Academic achievements in Sub-Saharan Africa: contexts, peers and inequalities

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence on students’ achievements determinants in Sub-Saharan Africa based on a sample of 26602 students from the ten countries that participated in the PASEC 2014 assessment. By using a two-level hierarchical linear model, I find that learning inequalities are primarily explained by differences in schools’ characteristics. Furthermore, the estimation findings corroborate this result by showing the relevance of resources at the school level and how it affects students’ performances depending on school type and location. Additionally, my results showed gender disparities and peer effects related to socioeconomic status, which disproportionately influence children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Education quality
• learning achievements
• inequalities
• hierarchical linear model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this article, by using the terms cognitive skills, I will precisely refer to pupils’ academic achievements. In the existing literature, those skills are related to mathematics, science and reading competencies, readily observed and measured by international tests such as TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA or PASEC. In our case, I only refer to those assessed by the Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN (PASEC) in mathematics and language-reading.

2 The Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN, known as the PASEC, has been created in 1991 and has run national and international evaluations under countries’ requests in sub-Saharan Africa. It mainly focuses its methodology on factors that may affect pupils’ learning levels to determine education systems’ efficiency and equity. In 2014, it launched its first international survey in ten sub-Saharan African countries. The PASEC 2014 data represents the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey on educational quality in the SSA region available at this date. The recent PASEC survey conducted in 2019 is not accessible, despite a report’s publication in December 2020.

3 According to the PASEC, the ‘sufficient threshold' corresponds to the knowledge and abilities deemed indispensable to pursue their schooling in good conditions. There are defined based on the concepts assessed in the PASEC tests and the priority goals of school curricula in mathematics. Four competencies’ scales have been developed according to students’ knowledge and abilities to answer the questions. On average, students at each scale can answer at least half of the questions provided for that scale. Students with scores at the upper end of the range for a particular scale or level can properly answer to 70% of the questions presented for that level. Pupils with scores at the bottom of the range for a particular level can properly answer at least half of the questions presented for that level. As a result, students at a particular scale can properly answer most of the questions prepared for that level and lower levels but struggle to complete the tasks planned for higher levels. For example, Level 2 students can properly answer most of the questions provided for Levels 1 and 2, but the probability of successfully answering Level 3 and 4 questions is substantially lower.

4 The Universal Primary Education (UPE) has been launched in 2000 as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). It aimed to ensure that by 2015 that children, boys and girls, around the world will complete a full course of primary schooling.