Education and Income Distribution in Asia

A study prepared for the International Labour Office...

P. Richards, M. Leonor

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032321899
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000648720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1981, Education and Income Distribution in Asia looks in detail at a number of aspects of the relation between education, employment, and income. Education is now the major programme of expenditure of governments in Asian countries. This book brings case studies from Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand to discuss themes like equality in education; schooling, earnings, and occupation; educational expansion and the labour market; determinants of educational achievement; school enrolment in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand; and educational innovations and inequality. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of education, public policy, and economics.

1	EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

A declaration of principles such as ‘equal educational opportunity for everyone’ raises people’s hopes but it is virtually empty rhetoric unless the criteria on which judgements are made are specified. Anderson and Bowman¹ cite the following variants of that principle and bring into sharp focus the emptiness of such a phrase and the complexity of the problem:

(a) An equal amount of education for everyone. ‘Amount’ is vague, and could be measured in different ways. Equality in one measure of education does not necessarily imply equality in another. The same number of years spent in schooling do not necessarily lead to equality in the amounts or kinds of skills and knowledge learned. Equalisation of this kind can lead to qualitative differentiation.

(b) Sufficient education to bring everyone to a given standard. This is the notion of minimum needs in education. A ‘poverty line’ is fixed and everyone must be brought to a point above that line. An example of this approach is ‘universal primary education’; the criterion of measurement is usually completion of a certain number of years of schooling. As pointed out above, that is a somewhat dubious measure of equality.

(c) Sufficient education for everyone to reach his/her potential. Human potential is largely undefined and its limits are virtually unknown. Only a very wealthy country could afford to bring individuals even to a very crude approximation of their potentials. In any event, if potential varies from one individual to another, the development of that potential need not spell equality in any other sense.²

(d) Continued education provided gains in learning per input of teaching match an agreed norm. This is, in fact, an approximation to the previous principle with the addition of a constraint, i.e. an agreed norm.

Among educators, equality of educational opportunity is seen in such diverse terms as ‘a common curriculum for all children regardless of background’, ‘diversified curricula to meet the various needs of different types of students’ or ‘a common school system that is open to all children without any distinction’.³ However, a common curriculum does not in any way lead to equality of educational results. The same curriculum followed in different environments (e.g. rural and urban) does not yield the same level of achievement. Neither would a common school system. Hence, these notions are quite remote from what might bring about any semblance of measured equality.

If we cannot specify the meaning of ‘equality’, will it help to investigate the notion of inequality? ‘Inequality’ suggests that a standard or norm exists which can be used as a reference point to determine deviations from that norm. Without such a norm, inequality is subject to many interpretations and ambiguities. For example, in a country of several ethnic groups, which educational attainment is to be used as a norm? That of the dominant ethnic group? The country’s average level of schooling attained? That of the cultural minorities? This may seem to be a simple issue, but it is a delicate one.

For countries which subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it would seem that appeals to absolute equality pose no serious problem. The scholastic achievement of dominant groups may well be used as a convenient and acceptable reference point for focusing attention on groups which perform below that level. It must be recognised, however, that a single-minded pursuit of parity in educational achievement is fine until questions of efficiency arise. Then within constraints of efficiency, it will be necessary to specify various levels of inequality and the pace at which they are to be reduced.

Definitions and Measurements

Clearly there are some problems. Can we not specify some of the dimensions of educational inequality and mark off some reference points? From these benchmarks, a relative concept of equality may be formed with a reasonable degree of precision and accuracy. Let us consider some examples of reference points.

We can first of all ask what it is that we are trying to equalise in the education field. Education (or, in this context, more specifically, schooling) can be viewed as a production process in itself. It has inputs, processes and outcomes. In simple terms, inputs consist of all resources that are combined to bring about a teaching-learning process. Schools and their facilities, programmes, teachers and their qualifications and teaching time are examples of educational inputs. So too are pupils, and their learning time as well as their learning capacity may be regarded as examples of those inputs. The educational process is the teaching-learning process, and its immediate outcomes are knowledge, skills and attitudes. By lumping together the process with the inputs, attention can be focused on two entities, namely inputs and results. Should educational policy seek to equalise either of these, and if so which? Equalising inputs does not equalise results; and if equality of results is the objective, the inputs would probably need to be unequal.

The next question concerns the units among which inequality is to be assessed. At the lowest level, the individual is such a unit. One can equalise the amount and kind of books and teachers’ time each pupil receives. Or, for a given behavioural or learning objective, these inputs can be varied and given in unequal quantities for different pupils. For instance, teachers’ time may be diverted from the bright pupils towards those who are less bright. The units of comparison can be enlarged to socio-economic groups (households, ethnic groups), demographic aggregates (sex group, age group etc.) and socio-political units (villages, towns, provinces or regions).

From the input side judgements can be made on equality in the provision of educational services to individuals, as well as to larger units such as the socio-economic groups and other aggregates we mentioned. Alternatively, it is also possible, even if more difficult, to make judgements in terms of learning outcomes and their approximations. These judgements, however, are dependent on agreed norms or standards which are yet to be either technically determined or politically established.

Given the two reference points, i.e. (a) inputs or results and (b) units of comparison, one can nibble at the edges of educational equality by citing parity of units in terms of basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. In the same fashion other gross measures of results (e.g. proportions of specified groups receiving or completing primary schooling, or attaining higher levels) may be applied. Less crude measures such as test results (e.g. school entry examinations) are also useful forjudging parity (or disparity) in education.

