Thèse en cours : Primary education quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Université Paris Dauphine
Sous la direction d’Elise Huillery

Date d’inscription : Septembre 2019

Over the past decades, Sub-Saharan African countries have undergone an unprecedented expansion in their primary school enrolment rates and primary school completion rates. However, several studies highlight the low level of knowledge accumulation in Africa. Many students do not master basic knowledge in literacy and numeracy at the end of primary school. With a low level of education quality, benefits from higher enrolment are undermined for African economies. Low education quality has prompted many policies to improve it and many studies to investigate determinants of student achievement considering the particular context in Africa. Policies of increase in resources have shown limits, and studies now focus on school governance, management of resources and teacher quality. However, reviews present divergences in results and several questions remain about determinants of school quality. This thesis focus on three potential determinants of primary school quality. The first chapter empirically investigates the role of school principals whose theoretical importance has been widely demonstrated. The second chapter focuses on teacher pedagogy and more precisely on the impact of a large reform of curriculum and pedagogy implemented in the early 2000’s in almost every French-speaking African country. The third chapter examines teacher effort and the effect of teacher status on instructional time provided. These determinants of school quality need to be investigated to enhance the understanding on how to improve primary education quality.