20. It is important to note that even among unaided school students, in India, only about 30% of 8–11 year-olds can perform a division, and around 50% can read a story **.** At the end of grade 10, Nepalese private school students score more than 50% on some SLC tests and more than 60% on some other SLC tests on average, with a considerable share scoring lower than 50%; weaker students are left out of this picture as they did not even make it to grade 10. In rural Punjab, Pakistan, on average Grade 4 students in private schools answer only about 45% of the test questions correctly. These patterns remain when we average test scores at the school level, indicating that they are not driven by a correlation between student achievement and school size.

**Table 3** . Gender and locational patterns of test scores of students in government and private schools

**India,** **<u>8–11 year-olds: India HD Survey, 2004/05</u>**

|||**Math **||**Writing**||**Reading**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|
|All|68.8|24.5***|81.5|16.5***|72.5|20.1***|
||(0.82)|(0.99)|(0.68)|(0.87)|(0.78)|(0.96)|
|Male|68.8|22.2***|82.0|16.2***|71.4|17.6***|
||(1.07)|(1.33)|(0.89)|(1.16)|(1.04)|(1.30)|
|Female|68.7|26.9***|80.7|16.5***|74.1|23.1***|
||(1.26)|(1.49)|(1.07)|(1.32)|(1.18)|(1.43)|
|Urban|72.9|17.8***|83.7|10.6***|76.3|14.0***|
||(1.07)|(1.67)|(0.89)|(1.45)|(1.02)|(1.61)|
|Rural|64.1|22.3***|79.0|15.9***|68.3|18.2***|
||(1.23)|(1.38)|(1.05)|(1.21)|(1.19)|(1.34)|

# **<u>Nepal, Grade 10: SLC Exam, 2004</u>**

|||**Math **||**Nepali**||**English **||**Science**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|
|All|56.5|24.7***|52.4|10.0***|67.0|27.8***|64.3|18.8***|
||(0.35)|(0.38)|(0.19)|(0.21)|(0.23)|(0.25)|(0.22)|(0.24)|
|Male|59.3|25.0***|52.2|9.3***|67.7|27.7***|65.8|19.0***|
||(0.44)|(0.49)|(0.24)|(0.27)|(0.28)|(0.32)|(0.28)|(0.31)|
|Female|52.5|23.6***|52.7|10.9***|65.9|27.8***|62.2|18.2***|
||(0.55)|(0.59)|(0.29)|(0.32)|(0.38)|(0.41)|(0.35)|(0.38)|
|Urban|59.4|24.2***|53.1|8.6***|69.6|27.4***|66.1|18.8***|
||(0.43)|(0.52)|(0.23)|(0.29)|(0.26)|(0.34)|(0.27)|(0.34)|
|Rural|51.6|21.0***|51.2|9.6***|62.4|24.3***|61.3|16.4***|
||(0.57)|(0.59)|(0.30)|(0.32)|(0.40)|(0.42)|(0.37)|(0.39)|
|**Rural Pu**|**njab, Pa**|**kistan, Grade 4:**<br>**Math **|**LEAPS **|**Survey, 2006**<br>**Urdu**||**English **|||
||Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|Private|Diff(Pvt-Govt)|||
|All|44.0|9.4***|46.0|12.0***|45.7|13.0***|||
||(0.31)|(0.38)|(0.33)|(0.40)|(0.27)|(0.33)|||
|Male|44.6|8.3***|44.3***|<br>11.4***|44.9|13.7***|||
||(0.42)|(0.52)|(0.44)|(0.54)|(0.36)|(0.44)|||
|Female|43.3|10.8***|48.2***|<br>12.7***|46.8|12.1***|||
||(0.45)|(0.54)|(0.50)|(0.59)|(0.40)|(0.48)|||

_Source:_ Authors, based on data from student assessments. _Notes:_ In India, figures refer to the share of students who can do at least one subtraction (math); write with three or fewer mistakes (writing); and read a paragraph or story (reading). In Nepal, figures refer to mean scores out of a maximum of 100 in each subject. In Pakistan, figures are the percentages of questions correctly answered.

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