Learning levels and gaps in Pakistan

By Jishnu Das, Priyanka Pandey, Tristan Zajonc. 2006

115 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The authors report on a survey of primary public and private schools in rural Pakistan witha focus on student achievement as measured through test scores. Absolute learning is low compared with curricular standards and international norms. Tested at the end of the third grade, a bare majority had mastered the K-I mathematics curriculum and 31 percent could correctly form a sentence with the word"school"in the vernacular (Urdu). As in high-income countries, bivariate comparisons show that higher learning is associated with household wealth and parental literacy. In sharp contrast to high-income countries, these gaps decrease dramatically in a multivariate regression once differences between children in the same school are looked at. Consequently, the largest gaps are between schools. The gap in English test scores between government and private schools, for instance, is 12 times the gap between children from rich and poor families. To contextualize these results within a broader South Asian context, the authors use data from public schools in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Levels of learning and the structure of the educational gaps are similar in the two samples. As in Pakistan, absolute learning is low and the largest gaps are between schools: the gap between good and bad government schools, for instance, is 5 times the gap between children with literate and illiterate mothers.

Subfields: Education, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8a3c2591154a1d08e5420bd2610e84a2bc0863bc

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. M. Aslam
2. Jishnu Das
3. J. Stern
4. S. Heyneman
5. Geeta Kingdon
6. Mehtabul Azam

In Safety Research

1. M. Aslam
2. Jishnu Das
3. Asim Ijaz Khwaja
4. J. Stern
5. S. Heyneman
6. Geeta Kingdon
7. Mehtabul Azam

In Sociology and Political Science

1. M. Aslam
2. Amaresh Dubey
3. Jishnu Das
4. Asim Ijaz Khwaja
5. S. Heyneman

Citations in the corpus

• Private Schooling in India: A New Educational Landscape (2008, result): “These results are consistent with the fi ndings for Uttar Pradesh from other studies that fi nd large differences in student outcomes for children from “best” schools in poorly performing districts and “worst” schools in better performing districts (Das et al., 2006).”
• Low-cost private schools for the poor: what public policy is appropriate (2014, background): “As far as school output is concerned, Das et al. (2006) found private school students had higher test score results in mathematics, Urdu and English (after accounting for observable characteristics).”
• The relative effectiveness of government and private schools in Pakistan: are girls worse off? (2009, background): “This corroborates, to a large extent, the finding by Das et al. (2006) of what they call the ‘primacy of schools’ in rural Pakistan suggesting that improvements in learning are at least partially amenable to policy.”
• A Dime a Day: The Possibilities and Limits of Private Schooling in Pakistan (2006, background): “For instance, Das et al. (2006) study performance in public and private schools for the subjects of Urdu, English, and mathematics using item-response scaled scores, where the mean of the distribution is 500, and the standard deviation is 150 (see fig.”