Explaining the Urban Schools’ Advantage in Literacy in English Performance: Do schools’ Locations Make a Difference?

Abstract

The study was to investigate the association between rural and urban pupils’ academic performance in literacy in English. The researcher collected data on the Primary Leaving Examination, the entranced exam to secondary school level in Uganda. The subject selected for analysis was Literacy in English. There were twelve schools in the Wakiso district that were used for the study. A fixed- effect model with a single covariate (ANCOVA) was used to analyse the data. The design is Ex-post facto. The results show that the proportion of learners rated proficient in Literacy in English (M = 4.16, SE = .13) in urban location was significantly (p = .01) higher than the learners in rural location (M = 5.12, SE = .07). It should be noted that, in Uganda, the lower the mean score, the better the performance whereas the higher the mean score the weaker the performance (i.e., 9 is the lowest score whereas 1 is the highest score).