Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education

1 Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education UNESCO. The constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was adopted by 20 countries at the London Conference in November 1945 and entered into effect on 4 November 1946. The Organization currently has 195 Member States and 10 Associate Members. The main objective of UNESCO is to contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through Education , science, culture and communication in order to foster universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms that are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.

2 To fulfil its mandate, UNESCO performs five principal functions: 1) prospective studies on Education , science, culture and communication for tomorrow's world; 2) the advancement, transfer and sharing of knowledge through research, training and teaching activities; 3) standard-setting actions for the preparation and adoption of internal instruments and statutory recommendations;. 4) expertise through technical cooperation to Member States for their development policies and projects; and 5) the exchange of specialized information. UNESCO Institute for Statistics The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official source of cross-nationally-comparable data used to monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG 4) and key targets related to science and culture. As confirmed in the Education 2030 Framework for Action, the UIS has the mandate to work with partners to develop new indicators, statistical approaches and monitoring tools to better assess progress across targets related to UNESCO's mandate.

3 The UIS was established in 1999. It was created to improve UNESCO's statistical programme and to develop and deliver the timely, accurate and policy-relevant statistics needed in today's increasingly complex and rapidly changing social, political and economic environments. Published in 2018 by: UNESCO Institute for Statistics Box 6128, Succursale Centre-Ville Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7. Canada Tel: +1 514-343-6880. Email: ISBN 978-92-9189-227-3. Ref: UIS/2018/ED/TD/1. UNESCO-UIS 2018. This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike IGO (CC-BY-SA IGO) license ( ). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository ( ). The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

4 The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. Table of contents List of .. 7. 9. 1. 11. Relevance of Equity in 11. Knowledge gaps and intended use of the 11. Overview of the Handbook .. 13. 2. Setting out a conceptual framework for Measuring Equity in learning.. 16. Introduction .. 16. Equity in learning: A theoretical 16. Why do we care about Equity in learning?.. 16. What do we mean by Equity ?.. 17. Concepts for Measuring .. 23. 23. Minimum 25. Impartiality.. 25. Equality of condition .. 30. 32. Equality of what? .. 34. What should an Equity measure look like?.. 38. Five desirable properties for equality of condition measures .. 38. Five desirable properties of impartiality 40. Desirable properties of redistributive and meritocratic 42.

5 Summary .. 42. 3. Proposed operationalisation of Equity measurement .. 46. 46. Visual representations of equality of 47. The histogram or the probability density 47. The cumulative distribution.. 49. The Lorenz curve.. 51. Using visualisations of equality of 53. Measuring inequality: A catalogue of common 53. Equality of condition.. 55. 55. Ratios.. 58. 58. Cumulative 61. Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education 3. Impartiality .. 64. 64. Ratios.. 66. 66. Cumulative 68. Analytic tools for testing 69. Availability and comparability of Education data on Equity dimensions .. 70. Scarcity of data on key dimensions of 71. Comparability of data on key dimensions of Equity .. 73. Design and sampling 74. Equity analysis: A proposed sequence .. 77. 4. Measuring Equity for national Education 80. Measuring Equity within national Education 80.

6 81. Indicators included in national Education 81. At what stages in the Education cycle is Equity in learning being measured? .. 88. Data needs for Measuring 95. A more expansive approach to how disadvantage is measured.. 95. Expanding the coverage of data collection.. 101. Focusing explicitly on disadvantaged sub-groups from the earliest 104. Conclusion .. 105. 5. Redistribution of government financing to promote Equity in 108. Assessing who benefits from government spending on Education .. 108. Formula funding strategies for redistribution of government Education resources.. 113. Examples of formula 115. Formula funding needs to take account of both access and 118. Formula funding needs to take account of regional inequalities within decentralised systems .. 118. Redistributive formulae need to include teacher salaries.

7 119. Schools need autonomy over the spending of resources, with guidance for using it in ways that address Education quality for disadvantaged 119. Even where quality issues are addressed at school level, resources rarely reach disadvantaged groups .. 119. The effects of redistribution on narrowing learning gaps take .. 120. Household spending on Education : Implications for 121. National Education accounts for tracking progress towards equitable 123. Conclusion .. 124. 6. Concluding remarks.. 127. Annex A. Major international learning assessments .. 130. Annex B. 75 national Education plans .. 134. 4 Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education List of figures Figure Imperfect and perfectly meritocratic distribution of university 24. Figure Proportion of children reaching three types of minimum 25.

8 Figure Impartiality of Education based on test scores by sex, location and wealth 28. Figure Impartiality of Education with respect to 29. Figure Lorenz curves showing a perfectly equal, and somewhat unequal, distribution of years of 30. Figure Federal government redistribution of Education financing in 33. Figure A model of how an Education system 35. Figure Hypothetical test score distributions with varying levels of 48. Figure Empirical distributions of PIRLS test scores for Canada 49. Figure Hypothetical cumulative distributions under different distributional 50. Figure Empirical cumulative distributions of EGRA oral reading fluency (ORF) results for Haiti and 51. Figure Hypothetical Lorenz curves illustrating two populations with different distributions of years of 52. Figure Lorenz curves for years of schooling in the United States and 53.

9 Figure Decision tree for Equity analysis and applicable 55. Figure Hypothetical distributions of simulated test scores under different distributional 57. Figure Gaussian distribution in relation to Chebychev's 59. Figure PIRLS test scores from Morocco and 61. Figure Hypothetical Lorenz curve for years of schooling and Gini 62. Figure Symmetric Lorenz curves for two independent populations with equal Gini coefficients .. 63. Figure Between-country PIRLS achievement 65. Figure Adjusted gender parity index of the primary out-of-school rate, 67. Figure In Education plans, participation and completion indicators feature more heavily than learning 84. Figure The majority of Equity indicators for participation focus on 86. Figure Among Equity indicators on completion, sex 87. Figure Performance of 19 Education plans against GPE quality 94.

10 Figure Educational opportunities vary greatly across rural 97. Figure Socioeconomic inequities are exacerbated by other 100. Figure In almost every country, poorer children are far less likely than richer children to complete primary school, latest year available (2006-2014).. 102. Figure Among poorer girls in rural Pakistan, those out of school are far less likely to be 103. Figure Ensuring all 12-year-olds are learning the basics by 2030 will require efforts targeted at most 104. Figure In most of 31 selected low- and lower-middle-income countries, the poorest children receive just a fraction of government expenditure on 111. Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education 5. Figure The poor-rich disparity in beneficiaries of government Education expenditure is most extreme in tertiary 112. Figure Pro-rich biases in expenditure vary greatly across selected 114.