Learning outcome in literacy and numeracy in Uganda: Mining Uwezo assessment data to demonstrate the importance of maternal education

Abstract

Academic performance in primary education plays a crucial role in obtaining further educational opportunities. Despite increased focus on addressing the inequality gaps in access to education, a number of studies have shown that children living in poor families with mothers who have low educational attainments experience less success, both in school and later as adults in the workforce, than children living in more advantaged circumstances. This paper analyses the effect of mothers’ education on the numeracy and literacy learning outcomes among children in Uganda.  Mining data from the 2018 Uwezo Uganda Learning Assessment survey, we explore the influence of maternal education on learning outcomes.

The findings showed that the proportion of children who demonstrated the ability of competently reading and comprehending a story of primary two level increased with increasing maternal education.  Whereas only 13.6% of the primary four children whose mothers had never been to school were able to read and comprehend a story (the highest level in literacy assessment), more than four times (50.7%) of the children whose mother had above senior four qualification had similar abilities. A similar trend was seen with performance in numeracy where 31.9% of primary four children whose mothers had no education at all were able to attain the highest numeracy level, compared to 59.1% for children whose mothers level of education was beyond senior four.  It was further observed that slightly more than one in three (35.6%) of the primary one/two children whose mothers had never been to school were completely non numerate compared to less than one in ten (9.0%) of the children whose mothers had studied beyond senior four who were non-numerate.  Given the changes in access to schooling and impact on learning yielding from the global COVID 19 pandemic, whereas the data mined was collected before this pandemic, there is need for reflection on the home schooling approach being proposed by government and other stakeholders considering that this is likely to benefit more children whose mothers have higher levels of education than those with less education or never