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School Effects on Educational Attainment in Egypt

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School Effects on Educational Attainment in Egypt __________________________________________________________________________________ CREDIT Research Paper No. 12/ 05 __________________________________________________________________________________ SCHOOL EFFECTS ON EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT IN EGYPT by Menshawy Badr Abstract Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data for Egypt in 2007, this paper examines the determinants and gender inequality of educational attainment (test scores in Mathematics and Science). The complicated structure of the data is carefully addressed during all stages of the analysis by employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the measurement error of the dependant variable and the clustering of students in classes and schools. A detailed analysis of Egyptian students’ achievements reveals differential effects of school types, notably being single or mixed sex and Arabic or language schools. Single‐sex schools tend to have higher attainment than mixed schools, especially for girls, and single‐sex language schools have higher test scores than Arabic single sex schools. The better performance of language schools is related to the socio‐economic characteristics of enrolled students. JEL Classification: H52, I21, I24, O15 Keywords: School inputs; Production function; School types; Test Scores; and Egypt. __________________________________________________________________________________ Centre for Research in Economic Development and International Trade, University of Nottingham _________________________________________________________________________________ CREDIT Research Paper No. 12/05 __________________________________________________________________________________ SCHOOL EFFECTS ON EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT IN EGYPT by Menshawy Badr Outline 1. Introduction 2. Egypt’s Education System 3. Data and Descriptive Statistics 4. Empirical Model 5. Main Results 6. Further Analysis Using Interactions 7. School Effects and School Types 8. Extensions 9. Conclusions References Appendices The Author Menshawy Badr is currently a doctoral candidate, the School of Economics, University of Nottingham and an assistant lecturer (on study‐leave) from the Department of Economics, Sadat Academy for Management Sciences (SAMS), Egypt. Acknowledgements I am gratefully acknowledges the useful comments and directions provided by my supervisors Oliver Morrissey and Simon Appleton and during the XREAP workshop on Economics of Education at IEB, Barcelona in 2010. Corresponding Author: [email protected] ; [email protected] __________________________________________________________________________________ Research Papers at www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/credit/ 1. Introduction This paper uses data from large comprehensive international student achievement tests – Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – to estimate the impact of parental education, other measures of Social‐Economic status (SES) and school inputs on students’ achievements in Egypt. Although there are now numerous studies on the factors influencing education quality in developed and developing countries (Hanushek and Lavy, 1994, Hanushek and Woessmann, 2007, Lloyd and Division, 2001), few include Arab countries and studies on Egypt focus on education problems such as enrolment and dropout rates and how these affect quality. Human capital quality measured by cognitive achievement tests directly and indirectly influences productivity and long‐run growth. It is a research priority to investigate sources of human capital quality. Governments, the main education services provider around the world, should apply rational, efficient, and equitable policies based on true research results (Hanushek and Luque, 2003; Woessmann, 2003). This study estimates the impact of student characteristics and family background on the one hand (the set of student variables) and teacher’s characteristics and school resources on the other (the set of school variables), on cognitive achievement in Egypt. The broad question addressed is: what are the major determinants, distinguishing Social‐Economic Status (SES) and school inputs, of students’ cognitive achievements (as captured by test scores)? Using test scores for 8th grade (age 14) students in Mathematics and Science for 2007, we examine the influence of SES and school variables. The literature on education production functions reveals no clear systematic relationship between school resources and student achievement; teacher quality is the only factor that usually has a significant influence (Hanushek, 1995). The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of education in Egypt. Section 3 describes the TIMSS data for Egypt. Section 4 outlines the empirical model and sections 5 to 8 discuss the results: core findings and further analysis with specific attention to school fixed effects and the impact of test language and section 9 concludes. 2. Egypt’s education system With more than 17 million students, 821 thousand teachers and 40 thousand schools, the Egyptian education system is one of the largest in the world and the largest in MENA 1 (Middle East North African Countries)1. The Egyptian education system is divided into Al‐ Azharite system (Islamic school) and a secular system. The first is supervised by ALAZHAR2 and accounts for 9.8% of students while the secular system includes Arabic, language and religious schools; the 90.2 percent of all students in the secular system are divided into public and private education sectors (comprising 83 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively)3. All are under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. Since 1981, free compulsory education is provided at the primary and preparatory stages. The school enrolment age is 6 years. The 9 years of basic education is divided into six years primary stage and 3 years preparatory stage. Vocational preparatory education is provided to serve slow learners in primary and preparatory education. The preparatory stage (grade 9 at age 15) exit exam (held at the governorates level) determines whether students are qualified for general or vocational secondary school. The secondary stage is divided into vocational (3 to 5 years) and general academic (3 years) schools. The test scores of the secondary school exit examination (country level) determine their access to higher education which includes universities and institutes (3 to 6 years). Students upgrade to the following year is conditional on their exams’ results, so there is grade repetition (Ministry of Education, 2008). Both mixed and single sex education is provided in Egypt. Typically, boys and girls attend mixed classes at the primary level with single sex‐schools being mainly at the preparatory level. In the rural areas where there are insufficient students to create two schools, students enrolled in the same school with either mixed or single sex classes. Table A.1‐A.3 in Appendix A show selected poverty, social, and educational characteristics of Egypt compared to MENA4 and lower middle income countries. The figures show Egypt in a good position regarding enrolment compared to MENA except for pre‐primary enrolment. However, 3.1 percent repeaters in primary stage and 5 percent drop out which is relatively high interruption in the education system. 1 UNESS, (2008), Arab Republic of Egypt, p 18 2 ALAZHAR is an Official mosque and university at Cairo, the world centre of Sunni Islamic learning. 3 “Ministry of Education strategic plan”, 2008 4 Middle‐East and North Africa countries 2 The Egyptian education system is highly centralised regarding administration, curriculum and examination. The Ministry of Education has the main responsibility for all education issues, collaborating with the ministry of Finance and the governorates regarding other organizational and financial issues. The Egyptian education system diagnostic identifies the following as issues: shortage of school buildings at the basic education level, existence of poor quality vocational preparatory education, weak participation of the private and cooperative sectors in education, high repetition rates in basic education, poor reading and writing skills of pupils in basic education, increases in the education wage bill (large number of employees not high wages), administrative jobs are overstaffed (1:1.26), shortages in basic education qualified teachers (41percent do not have university degree), training mismatch with the actual needs of teachers, curricula problems, existence of traditional teaching and evaluation methods, and the spread of private tutoring5. 3. Data and descriptive statistics The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), an independent organization, collects data on students at fourth (9‐10 years) and eighth (14‐15 years) grade for a large sample of countries to give comparative assessments dedicated to improving teaching and learning in maths and science for students around the world. This study relies on data from TIMSS on student tests results with extensive information from the student background questionnaire and teachers and school characteristics for both maths and science. The TIMSS target population is fourth and eighth grades. Each participant country followed a uniform sampling approach applied by TIMSS team to assure high quality standards. A two stage stratified cluster design was followed: at the first level a random schools sample
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