Influential reports about the “learning crisis” in the global South generally pay insufficient attention to social inequalities in learning. In this study, we explore the association between family socioeconomic status and learning outcomes in 10 francophone African countries using data from the Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems, a standardized assessment of pupils’ mathematics and reading competence at the end of primary school. We start by showing that learning outcomes among grade 6 pupils are both poor and highly stratified. We then develop and test a conceptual framework that highlights three mechanisms through which family socioeconomic status might contribute to learning: (1) educational resources at home, (2) health and well-being, and (3) differences in school quality. We find that most of the effect of family background on learning outcomes operates through school quality, which results from a combination of the unequal distribution of resources (such as teachers and textbooks) across schools and high socioeconomic segregation between schools. On the basis of these results, we suggest that most countries in the region could improve equity as well as overall performance by “raising the floor” in school quality.

关于全球南方“学习危机”的有影响力的报告通常对学习中的社会不平等没有给予足够的重视。在这项研究中，我们使用教育系统分析计划中的数据，对学生的数学和小学期末阅读能力进行了标准化评估，探索了10个法语国家的非洲国家家庭社会经济状况与学习成果之间的关系。我们首先表明，六年级学生的学习成绩既差又高度分层。然后，我们开发并测试了一个概念框架，该框架突出了家庭社会经济地位可能有助于学习的三种机制：（1）家庭教育资源，（2）健康和福祉，以及（3）学校质量的差异。我们发现，家庭背景对学习成果的大部分影响是通过学校质量来实现的，这是由于学校之间资源（如教师和教科书）分配不均以及学校之间社会经济高度隔离的综合结果。根据这些结果，我们建议该地区的大多数国家可以通过“提高质量”来提高公平性和整体绩效。