Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty (RECOUP)
Poverty often leads to inferior educational outcomes. Those outcomes in turn play a major role in determining the future incidence and extent of poverty. The core objective of RECOUP is to study the mechanisms that drive this cycle of deprivation, and to identify the policies needed to ensure that educational outcomes benefit the disadvantaged.
RECOUP is a partnership of seven institutions from UK and four developing countries - Kenya, Ghana, India and Pakistan - coordinated by the University of Cambridge. Established with DFID funding in 2005, it is a five-year research programme during which more children than ever before - particularly those from poor households - will be moving through schooling and training to become working youths and adults. Their fortunes will be affected not only by their educational experiences, but also by the broader context of welfare and opportunity. The multi-sectoral objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) acknowledge this inter-dependence. Yet its nature and strength are not fully understood, and judgments about priorities for policy change, or about their sequencing, are not always firmly based.
The research will help clarify these matters, focusing on the circumstances of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - the two regions where the challenge of achieving the MDG objective of halving world poverty by 2015 is greatest, and where the policy benefits are most urgently required.
Countries
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are regions with low school efficiency, low levels of cognitive achievement amongst many school leavers, high inequalities in educational outcomes and in the social and economic consequences of schooling. They include countries with different demonstrated commitment to education provision and rights, providing opportunity for comparative policy analysis and educational strategies. Most of the detailed work of RECOUP takes place in our partner countries - Ghana, Kenya, India and Pakistan. However, Consortia members have research links with a wider range of countries in Africa, Asia and other regions. Some collaborative research with these colleagues is anticipated.
