Inequalities in children's basic literacy and numeracy skills in Uganda and their implications for policy

Over the past ten years Uwezo’s household-based assessments in Uganda have shown, not only that children’s learning of foundational skills tends to be delayed, but also that there are great disparities (inequalities) in their learning of these skills. For example, our 2018 learning assessment estimated that 25% of children aged 11 could read and understand a short Grade 2 story in English, but 40% had not gone beyond the letter reading stage (Uwezo, 2019). This brief focuses on two sets of factors that are found to account for inequalities of learning outcomes. Firstly, some individual characteristics of children are considered: absenteeism and reported difficulties in hearing and memory. Secondly, we focus on some aspects of the educational structure: the child’s grade in school, how much preschool experience the child has and whether the child is enrolled in a private or other primary school.