WHY IMPOVERISHED CHILDREN DO WELL IN UGANDAN SCHOOLS

Socio-economic status measures have been used to represent a mixture of material and psychological privileges which vary between families. There is less than unanimous agreement about exactly what it' is within the family environment; nevertheless many of the indices (such as father's occupation, educational attainment, income, possessions, number of rooms per family-member, number of books in the home, etc.) indicate something' because children who have better than average amounts seem to demonstrate better than average performances in school. The fact that this is not true in Uganda (Heyneman, 1976a, b), by necessity, forces us to retrench, and to rethink why these symbols are such powerful and consistent influences in one society, and not in another. © 1979, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.