiveness in Ethiopia (Zoe James)

In low resource settings especially, effective allocation of resources is essential to ensure that policies to expand educational access and to improve quality translate into improved and equitable outcomes for children. Ethiopia has made considerable progress in recent years in expanding access, while existing evidence suggests that learning levels are low and progression through schooling is uneven. Moreover, scarcity of data in the Ethiopian context has limited the availability of comprehensive analysis of the schooling system, as in many other low-income settings. In this paper we employ data from a large-scale school survey conducted by Young Lives in 2013-14 alongside data from the Young Lives household panel survey on 2,000 children born in 2001. We focus on key areas of service delivery effectiveness in basic education, examining the evidence on patterns of enrolment, attendance, drop-out, repetition, grade progression and learning outcomes and the implications for equitable access to education and its benefits. We find considerable heterogeneity in effectiveness between locations and schools, including in terms of the delivery of learning outcomes, linked to levels of development and advantage across the regions and sites. We examine the characteristics of schools, classes and teachers which are associated with more effective service delivery, drawing attention to the implications for current policy and for policy reform.

Overcoming Inequality: Challenges for Equitable Education in Three Developing Countries Inequalities among children in terms of home backgrounds are compounded by inequitable schooling systems to the extent that access to... [ view full abstract ]

Overcoming Inequality: Challenges for Equitable Education in Three Developing Countries

Inequalities among children in terms of home backgrounds are compounded by inequitable schooling systems to the extent that access to quality education is associated with children’s home advantage or disadvantage. The expansion of access to free primary schooling in developing countries has served to reduce inequalities in terms of initial access, while this has not necessarily led to a reduction in inequalities with regard to the benefits of education, including in terms of learning outcomes. This symposium examines the issues and the policies intended to address them in the contexts of Peru, India (Andhra Pradesh) and Ethiopia, making use of data from the Young Lives longitudinal study of childhood poverty in these three countries.

The Young Lives study has traced the lives of 12,000 children in two age cohorts at their households since 2002 and since 2010 has included school-surveys at the schools attended by the index children, providing a comprehensive data on both supply and demand sides of the four countries’ educational systems. Simultaneous efforts to universalise access and to improve quality have been made in different configurations in the three countries, resulting in a range of trade-offs between access, quality and equity. We explore these tensions in the light of educational inequalities within these systems, drawing attention to the axes of advantage and disadvantage in each which determine children’s educational trajectories and outcomes and to their implications for whose learning development needs to be prioritised post-2015.