Inequalities in education

A two-stage socio-psychological analytical framework will be adopted to illuminate the relation between familial socioeconomic status and academic achievement of the students. The framework puts the emphasis to incorporate micro familial factors into macro factor of the tracking system. Initially, children of the poor families always lack major prerequisite of diminution of cognitive stimulating resources. Hence, they are very likely to be assigned to low caliber class. The diminution of cognitive stimulating resources originates from stress coping strategy of the parents, parental expectation and parenting. As students advance to upper grade, a triad nexus of expectation among parents, students and teachers help perpetuate the vicious cycle among students of poor families. Students with low socioeconomic status bore entire brunt of the tracking system in a way that they get poor academic result and a high school dropout rate.
This theoretical framework represents the very first step of the research, to be followed in the next stage by in-depth interviews with the different stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, educational academics and government officials of Hong Kong. The research will then be concluded by analyzing how the theoretical framework applies in Hong Kong.

The right to education is a fundamental principle championed in the international community’s goal, Education for All (EFA). This educational policy promises to expand access to education to all children by the year 2015. The current paper uses two of the EFA goals (Universal Primary Education (UPE) and equal gender parity) as a framework to assess patterns of school participation in Sierra Leone among children of official school going age. The country’s 2003/04 Integrated and Household Survey and 2008 Demographic and Household Survey are analysed. Results show that Sierra Leone will not attain UPE. Ever attendance at school is positively associated with age of the child; the opposite is true of net attendance. Differences between sexes only emerge at secondary school. Inequalities in access are most pronounced between the richest and poorest households, followed by rural and urban areas, then by sex. Future policies should encourage entry into school at the official age and make more effort to target poor and rural children.

In West Africa, there is a lack of understanding regarding the impact of female education on children’s schooling. This is particularly the case in post-conflict states where there is a dearth of knowledge regarding the determinants of school attendance. The current paper uses two indicators, maternal and community female education, to investigate the relationship between school attendance and female education. Multilevel techniques are applied to the 2008 Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey to undertake the analysis. Findings suggest that there is a positive association between school attendance and women’s education; the relationship is stronger at the community level than at the household level. The incremental effect of community female education is amplified among older children, children in rural and poorer communities. Both the household and community effects of women’s education did not vary between households and communities respectively, suggesting a consistent positive effect of female education on children’s school participation.

This paper studies the effect of private tutoring on academic achievement and educational inequality in Korea. Korea has the largest system of private tutoring in the world along with outstanding performance on international academic tests, such as the PISA. Korea's school system is characterized by limited school choice and low variation in quality and curricula across schools, which provides incentive to use private tutoring for additional educational investment. Out of concerns that wealthier families can choose more and better tutoring, the government enacted various forms of regulation on the tutoring market. This paper seeks to estimate the effect of private tutoring on academic achievement and to evaluate the impacts of a range of government policies. It develops and estimates a dynamic discrete choice model of private tutoring and self-study decisions using panel data from the 2005 to 2011 waves of the Korea Education Longitudinal Study. The data follow 7th graders annually until one year after high school graduation and contain detailed information on private tutoring use and test scores.

In almost all developed countries, girls and boys have an equal access to education and seem free to choose their educational field. However, educational choices are highly gendered, and partly remain a mystery according to an economist. Girls choose more fields leading to low-paid jobs et less prestigious careers, while they perform as well as boys at school. In this paper, I test the presence of non-monetary payoff affecting educational choices, as stereotypes and social norms. Particularly, I investigate if grades influence differently girls and boys' choices, and I test the assumption that girls are more influenced by their humanity grades, while boys decide more according to science grades. I use the French pupils panel (Panel d'élèves du second degré 1995-2011), and I concentrate on field choice after Baccalaureat (at eighteen). First results show that students make educational choices according to their grades. However, gender differences appear and are in accordance with the stereotype: girls have a lower probability to choose science, even if they are talented in science.

