Equity and Effectiveness in East African Primary Schools

ABSTRACT

Researchers and policy makers agree that studying the relationship between school quality

and academic achievement will benefit public investment in education. An important turning

point in educational delivery in Africa came during the 1990 World Conference on Education

for All where renewed commitments to quality basic education were made. Against this

background, interest in how African education systems are progressing has increased. This

thesis contributes to this understanding in three important ways. The first and broadest

objective is to assess the role of comparative studies in setting educational standards. The

second relates to how schools within three East African education systems can contribute to

the academic success of students whatever their background. The third is to investigate which

schools most effectively ensure a meaningful educational experience for children who face

economic and social hardships. Data are sourced from the second wave of a cross-national

survey of schools in Southern and Eastern Africa. Hierarchical Linear Modelling is used to

analyse data on schools and students in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

The results demonstrate that, although valuable for establishing general patterns of effects,

comparative studies should be followed by further investigation of the salient issues at work

within individual countries. Contrary to earlier studies in developing countries, an

unambiguous positive relationship between socioeconomic status and student performance

was evident across this region. Compositional, structural and organisational characteristics of

East African primary schools were found to be related to academic achievement. Academically

supportive relationships between students and household members benefited student

performance in Kenya and Tanzania. In line with the school effectiveness theory, resource

availability proved to be consistently related to educational quality and its equitable distribution

in Uganda. An important finding relating to gender was that characteristics of schools that

improved quality did so more effectively for boys than for girls and therefore increased the

male academic advantage. The implication is that the climate for learning in East African

primary schools is better suited to educating boys.

The study recommends that future surveys pay closer attention to how student attitudes to

learning are shaped so that schools can play a more effective role in motivating students. To

tease out exactly how the educational environment influences learning, it is also recommended

that more longitudinal studies be pursued by the educational research community. That the

pace of educational reform is often painfully slow makes the use of longitudinal data to track its

course all the more necessary.