School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway.
Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, Oslo, Norway.
PLoS One. 2023 Apr 20;18(4):e0284821. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284821. eCollection 2023.
Significant progress has been achieved in universal basic education in African countries since the late 1990s. This study provides empirical evidence on the within- and across-country variation in numeracy skills performance among children based on nationally representative data from eight African countries (DR Congo, The Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe). We assess whether and to what extent children with disabilities lag in numeracy skills and how much it depends on their type of disabilities. More specifically, we explore whether disabled children benefit equally from better school system quality. The assessment is analysed as a natural experiment using the performance of non-disabled children as a benchmark and considering the different types of disabilities as random treatments. We first evaluate the variation in average numeracy skills in the eight African countries. They can roughly be divided into low- and high-numeracy countries. We apply Instrumental Variable (IV) methods to control the endogeneity of completed school years when assessing subjects' school performance and heterogeneous disability effects. Children with vision and hearing disabilities are not especially challenged in numeracy skills performance. The low numeracy skills among physically and intellectually disabled children are mainly attributable to their limited school attendance. Children with multiple disabilities are constrained both by low school attendance and by poor numeracy skills return to schooling. The average differences in school performance across the high- versus low-numeracy skill country groups are larger than the within-group average differences for disabled versus non-disabled kids. This indicates that school enrolment and quality are crucial for children's learning of numeracy skills, and that disabled children benefit equally from better school quality across these African countries.
自 20 世纪 90 年代末以来，非洲国家的普及基础教育取得了重大进展。本研究基于来自八个非洲国家（刚果民主共和国、冈比亚、加纳、莱索托、塞拉利昂、多哥、突尼斯和津巴布韦）的全国代表性数据，提供了关于儿童在计算技能表现方面的国内和国际差异的经验证据。我们评估残疾儿童在计算技能方面是否以及在多大程度上落后，以及这在多大程度上取决于他们残疾的类型。更具体地说，我们探讨了残疾儿童是否同样受益于更好的学校系统质量。评估是作为一项自然实验进行的，以非残疾儿童的表现作为基准，并将不同类型的残疾视为随机处理。我们首先评估了这八个非洲国家的平均计算技能差异。这些国家大致可以分为低计算技能国家和高计算技能国家。我们应用工具变量（IV）方法来控制完成学年的内生性，以评估受教育者的学校表现和异质残疾效应。视力和听力残疾儿童在计算技能表现方面没有特别的挑战。身体和智力残疾儿童的计算技能水平较低主要归因于他们有限的入学率。多重残疾儿童既受到入学率低的限制，也受到计算技能对教育回报差的限制。高计算技能国家组与低计算技能国家组之间的学校表现平均差异大于残疾儿童与非残疾儿童之间的组内平均差异。这表明，入学率和教育质量对儿童学习计算技能至关重要，在这些非洲国家，残疾儿童同样受益于更好的学校质量。
