COMPETENCY LEVELS

Students

• Early primary level
  • Language
    • Across the 14 countries, a majority of students (more than 55%) on average lacked the skills expected in the language of instruction at the early primary stage and did not achieve the “minimum proficiency level”. 
    • Such students experienced relatively significant learning difficulties in decoding writing and understanding short words, sentences and texts, as well as oral messages.
    • While the situation was particularly acute in some countries, in four countries, most students were above the minimum proficiency level in language of instruction: Burundi (78.9%), Gabon (66.1%), Congo (63.3%) and Madagascar (55.3%).
  • Mathematics
    • Mathematics had a considerably better distribution of students on proficiency scales, but student achievement was still in need of consolidation.
    • The majority of students reached the baseline level in mathematics. 
    • However, over 28% of students across countries did not meet the “minimum proficiency level”.
    • These students had difficulty handling concepts of location in space (below/above/beside) and recognizing simple geometrical forms.
• Late primary level
  • Language 
    • More than half of students (52%) on average across countries were below the “minimum proficiency level” in reading at the end of primary education.
    • Such students had difficulty in understanding isolated words derived from their daily life and isolated sentences, as well as in locating explicit information in short and medium texts by taking cues from the text and the questions.
    • Among the countries whose students were positively distributed on the reading proficiency scale (Gabon, Benin, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Congo, Cameroon), Gabon stood out, with more than 93% of its students above the baseline level.
  • Mathematics
    • Nearly 62% of students were below the baseline in mathematics at the end of primary school. 
    • These students found it difficult to answer short questions relating to the three cognitive processes covered by the mathematics test in the assessment: knowing, applying, and solving problems. In addition, they found it very hard to perform elementary operations with decimals.
    • Gabon (66.7%), Senegal (65%), Burkina Faso (62.5%) and Burundi (60.9%) were the only countries to have raised a large majority of their students above the minimum proficiency level in mathematics.
• Relationships between students’ performance at the start and end of primary education
  • The countries where a large number of students reached satisfactory proficiency levels at the start of schooling were generally those which recorded the highest performances (especially in mathematics) at the end of primary education.
  • Likewise, the education systems with high percentages of students with difficulties in the early years were also those that tended to perform at the lowest level at the end of primary education.
• Trends (2014 – 2019)
  • Early primary level
    • Across the ten countries that participated in both assessments, the average performance in language of instruction improved considerably, from 500.0 to 532.5 points. 
    • However, these gains were offset by the increased inequity in most education systems.
    • Across all countries combined, a similar improvement also occurred in mathematics, with the international average rising from 500.0 to 537.5 points.
  • Late primary level
    • Language
      • Four countries showed notable improvements in their average performance, ranging from almost 28 to almost 68 points.
      • Two countries saw more modest gains of nearly 20 points. 
      • Two other countries experienced significant declines, one dropping by over 35 points and another by 14 points.
    • In mathematics
      • Only two countries saw substantial improvements in their average performance with increases of almost 37 and 56 points respectively.
      • The performance of one country dropped by nearly 50 points.
      • Two other countries experienced decreases of around 25 and 22 points, respectively.
  • Equity
    • Inequalities in terms of skills were present to a far greater extent between schools than between countries.
    • The growing gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students was primarily accompanied by increasing differences between schools.
    • The extent of inequalities in performance among students varied from country to country.
    • Improvements in performance were more pronounced among the top performers, and thus associated with an amplification of the variation in performance.

Teachers

• Subject content
  • Across countries, most teachers had a relatively satisfactory command of the subject content (reading comprehension and mathematics) taught at the primary level. 
  • However, considerable proportions of teachers were at Level 1 or below on the proficiency scales for reading comprehension (over 15%) and mathematics (over 35%).
• Teaching skills
  • Teachers lacked teaching skills in the two subjects. 
  • They were much more likely to experience difficulties in 
    • Analyzing their educational approaches
    • Choosing situations suited to the learning objectives
    • Spotting common errors
    • Identifying their causes so as to help students to progress.

FACTORS IN EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS

Students

• The assessment identified several factors related to student homes and educational careers that had an impact on student learning, both at the beginning and at the end of the primary cycle:
  • Books at home were associated with significantly higher average performance in both subjects at the end of primary education across all countries, except for Chad in mathematics.
  • Parental literacy, indicated by at least one parent being able to read, tended to positively influence students' performance in reading and mathematics across most of the countries.
  • Work (small-scale commerce, agriculture, manual work) outside of school hours had a negative impact on academic results except domestic work.
  • Hunger created a notable difference in reading and mathematics performance between students who experienced it at school and those who did not.
  • Pre-primary education was linked to better student achievement in both subjects in all countries, except for Burundi in mathematics. In most of the participating countries only a third of students had access to it. 
  • Grade repetition, experienced by over half of students across the different countries, seemed to prevent them from catching up with peers who had not repeated a grade.
• Student performance at school also varied according to school characteristics and resources:
  • At both the beginning and the end of primary education, the variance of scores between schools was greater than that within schools in most countries: 
    • More than 50% of the variance in language scores was explained by differences between schools in all but two countries. 
    • The same result was observed in mathematics, except for five countries
  • Students at urban schools performed better than those at rural schools in all but two countries in language of instruction and in all but three countries in mathematics.
  • Private schools outperformed public schools in both subjects.
  • Better levels of school infrastructure and classroom equipment were also positively associated with student performance.
• Gender
  • Enrolment rates
    • The percentage of girls was lower than that of boys across countries at both the start (48.4 %) and the end of primary education (49.1%). 
    • However, in some countries such as Cameroon, Congo and Senegal, the percentage of girls was slightly higher than that of boys at the start of primary education.
  • Regarding performance
    • In early primary school 
      • In the language of instruction, there was no significant gender difference.
      • In mathematics, boys’ mean score across countries was significantly higher than that of girls.
    • At the end of primary school 
      • Girls did better in reading.
      • Boys did better in mathematics. 

Teachers

• Teachers' content scores in both subjects (reading comprehension and mathematics) were correlated with their: 
  • Length of service, as teachers with over five years of experience demonstrated greater subject knowledge and skills compared to novices.
  • Level of academic education, as teachers educated to university level outperformed those educated to secondary level. 
• In early primary, teachers were generally less qualified and experienced than in late primary. 
• In-service training 
  • In-service training provided an opportunity for teachers to partly compensate for the shortcomings or even non-existence of preservice education.
  • In the vast majority of countries (12 out of 14), a high proportion of teachers (from almost 60% to almost 90%) had received additional in-service training. 
  • However, participation in in-service training improved teacher performance in reading comprehension only in four countries and in mathematics only in two countries.
• Gender
  • Female teachers at the schools surveyed during the assessment were in the minority in most countries.
  • In reading comprehension, male and female teachers obtained similar scores in four countries. A significant difference in scores was observed in favor of male teachers in seven countries and in favor of female teachers in two countries.
  • In mathematics, male and female teachers obtained similar scores in two countries, in all other countries, male teachers scored significantly higher than their female counterparts.
• Perceptions
  • In terms of working conditions, teachers generally regarded school curricula as satisfactory. However, their view of the quality of buildings and the availability of school supplies was negative in most countries.
  • In almost all countries, most teachers expressed a favorable opinion on the management of their school and also reported that they had good relations with their colleagues and the community.
  • The vast majority of teachers across countries as a whole were less happy about their salary conditions as well as their training and career opportunities.