Cognitive Framing and Its Theoretical Implications for Tuition Fee Policies in England

This working paper seeks to contribute to the study of university access in England by analyzing the predominant theoretical conceptual frameworks – human capital and habitus – and then suggesting a supplementary avenue of inquiry. It does so by exploring an additional approach to theorizing the recent drop-off in university applications in England: cognitive framing, which focuses on how new information is presented to and interpreted by an individual. The predominant conceptual models emphasize the explanatory power of the characteristics of a given student or the policy that they encounter; in contrast, framing draws attention to their engagement. In other words, it claims that substantively identical policies can differ in their impact according to variations in how people are informed about them. Consequently, its application could augment the explanations offered by the established conceptual models in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of application disparities in England

Does private schooling narrow wealth inequalities in learning outcomes? Evidence from East Africa

In many low- and lower-middle-income countries, private schools are often considered to offer better quality of education than government schools. Yet, there is a lack of evidence to date on their role in reducing inequalities: namely, the extent to which private schooling improves learning among the most disadvantaged children. Our paper uses household survey data from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to identify whether any observed impact of private schooling on core literacy and numeracy skills differs according to children’s household wealth. We demonstrate wealth gaps in access to private schooling, and use inferential models to account for observable differences between those who do and do not enrol in private schools. In Kenya and Uganda, we find that private schooling appears to improve the chances of children learning relative to their peers in government schools, but the chances of the poorest children learning in private schools remains low and is at best equivalent to the richest learning in government schools. In Tanzania, private schooling does not seem to improve poorer children’s learning, whereas it does for richer children. These findings raise a caution about the extent to which private provision can help narrow learning inequalities

Schools and learning in rural India and Pakistan: Who goes where, and how much are they learning?

It is increasingly recognised that there is a global learning crisis. We investigate this learning crisis through a comparative analysis of rural India and Pakistan. Using data from each country’s Annual Status of Education Report, we demonstrate that socio-economic status and gender are important determinants of whether children are in school or not, the type of school they attend, and whether or not they are learning. While learning varies across the type of school attended, socioeconomic disparities predominate: disadvantaged children in private schools are learning less than more advantaged children in government schools. Gender plays an important role, with disparities between boys and girls being most pronounced among poorer children in Pakistan. In addition, while private tuition improves learning for all children, it does not resolve socio-economic and gender disparities. This study draws attention to the need for policymakers to focus their attention on government schools in both countries given that this is not only where the majority of the poorest children are studying, but also where learning levels are lowest. The fact that rich children in government schools are learning indicates that we ought not to dismiss out-of-hand the role that government schools can play in learning.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11125-015-9350-

The Effect of Private Schooling on Learning Outcomes in South Asia and East Africa: A Within-Family Approach

A contentious debate in academic as well as policy circles relates to the growth in private schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa and other low-income regions. While proponents highlight the superior learning outcomes of pupils in private schools, others have argued that this is merely a reflection of the more advantaged family background of private school pupils, rather than an effect of private schooling itself. We contribute to this debate by providing estimates derived from household fixed effect models, which control for any observed or unobserved differences between government and private school pupils at the household level. We argue that these can be interpreted as an upper bound estimate of the effect of private schooling on learning. We rely on large-scale, comparable household survey data from Kenya, Uganda, India and Pakistan, focusing on children enrolled in grade 2 to 6 of primary school. Private school attendance ranges from 12% in Kenya to 33% in rural India, with substantial within-household variation. Preliminary findings show that controlling for family background almost eliminates the positive effect of private schooling in rural Pakistan and reduces it by around half in rural India, Kenya and Uganda, to about a quarter of a standard deviation. Subgroup analyses show that the effect of private schooling does not differ substantially between high- and low-SES families. We discuss implications for educational policy

A Comprehensive Approach to Addressing Gender Equity in STEM Subjects at Four-Year Universities in England

England is among the many nations aspiring to increase highly qualified and diversified human resources in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Gender disparities in enrollment and persistence in STEM undergraduate education in England are replicated internationally. Despite the expansion of higher education in England, women remain underrepresented in STEM subjects. Politicians have voiced their worries over the economy’s overall health and security due to the inadequate number of women in STEM fields in England. While numerous studies have documented gender disparities in STEM subjects in England, there is still a need for better understanding about how to promote gender equity in STEM from early childhood to higher education. In this chapter, we examine the difference in early educational achievement in mathematics and science subjects and students’ plan to study STEM subjects by gender. We also examine women’s odds of studying STEM subjects in England after controlling for academic performance and social class characteristics. We particularly test gendered differences in studying STEM at prestigious Russell Group universities. We analyze data from the British Department of Education’s Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (also known as Next Steps). Finally, we highlight factors that policy makers, researchers, instructors, and STEM workforce members should consider to close gender gaps in STEM undergraduate education

Experience and lessons of learning intervention programmes across the PAL Network members

This report provides an analytical overview of the learning interventions that PAL Network members have developed over recent years. These interventions share two common principles. First, they work from children’s actual, rather than expected, learning levels. This is based on the approach most commonly known as Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), which entails grouping children by current ability and using pedagogical approaches tailored to each group’s level. Second, they treat education as a collective responsibility shared between citizens, communities, governments and school systems. Interventions work to bring these stakeholders together to view education as a collective responsibility that requires collective solutions

Measuring equity for national education planning

This chapter presents evidence on the extent to which different indicators included in national education plans take account of equity as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. It is fairly common to find equity measures in plans for indicators related to access at the primary level. But few national education plans include indicators for learning and, for those that do so, the main dimension of inequality included is sex. Where plans do include measures of equity, these are most often associated with impartiality in that they track sub-groups of the population separately or assess parity between these sub-groups. This chapter highlights positive country examples for tracking progress to achieve equity in access and learning. It then highlights the importance of including a wider range of dimensions of disadvantage within education plans, discusses what data need to be collected and proposes methods to track progress to identify how inequalities have changed over time. The chapter aims in particular to advise policymakers on what information should be taken into account when deciding on the types of indicators that are suitable for tracking progress on learning