This paper presents estimates of educational inequality for the major states of India. We compute the education Gini index and examine trends in inequality, separately for the rural and urban sectors. The paper uses unit level data from four rounds of employment and unemployment survey of National Sample Survey Organization, Government of India. The estimates show the high extent of educational inequality. Though the inequality has declined during 1993 to 2009, the Gini index is well above 50% in 2009. There is a clear regional contrast; the index in the rural sector is higher by 18 percentage points than in the urban sector in 2009. Using the analysis of Gini, we show a large part of educational inequality is due to intra-sector inequality. We find that intra-sector inequality has widened, and inter-sector inequality has narrowed over the period. Although progress has been made, a lot more remains to be done. There is still need to give more attention on education in rural areas.

Literacy and education constitute a real challenge for the Moroccan authorities.
Although gender inequalities were significantly reduced, huge gaps are seen in education between rural and urban areas, by mother’s level of education and by wealth quintile.
During the last decade, real progress was achieved in terms of primary school enrolment. The net rate of enrolment of children aged 6-11 years reached 90.5% in 2008/09. Milieu and gender disparities were noticeably reduced. The rates registered were: 91% for boys and 90.2% for girls in urban areas compared to 93.2% for boys and 88% for girls in rural areas.
Achievements at primary school remain, however, insufficient and incomplete when other levels (preschool, college, secondary and university) are considered. For example, huge disparities are seen for children who are supposed to be enrolled at the college (age12-14). Indeed, only 44% of this age category reaches this level of education, of whom only 16% of rural girls and 22% of rural boys compared with respectively 68% and 65% in urban areas.
Preschool enrolment shows the greatest gaps between the richest quintile (78%) and the poorest (6%), urban (64%) and rural (10%); and by mother’s level of education (secondary: 74%, illiterate: 26%).

School education provide a base for higher education which is important for human resource building of a nation. This paper based on data from the survey - “Youth in India: Situations and Needs Study”- conducted in 2006-07 in six Indian states. Attempt to address the reasons and factors behind discontinuation of school education. Cross Tabulations and Logistic regression has been used in the analysis. The preliminary findings show that as level of education increases the gender gap in school dropout decreases. There is a significant impact of mother's education on school dropout. Youth from the Muslim religion and socially marginalised groups have high dropout. It is also found that youth from poor households have reported economic reasons, while youth from rural area have reported school related reasons for dropout. The findings suggest that improvement in socio-economic conditions of family and state is necessary to retain the students in schools.

The present paper aims to assess gender disparity in educational expenditure in the rural and urban sectors of India using Consumer Expenditure data collected in various rounds by National Sample Survey Organization. Also the paper examines whether the change in age and sex composition contributes to change in educational expenditure from the first to the second survey period. Linear form of Engel function, bivariate and multivariate analysis is used to fulfil the first objective and to obtain the second objective Decomposition Analysis is employed. Findings indicate that there is an overall increase in educational expenditure over time, however gender disparity exists in expenditure on primary, secondary and higher education. In rural sectors gender inequality in expenditure has increased over time. In urban sectors the inequality has decreased, but the gape is high compared to rural sectors. Result from Decomposition Analysis reveals that compositional shift in female population is the main factor which contributes to decrease in educational expenditure among females over time. The study suggests that looking to the scenario, Government should implement programmes to reduce existing gender inequality in educational expenditure by enhancing investment in education, and special emphasize should be given on females.

The rich literature on inequality in educational access in the Global North has yet to fully reach the Global South, limiting social demographers’ understanding of processes of social stratification in many world regions. In this paper, I apply the educational transitions model developed by Mare to the issue of class background and educational attainment in Egypt. The aim of the paper is to assess change in the importance of class background as a determinant of educational attainment against the background of the rapid increase in education that has occurred in Egypt at the population level. The results indicate that the magnitude of the association between parental education and educational attainment has declined significantly for cohorts born since the 1950s, largely due to an increase in primary school completion rates. However, both mother’s and father’s education remain significant predictors of educational attainment through advanced stages of the educational system. Furthermore, higher parental education is positively associated with placement into the more prestigious general academic track at the secondary level, and negatively associated with tracking into vocational education. The latter result holds even when measures of school quality are incorporated into the analysis.