Redistributive social justice in Southern and East Africa: Investigating the affect of social & economic differences on primary pupils’ literacy scores

This paper considers what multilevel modelling approaches to analysing large scale cross-national surveys of education quality can tell us about redistribution in education, one of Fraser’s three dimensions of social justice. The impact of pupil background on performance in reading towards the end of the primary cycle in sub-Saharan Africa is investigated via an analysis of the second wave of data collected by the Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ). The affect of various factors associated with disadvantage/advantage (e.g. gender, rurality, grade repetition, parents’ education, amenities, books and furnishings at home etc) and some interactions between these is examined to explore how each of the SACMEQ countries is achieving in terms of redistribution and what this type of data can tell us about redistributive social justice. The paper concludes by suggesting that the findings lend themselves to interpretation in terms of capabilities resources and conversion, developed by Sen (1999; 2009).