Community involvement and socioeconomic achievement gap in 14 sub-Saharan African Countries

Hossain, Mobarak ORCID: 0000-0002-1042-7388 and Beretta, Martina (2025) Community involvement and socioeconomic achievement gap in 14 sub-Saharan African Countries. British Journal of Sociology of Education. ISSN 0142-5692

Text (Community involvement and socioeconomic achievement gap in 14 sub-Saharan African countries) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB)

• Scopus publication

Abstract

As a global trend, sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have increasingly received reforms from international organizations (IOs) to improve learning achievements for marginalized groups by promoting community involvement in school governance. The idea is to mobilize local resources and lessen the ‘burden’ on the central government. This paper examines the association between community involvement in school affairs and inequality in achievement by socioeconomic status (SES) using data from the Program for the Analysis of Education Systems (PASEC) 2019 survey of 14 Francophone SSA countries. Results suggest that community involvement is not significantly associated with the SES math achievement gap and does not substantially explain the gap. Contrarily, school resources substantially explain achievement gaps between lower- and higher-SES students. Our findings remain similar in several specifications, including using different inequality measures. We argue that involving local communities may not fully address the challenges of insufficient school resources and individual-level poverty in SSA.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author
Divisions:	Social Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology L Education
Date Deposited:	25 Jul 2025 08:09
Last Modified:	20 Aug 2025 09:36
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128924

Actions (login required)

View Item