Measuring educational inequality of opportunity: pupil’s effort matters

The distinction between effort and other factors, such as family background, matters for correcting policies normative reasons when we appeal to inequality of opportunity. We take advantage a purposefully designed survey on secondary schools in rural Bangladesh offer comprehensive view the importance overall measuring inequalities opportunity education. analysis comprises decomposition exercises predicted variance student performance mathematics English by source (effort, circumstances, etc.) subgroup (within- between-schools) based parametric estimates educational production functions. Pupils’ effort, preferences, talents contribute 31% 40% total variances scores. contribution falls 10% correlation circumstances is taken into account. These findings are robust choice estimation strategy (i.e. combined within- between-schools variation models versus multilevel random-effect models). All all, these results advocate that social determinism education can be mitigated individual at school.