Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach

Using TIMSS data set on MENA countries, this study examines the determinants of educational outcome and gender inequality of learning in eight selected countries. The complicated structure of the data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and...

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Main Author: Badr, Menshawy
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2012
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12947/
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author Badr, Menshawy
author_facet Badr, Menshawy
author_sort Badr, Menshawy
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Using TIMSS data set on MENA countries, this study examines the determinants of educational outcome and gender inequality of learning in eight selected countries. The complicated structure of the data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the measurement error of the dependant variable and the clustering of students in classes and schools. The education production functions provide broad evidence from mean and quantile analysis of very low returns to schooling; few school variables are significant and none have effects across countries and quantiles. In general, student characteristics were far more important than school factors in explaining test scores, but there was considerable variability across countries in which specific factors were significant. Strikingly, computer usage was found to influence students’ performance negatively in six MENA countries. Only Turkey and Iran had a significant positive effect of computer usage on maths achievements. Gender inequality of academic achievement has been investigated thoroughly using mean and quantile decomposition analysis. There is mixed picture of gender inequality across the eight countries with three pro-boys, three pro-girls and two gender-neutral. This exercise gives no general pattern of gender inequality across MENA. A detailed analysis of Egyptian students’ achievements explains the differential gap between school types, notably being single or mixed sex and Arabic or language schools. Single-sex schools perform better than mixed schools especially for girls. The single-sex language schools are more effective than the Arabic single sex school. This confirms the dominance of the language schools and is also related to the style and social-economic status of enrolled students.
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spelling nottingham-129472025-02-28T11:22:16Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12947/ Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach Badr, Menshawy Using TIMSS data set on MENA countries, this study examines the determinants of educational outcome and gender inequality of learning in eight selected countries. The complicated structure of the data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the measurement error of the dependant variable and the clustering of students in classes and schools. The education production functions provide broad evidence from mean and quantile analysis of very low returns to schooling; few school variables are significant and none have effects across countries and quantiles. In general, student characteristics were far more important than school factors in explaining test scores, but there was considerable variability across countries in which specific factors were significant. Strikingly, computer usage was found to influence students’ performance negatively in six MENA countries. Only Turkey and Iran had a significant positive effect of computer usage on maths achievements. Gender inequality of academic achievement has been investigated thoroughly using mean and quantile decomposition analysis. There is mixed picture of gender inequality across the eight countries with three pro-boys, three pro-girls and two gender-neutral. This exercise gives no general pattern of gender inequality across MENA. A detailed analysis of Egyptian students’ achievements explains the differential gap between school types, notably being single or mixed sex and Arabic or language schools. Single-sex schools perform better than mixed schools especially for girls. The single-sex language schools are more effective than the Arabic single sex school. This confirms the dominance of the language schools and is also related to the style and social-economic status of enrolled students. 2012-12-11 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12947/1/MB_THESIS_Final.pdf Badr, Menshawy (2012) Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
spellingShingle Badr, Menshawy
Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title_full Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title_fullStr Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title_full_unstemmed Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title_short Determinants of educational attainment in Egypt and MENA: a microeconometric approach
title_sort determinants of educational attainment in egypt and mena: a microeconometric approach
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12947/