For the purposes of this study, deviations from parity are identified as disparity or an indication of educational inequality, especially so if the size of the deviation is statistically significant.

In addition we must be clear on the limits to the scope of education. Education consists partly of schooling and partly of non-formal training and the learning events that occur in informal circumstances. Only in the abstract sense are these categories mutually exclusive: in the real world they overlap and interact, so that it is extremely difficult to isolate what might be called the ‘pure’ effects of schooling on learning outcomes, and later on such indirect consequences as employment and changes in earning streams.

This study deals mainly with schooling strictly defined, even if much of what is discussed also applies to other modes of education. The reasons for this emphasis are first that because of data availability schooling is a convenient starting point for any systematic inquiry, and secondly that formal schooling is an instrument which stands, in principle, at the ready disposal of governments.

Education narrowly defined as learning reflects mainly the process of developing abilities. More specifically, we want to approach the substantive aspects of learning, i.e. the learning outcomes. In this context education is viewed as ability creation and thus as the immediate output of learning events – whether in school, at home or anywhere else.

Learning outcomes are capable of categorisation although the variety of human abilities which are learned is probably infinite. The task of specifying and describing them is extremely involved. Rather than tinker with individual abilities, we prefer to deal with ability sets. As classified by Bloom,⁴ these abilities are in three domains, namely (a) cognitive or mental ability, (b) affective states, i.e. attitudes, aspirations, values etc., and (c) psychomotor skills, or what are more popularly known as the manipulative skills. Various levels of the first two categories are well described by Bloom and Krathwohl.⁵ Cognitive ability is simply thinking ability. At its initial level it is simple recall of bits of information; as such it belongs to the knowledge (or functional information) level. The next step is that of comprehension: this means that the items of information are associated and their connection is grasped.⁶ These cognitive effects are the raw materials for the higher mental processes such as analysis and synthesis. Affective states are commonly referred to as attitudes and their correlates such as interests, opinions, beliefs and values. In its simple form, an attitude is merely an awareness of a stimulus without the production of any active reaction. At the complex level it involves value formation and a commitment to solve problems which require action.

In empirical work, these ability sets are measured in various ways. General mental ability, for instance, is measured (however crudely) by IQ tests; cognitive achievement in particular subject areas is evaluated by test batteries such as those used by the International Educational Achievement Association (IEA) and by college admission boards. In the affective domain, attitudes are also measured in many ways, e.g. by questionnaire, ‘opinionnaire’ or notation of semantic differences. Attitudes towards persons are documents by sociometric methods. Performance tests relating to particular psychomotor skills are also available.

Effect of Schools and Other Variables

Closely related to these ability sets is the question of the extent to which schools affect learning outcomes. Popular belief sees schools as specialised institutions for ability formation. And educationalists would say that by skilfully structuring the learning process through curricula and teaching methodology, certain ability sets are developed better than others. For instance, vocational training, especially of the routine mechanical sort, tends to develop psychomotor skills better than cognitive (mental) abilities. In the cognitive domain rote teaching emphasises simple recall rather than the ability to analyse and synthesise. Freire’s pedagogic method⁷ has been reported to inculcate a keen awareness of relative deprivation as well as certain kinds of value orientation, outcomes which are largely in the affective domain. Adults or children acquire these ability sets at school as well as in other places. The home, market-place, church, workshop, farm or factory constitute a range of learning environments and may complement or supplement that of the school. As measured, these abilities rarely reflect what has been learned entirely from school, but from all learning environments. Nor is any of these abilities highly developed in isolation; they are developed in combinations or patterns falling in all three of the main categories distinguished above.

Now we turn to what other researchers say about the influence of schools on learned abilities, especially on those which are ostensibly taught in schools. Like Illich,⁸ Jencks and Brown⁹ have little faith in the effectiveness of schools. They found that

Some high schools are more effective than others in raising test scores, and schools that boost performance on one test are not especially likely to boost performance on other tests. Moreover, high school characteristics such as social composition, per pupil expenditure, teacher training, teacher experience, and class size have no consistent impact on cognitive growth between ninth and twelfth grades … Similarly, some high schools are more effective than others in boosting a student’s eventual educational attainment …

However, a high school’s effect on individual educational attainment does depend on social composition, but not in a simple way.

This finding sheds an unfavourable light on conventional wisdom and suggests that there is little advantage to be derived from policies of reallocating resources to reduce differences in school characteristics.¹⁰ Nevertheless, two other authors¹¹ reported that school inputs are productive. They analysed data from the Michigan Assessment Program, using new criteria. Briefly stated, their argument was as follows:

Many previous economic studies have concluded that school inputs do not matter because mean school output is often uncorrelated with inpu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Equality in Education
• 2. Schooling, Earnings and Occupation
• 3. Educational Expansion and the Labour Market
• 4. International Comparisons I (General Pattern of Inequality)
• 5. International Comparisons II (Thinking Ability of Children of Labourers and of Executives and Professionals)
• 6. Determinants of Educational Achievement in the Philippines
• 7. School Enrolment in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand
• 8. Educational Innovations and Inequality
• 9. Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations
• Index