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It is increasingly recognised that there is a global learning crisis. We investigate this learning crisis through a comparative analysis of rural India and Pakistan. Using data from each country's Annual Status of Education Report, we demonstrate that socioeconomic status and gender are important determinants of whether children are in school or not, the type of school they attend, and whether or not they are learning. While learning varies across the type of school attended, socioeconomic disparities predominate: disadvantaged children in private schools are learning less than more advantaged children in government schools. Gender plays an important role, with disparities between boys and girls being most pronounced among poorer children in Pakistan. In addition, while private tuition improves learning for all children, it does not resolve socioeconomic and gender disparities. This study draws attention to the need for policymakers to focus their attention on government schools in both countries given that this is not only where the majority of the poorest children are studying, but also where learning levels are lowest. The fact that rich children in government schools are learning indicates that we ought not to dismiss out-of-hand the role that government schools can play in learning.

Theory suggests that teacher encouragement can aid students' educational progress, but there are not yet quantitative inferential studies that assess its longer-term impact. With data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), I use propensity-score matching to investigate whether encouragement influences the likelihood of students enrolling in (1) advanced high school (A-level) courses and (2) a university degree course. Model estimates suggest that encouragement does have a significant positive impact on both outcomes. In addition, I investigate whether encouragement effects vary according to parental education and the given student's prior academic achievement; it appears that the impact is greatest for those students in the middle third of academic achievement as well as those with lower levels of parental education. These findings have important policy implications, especially as it seems that teacher encouragement has the greatest influence on those students most likely to be on the margin for university attendance.

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In many low-and lower-middle-income countries, private schools are often considered to offer better quality of education than government schools. Yet, there is a lack of evidence to date on their role in reducing inequalities: namely, the extent to which private schooling improves learning among the most disadvantaged children. Our paper uses household survey data from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to identify whether any observed impact of private schooling on core literacy and numeracy skills differs according to children's household wealth. We demonstrate wealth gaps in access to private schooling, and use inferential models to account for observable differences between those who do and do not enrol in private schools. In Kenya and Uganda, we find that private schooling appears to improve the chances of children learning relative to their peers in government schools, but the chances of the poorest children learning in private schools remains low and is at best equivalent to the richest learning in government schools. In Tanzania, private schooling does not seem to improve poorer children's learning, whereas it does for richer children. These findings raise a caution about the extent to which private provision can help narrow learning inequalities.