Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

PROGRESS TOWARDS THE EFA GOALS
The quality of education
between indigenous and non-indigenous students
were explained by the poor quality of schools
serving indigenous students (McEwan, 2004).
These findings demonstrate that improving school
quality and narrowing differences among schools
will reduce inequality in student performance. In the
mid-1990s, Brazil created the Fundo de Manutenção
e Desenvolvimento do Ensino Fundamental e de
Valorização do Magistério (FUNDEF), a fund to
finance subnational spending on primary and lower
secondary education to ensure a more equitable
distribution of per-student spending across the
country. Preliminary evidence suggests that this
redistributive policy has narrowed learning
inequalities, though only by a small amount (Gordon
and Vegas, 2005). In other countries, per-student
funding formulas have been introduced to ensure
that resources are more equitably distributed
across regions and population groups.
Box 2.23: Improving equity in Poland
In 1999, Poland started providing an additional year of general
education before students were split into upper secondary school
tracks. By using three rounds of PISA it is possible to assess the
reform’s impact on equity:
From 2000 to 2003, average variation in student performance
in science fell from 51% of the OECD average to 15%. By 2006,
Poland had one of the lowest levels of variation in science
performance among participating countries (Figure 2.41).
Improvement in equity came about at the same time as general
improvement in performance. For example, average reading
performance of 15-year-olds increased by twenty-nine score
points between 2000 and 2006.
Most of the improvement occurred among students with poor
performance. From 2000 to 2006, the proportion of students
failing to score above level 1 in reading competency fell from
23% to 16%.
Students in the vocational track appear to have benefited
most from greater integration of the system.
School-based disparities do not operate in isolation.
In many cases they interact with and reinforce
wider disadvantage. Parental income and education,
home language and other factors are all strongly
associated with learning achievement levels, as
the following cases demonstrate:
In Pakistan, children from families in the richest
third of the population scored on average
between 0.25 and 0.5 of a standard deviation
higher than children from the poorest households
(Das et al., 2006).
In Peru, in national assessments of mathematics
conducted in 2004, sixth grade pupils whose
mother tongue was Spanish scored more than
one standard deviation higher than children
whose mother tongue was an indigenous
language (Cueto et al., 2009).
Fifth grade students from Cameroon’s Bamileke
language group scored 48% on the PASEC
literacy test, compared with 56% for students
from the Ewondo language group (Fehrler and
Michaelowa, 2009).
In the 2006 SERCE assessments in Latin America
and the Caribbean, students who undertook a
significant amount of work, inside and outside
the home, had lower levels of mathematics
achievement on average. For example, in
El Salvador, sixth graders who worked had
average scores 6% lower than those of children
who did not (Bonnet, 2009).
Source: OECD (2007b).
A longitudinal study in Ethiopia found that 42%
of 12-year-olds who had lost their mothers
between ages 8 and 12 were unable to read,
while for children with both parents living the
figure was 23% (Himaz, 2009). The study
attributed the difference to lower school
enrolment among orphans, as well as poorer
performance in school.
In countries with more equitable systems,
children’s backgrounds are less important in
determining levels of achievement. In countries
where there is a strong relationship between
student background and performance, or where
large differences in student background exist,
reducing differences in school quality is unlikely
to be enough to improve equity significantly.
Targeted programmes to improve learning among
children who are being left behind will also be
needed (see Chapter 3). In Mexico, the Consejo
Nacional de Fomento Educativo (CONAFE) provides
supplemental funds, learning materials – including
textbooks in indigenous languages – and teacher
support to schools in areas marked by consistent
underperformance and disadvantage. Evaluations
indicate that these efforts have narrowed the gap
in primary school mathematics scores, though
they have had little impact on Spanish scores
(Vegas and Petrow, 2008).
School-based
disparities interact
with student
background and
socio-economic
status
111