Many children lost time in school because of Covid-19, but children from the poorest communities may have lost out the most. This is because the extent to which remote learning or home support can compensate for lost time varies enormously.

The challenges of education associated with the pandemic underline a more generic issue: how do the contributions from both schools and families combine to produce learning outcomes? And, why is there so much inequality in those outcomes?

It is well known that household conditions matter a great deal for education. For example, differences in parental literacy (especially of mothers) and household financial resources tend to make a very large independent contribution to learning outcomes. Indeed, children in very poor households may never even attend school – or they drop out early to work.

There are also large differences in school quality, both across and within countries. This means that children who attend ‘better’ schools – typically, those with better teachers – often learn much more than their peers.

These inequalities in learning outcomes have serious implications for the level of social mobility in a country. Addressing learning inequalities can be one way to increase social mobility and reduce inequality in the future.

Combining household and school contributions to learning

An understudied question is the extent to which there are interactions between two different groups of inputs – those from households and those from schools. For example, if they were simply independent of each other, then we would expect to find no systematic relationship between the quality of schooling and household conditions (within a given country or location).

But in theory, a positive association is quite likely – richer families can choose to move to areas with better schools; or more qualified teachers may prefer to work in richer neighborhoods with better amenities. So, children from more advantaged households may be matched to better schools, public or private, giving them an extra step up and contributing to lower levels of social mobility for more disadvantaged students overall.

In a recent study, published by the United Nations University World Institute of Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and the World Bank Economic Review, we investigated this further. Specifically, we looked at the extent to which children from different kinds of families sort between schools in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda).

Focusing on actual learning outcomes for one million children, as measured by the Uwezo surveys, we developed a new method to distinguish between the contributions of households, schools, and their interactions — described as ‘sorting’. We measured the scale of the contribution of each component to overall inequalities in learning outcomes, noting that unequal outcomes are likely to persist over time and show up in other indicators later in life, such as adult income.

As Figure 1 shows, our main finding is that sorting does indeed add to other educational inequalities. Overall, children from less advantaged households tend to attend poorer-quality schools. This component accounts for around 16% of inequalities in educational opportunities within communities, which is almost as large as the contribution from differences in school quality (19%).

Figure 1: Decomposition of contributions to overall inequality of opportunity

Policy challenges

The main implication of this result is for policy-makers concerned with educational outcomes, but it also has important implications for anyone working to improve social mobility and reduce inequality in society more broadly.

In East Africa, the phenomenon of educational sorting — where children from poorer families systematically attend lower quality schools — represents a double learning disadvantage. It suggests that in addition to raising the quality of education in general, it is also critical to make the quality of schooling more equal – ideally, by equalizing access to high(er) quality education for all children.

How can this be done? While there is no magic bullet, one priority should be to raise the quality of schooling specifically in the most deprived and poorly-served communities. To do so, a body of evidence suggests that a strict focus on learning fundamentals (reading, writing, and mathematics), taught at the specific level of the ability of the child (not just their age or grade) is critical.

In addition, decision-makers should consider channeling extra resources to these schools. Possibilities include provision of incentives for teachers to reside in poorer locations, recruiting additional teaching assistants from the local community, providing intensive remedial (support) programs, and external scholarship programs.

The point is that although we cannot reasonably eliminate all differences in school quality, we can focus on ensuring that children from disadvantaged households receive better support. This is even more vital because inequalities in educational outcomes tend to last a long time, persisting across generations.

Our own simulations show that for the average district in East Africa, educational inequality would fall by around 15% if sorting between households and schools were fully eliminated and by up to 30% if sorting across communities were also cut to zero. Roughly speaking, this would be equivalent to cutting the magnitude of the intergenerational persistence of unequal education outcomes by more than half.

If decision-makers don’t act decisively to narrow within-country learning gaps, inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged students will become even more entrenched, making social mobility more difficult. Addressing these inequalities is vital to prevent children in the poorest communities from falling further behind.

The post Dual learning disadvantages in East Africa – and how to deal with them appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

In early 2020, as Covid-19 morphed into a global pandemic, economists and public health officials often found themselves in agreement. If the virus could be crushed, then the short-term economic costs of a strict lockdown would be a small price to pay – not just to save countless lives, but also to enable the economy to return to full steam sooner rather than later.

From today’s perspective, this strategy seems to have been sensible in a number of countries. But the economic and social difficulties imposed by lockdowns, especially for the world’s poorest, have also become clear. With increases in domestic violence and police brutality, as well as lost access to education and other public services, we have seen unease spilling over into civil protests.

Even in exemplary cases such as South Korea and New Zealand, it is evident that the virus cannot be crushed easily or any time soon. While early lockdown restrictions slowed the pace of the spread of the virus, it seems that the reproductive ratio (the R number) cannot easily be squeezed below one.

So as the pandemic continues, the dilemma facing many countries is how to sustain measures that slow the virus and shield the most vulnerable, without imposing excessive long-run social and economic costs.

But as different policies are taken up to get us through until a vaccine is available, it is important to take stock of the damaging effects of lockdowns, and to acknowledge that no matter how well intentioned, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches are not particularly helpful.

While strict lockdowns have worked in some countries, they have been most effective in higher-income contexts where both state capacity and levels of trust are high. Even in these places, tensions are rising, either through direct protests against health measures or the heightening of other ingrained social grievances. We certainly should not expect the same policy to work in all contexts.

Lockdowns in Africa

Our research shows that the challenges of imposing lockdowns are particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a simple index of lockdown readiness, which includes access to clean water, sanitation, electricity, and a regular income, we find that just 7% of all households could be classified as ‘fully ready’ and under one in three are ‘partially ready’.

Moreover, we find that countries with low lockdown readiness also have lower levels of trust, particularly in political institutions. And, as we show, since lower trust also tends to go hand-in-hand with civil unrest, this raises the risk that poorly designed restrictions (of any sort) could quickly descend into protest, weakening the already fragile social contract between the state and its citizens.

Building the social contract

But there is another way. Instead of a vicious cycle of legal restrictions on movement, followed by police brutality that begets more resistance, the need to strengthen trust between state and its citizens must be recognized. Indeed, not only is trust an essential ingredient of effective public health interventions – as the experience of Ebola has demonstrated – but it could also provide a foundation to enact more localized or targeted lockdowns, to the extent that these may become unavoidable.

So how can trust be built in these difficult times? Two general policy measures merit attention. The first is to engage with community leaders and organizations as integral parts of the solution, working with them to find out how the objectives of social distancing and other preventive measures (such as reduced mass gatherings, hand hygiene, and mask usage) can be achieved, as well as how communication with local communities can be effective. This means creating space for local solutions to common challenges.

The second measure is to initiate a massive scaling-up of social protection, ideally towards some form of near universal coverage of families working in the informal sector, who are the hardest hit. There is ample evidence that even small unconditional cash payments can make a vital difference. And with widespread use of mobile phones, even in the poorest communities, low-cost technological solutions to delivering these payments are within reach.

Without action to avoid a cycle of violence and unrest, we could see outbreaks, not just of the virus but also of social conflict, that could persist well beyond the time span of this pandemic. Our best chance to avoid this is to support those most affected by the pandemic – not through heavy-handed police repression and curfew enforcement, but through concerted efforts to rebuild the social contract. Governments need to make a priority of policies that protect the most vulnerable, build trust and soothe tensions, not exacerbate them.

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