What Explains the Rural-Urban Learning Achievements Inequalities in Francophone Sub-Saharan African Primary Education

Conference: The Asian Conference on Education (ACE2021)
Title: What Explains the Rural-Urban Learning Achievements Inequalities in Francophone Sub-Saharan African Primary Education
Stream: Educational Policy, Leadership, Management & Administration
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Jean-Baptiste Sanfo, University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan

Abstract:

Access to education has increased in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but countries face a learning crisis exacerbated by rural-urban learning achievements inequalities. Previous research dominantly argues that rural-urban learning inequality is explained by differences in educational tangible factors. However, an emerging literature seems to suggest that intangible factors (e.g., educational leadership, parental involvement, teacher perceptions) also explain the rural-urban learning inequalities and may sometimes account for them more than tangible ones. They thereby call for more investigations on factors accounting for rural-urban learning inequalities.

Using re-centered influence function decomposition with the Program for the Analysis of Education Systems” (PASEC) 2014 data, this study answers the following questions: (1) To what extent is rural-urban learning achievements inequalities accounted for by tangible factors in SSA? (2) What is the proportion of rural-urban learning achievements inequalities explained by intangible factors? Findings suggest that the rural-urban learning achievements inequalities are explained by child background and school factors, but the latter seems to account for more of the inequalities across the distribution. Intangible factors account for 4.50 to 34.50% of the achievements inequalities and seem to be more important for students on the lower tail of the distribution. This study is part of an on-going research project and will be extended using PASEC 2019 data (when available to the public) to investigate factors explaining rural-urban learning achievements inequalities over time.

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