populations, sampling and analytical procedures). A separate report was prepared for each country.

SACMEQ II surveyed grade 6 pupils from 2000-2004 in 14 countries: Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (Mainland), Tanzania (Zanzibar), Uganda, and Zambia. Notably, SACMEQ II also collected information on pupil’s socioeconomic status as well as educational inputs, the educational environment and issues relating to equitable allocation of human and material resources. SACMEQ II also included overlapping items with a series of other surveys for international comparison, namely the _Indicators of the Quality of Education_ (Zimbabwe) study, TIMSS and the 1985-94 IEA _Reading Literacy Study_ .

The third SACMEQ round (SACMEQ III) spans 2006-2011 and covers the same countries as SACMEQ II plus Zimbabwe. SACMEQ III also assess the achievement of grade 6 pupils. The latest round of SACMEQ (SACMEQ IV) began in 2013 in 15 countries, but results are not yet available.

**PASEC.** The “Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Éducatifs” (PASEC, or “Programme of Analysis of Education Systems”) was launched by the Conference of Ministers of Education of French-Speaking Countries (CONFEMEN). These surveys are conducted in French-speaking countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in primary school (grade 2 and 5) for Mathematics and French. Each round includes ten countries. PASEC I occurred from 1996 to 2003; PASEC II from 2004 to 2010 and PASEC III was conducted in 2014.

However, in contrast with other assessments, PASEC has not always been conducted simultaneously across countries and participation has varied considerably since 1994.<sup>7</sup> Moreover, data from the first four assessments is not available<sup>8</sup> . PASEC was modified significantly in 2014, rendering results hard to compare with previous PASEC items. Since scores are not fully comparable between each assessment, we anchor major items to enable international comparability.<sup>9</sup> Currently, we do not include PASEC III results since they require anchoring with SACMEQ IV results, which are not yet available.

> 7 The following is a list of participating countries in chronological order: Djibouti (1994), Congo (1994), Mali (1995), Central African Republic (1995), Senegal (1996), Burkina Faso (1996), Cameroon (1996), Côte d'Ivoire (1996), Madagascar (1997), Guinea (2000), Togo (2001), Mali (2001), Niger (2001), Chad (2004), Mauritania (2004), Guinea (2004), Benin (2005), Cameroon (2005), Madagascar (2006), Mauritius (2006), Congo (2007), Senegal (2007), Burkina Faso (2007), Burundi (2009), Ivory Coast (2009), Comoros (2009), Lebanon (2009), Togo (2010), DRC (2010), Chad (2010). Additional countries took a slightly different test between 2010 and 2011 (Lao PDR, Mali, Cambodia and Vietnam).

> 8 The first four assessments were mainly pilot studies and the purpose was not to disseminate results.

> 9 We are very grateful to the PASEC team, and especially to Jean-Marc Bernard, Antoine Marivin and Vanessa Sy for their help in providing the data. More details concerning the adjustment of the PASEC database is provided in Altinok et al. (2014).

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