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Educational access in developing countries has improved significantly in recent years, but less evidence is available on learning and learning progress in comparative perspective. This paper employs data from Young Lives to examine levels and trends in cognitive skill development and the links to enrolment in school across the four study countries for pupils aged five to 15. Non-continuous patterns of enrolment are linked to lower learning levels in all countries, as are key indicators of home background disadvantage. Large differences in learning and learning progress are also found between the four countries' education sytems, with "learning gains" being typically highest in Vietnam and much lower in India (Andhra Pradesh) and Ethiopia. Inequalities linked to prior learning and home backgrounds are wide in Peru, while in Ethiopia and India relatively low levels of learning progress are a more general concern. In Ethiopia, both enrolment and quality improvements remain priorities for policy, while in India high levels of primary school enrolment, at younger ages than in the other study countries, suggest that comprehensive quality improvements may be required, nonetheless with a focus on disadvantaged pupils and those with low attainment in the early years.

Cognitive gaps between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds are particularly significant in the developing world. We propose and use a new decomposition strategy to measure the contribution of early childhood and school influences to the cognitive gap between urban and rural eight-year-old children in Peru. This strategy accounts for the relation between family choices and skill inputs and is less prone to biases than those employed before. We find that school influences occurring between ages 6 and 8, account for a significant share of urban/rural cognitive gap (around 35%). The share attributable to early childhood influences is important but no larger than 50%. Because skill depreciates, only a fraction of the gap (70–80%) is carried forward to the next period. Therefore, inequalities in school environments are sustaining a cognitive gap that would otherwise be smaller and this explains why differences that emerge during early childhood can remain unchanged after children start school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines—for two developing countries, Vietnam and Peru—whether disadvantaged children learn less than advantaged children when both types of children are enrolled in the same school. This is done by estimating education production functions that contain two school fixed effects for each school, one for advantaged children and one for disadvantaged children. The article examines six different definitions of advantage based on household wealth, cognitive skills at age 5, gender, ethnicity (Peru only), maternal education, and nutritional status. The results show no sign that schools are less effective for disadvantaged groups in Vietnam; indeed, if anything one traditionally advantaged group, males, seems to do worse in school than the corresponding disadvantaged group, females. In contrast, in Peru ethnic minority students and students who enter primary school with low cognitive skills appear to learn less in school than ethnic majority students and students with relatively high cognitive skills, respectively, who are enrolled in the same school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]