Learning Inequality in Francophone Africa: School Quality and the Educational Achievement of Rich and Poor Children

reports about the 'learning crisis' in the global South generally pay insufficient attention to social inequalities in learning. In this study, we explore the association between family socio-economic status (SES) and primary school learning outcomes in 10 Francophone African countries using data from PASEC, a standardized assessment of pupils' mathematics and reading competence at the end of primary school. We start by showing that learning outcomes among Grade 6 pupils are both poor and highly stratified. We then develop and test a conceptual framework that highlights three mechanisms through which family SES might contribute to learning: (1) educational resources at home, (2) health and wellbeing, and (3) differences in school quality. We find that most of the effect of family background on learning outcomes operates through school quality, which results from a combination of the unequal distribution of resources (such as teachers and textbooks) across schools and high socio-economic segregation between schools. Based on these results, we suggest that most countries in the region could improve equity as well as overall performance by redistributing resources across schools