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Recent educational research has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study seeks to report rural‐urban disparities in achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample of grade four students from four provinces of Pakistan. The study aims to take into account the limitations of previous research, mainly the issues of non‐representative samples and inadequate sampling techniques, by using proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students and how schooling, students and teacher‐related factors account for gap in achievement.

The primary data source for the study was the 2006 national assessment survey of year four students in government school across four provinces in four core subjects. The sample design included a two‐stage stratified random sample, where the major strata of national interest were student and school gender, geographical location and region. First stage involved selecting schools and in the second stage students were selected from schools. The procedure of estimation involved computing the average of each group's achievement scores and attached standard errors, the gap of standard errors and statistical significance of standard errors at 0.05 level.

The results show that rural and urban students had comparable levels of achievement in some of the tested learning areas. In Balochistan province, rural students outperformed their urban counterparts in three out of the four tested subjects. In Punjab and Sindh, urban students performed significantly better in social studies and language tests; scores on social studies and language did not differ significantly across location in the North West. The differences appeared to be partly explained by variation in schooling conditions, students' home background, and teachers' characteristics. Teachers' training turned out to be decisive in determining students' achievement, whereas availability of resources and multi‐grade teaching was less important.

Recent educational research from around the world has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study is the first attempt to report rural‐urban disparities in academic achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample. The study has employed an appropriate sampling strategy and proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students in four provinces. The findings could therefore be used to guide policy interventions in areas of curriculum differences, schooling conditions, teachers' training and multi‐grade teaching across provinces.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate computer literacy competencies among rural and urban students in India and its prime objectives are to find out: how rural and urban students use computers, what is the purpose of computers for these students and what problems have the students encountered while using computers.

Scheduled interviews were conducted to collect necessary data from rural and urban students. The interview schedules consisted of various questions designed to elicit details about the students’ use of computers. A total of 600 interview schedules were collected and data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for windows to test the formulated hypothesis.

The findings of the study indicate that the infrastructural facilities varied among rural and urban schools. Another notable finding of the study was that majority (91.33 percent) of urban students used computers compared to a significantly less percentage of rural students (32.33 percent). Most rural students have not used computers mainly because they do not know how to (49.75 percent) followed by lack of support from teachers (48.76 percent) and non-availability of computers in their schools (48.27 percent). Electrical power failure was another major problem faced by both urban students (31.75 percent) and rural students (40.20 percent).

This study attempted to learn about the computer literacy competencies among the students and the digital divide in Indian schools. On the basis of the findings, the study has recommended guidelines to bridge the digital gap. These findings and recommendations will potentially be helpful to school authorities and the government in order to take the necessary measurements to bridge the digital gap between the rural and urban students.

The purpose of this paper is to know the frequency, place, and purpose of use of computer. It also aimed to know the various problems faced by the students in using the computer and to know the reasons for not using computer by rural and urban students.

A total of the 2,592 sample population were selected from 64 rural and urban high schools of two districts of Karnataka state. A structured questionnaire was used for the data collection and data have been analyzed using Software Package for Social Science. Statistical tests, namely, χ² and one-way ANOVA were applied to test the formulated hypotheses.

The results of the study showed that only 20.66 percent rural students and 69.70 percent of urban students used computer for various academic purposes. Further, most of the rural and urban students opined that “electric power failure” and “lack of computer” skills were major problem in using computer.

Today, the computer education in schools plays an important role in student’s career development and enhances the quality of learning among students. Thus, the local government/school authorities may provide the minimum ICT infrastructure in both schools and more particularly in rural schools.

Developing countries in many parts of the world have experienced a disturbing trend in the differential pace of economic development among urban and rural communities. These inequities have been observed in education systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where researchers have documented differences not only in resource allocation but also in the academic performance among students in urban and rural schools. Recently researchers have shifted their focus from examining financial and physical resources to investigating the nature and impact of differences in human resources. The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in school organization processes associated with learning-centered leadership and teacher learning among urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. Teacher trust and teacher agency were proposed as possible mediators of leadership effects on teacher learning.

This study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,011 teachers and 60 principals in 30 urban and 30 rural primary schools in Thailand. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping were used to analyze the proposed model of leadership and teacher professional learning. More specifically, data analysis was aimed at determining the nature of relationships among the constructs in the conceptual model and whether patterns of leadership and teacher learning differed in urban and rural primary schools.

The results affirmed a model whereby school leadership exerted significant indirect effects on teacher learning in both urban and rural primary schools. Data analyses determined that the path of leadership effects moved through trust to agency and then to teacher professional learning. Thus, while the authors found a strong direct effect of leadership on teacher trust, there were only small direct effects of leadership on teacher agency and no meaningful direct effects of leadership on teacher professional learning. Thus, the research affirmed a full mediation model of leadership effects on teacher learning. Finally, the study also affirmed that the measured variables were perceived as significantly stronger in the urban schools than in the rural schools.

The research expands on prior research on the “achievement gap” in Thailand by demonstrating the existence of a similar “human resource gap” when comparing urban and rural school leaders and teachers. This study implies that addressing the gap in student achievement will require action aimed at building the capacity of the principals and teachers who work with the rural pupils.

These results suggest differences in the quality of human resources between urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. There may be potential benefit to be gained from providing training focused on “learning-centered leadership” for principals and middle level leaders, as well as expanding access to quality professional development opportunities for rural teachers.

Private supplementary tutoring, common in many countries, has mixed (both positive and negative) dimensions that impact student learning. Private supplementary tutoring runs parallel to mainstream schooling and provides lessons before or after school hours in exchange for additional fees. The purpose of this paper is to focus on how private supplementary tutoring benefits students’ learning in secondary education. It also identifies the drawbacks of tutoring, and shows variations in and between urban and rural locations.

The paper employed a mixed methods approach using a survey and individual interview collected from two different research settings: urban and rural. Grades 8 and 10 were purposefully chosen for data collection. A sample of 802 participants, including 401 students and their 401 parents (either mothers or fathers), participated in the survey, in addition to 48 interviewees comprising students, parents and teachers.

At times, pupils’ educational perspectives are influenced by the conflicting (positive/negative) standpoints of tutoring issues. The paper finds mixed impacts of private tutoring with a focus on disparities of implications between urban and rural locations. It identifies positive aspects such as learning attainment, exam preparation, relationship growth and lesson practice, as well as negative perspectives, such as an examination-centered aim and hamper of mainstream school learning.

The study contributes to the awareness of private supplementary tutoring that benefits students’ learning while also bringing disadvantages. It shows implications of fee-charging tutoring which may relate to students’ family socio-economic situations. The paper addresses private tutoring in general (including English and all other subjects) in most cases, and, more specifically, private tutoring in English as a subject in some cases.

This article presents findings from an investigation which had as its purpose to compare and contrast the attitudes and aspirations of British and American secondary school students as regards education and occupations. The intention was also to increase understanding of those aspirations and expectations by placing them within the context of peer group culture. It is hoped that through a comparative study insight may be gained into the relation between schooling and cultural values in each country.

Explores how rural communities support or constrain school‐level processes which enable effective instruction to occur. Grounded in a conceptual framework of school context indicators, reviews the research and literature on rural education to describe rural community characteristics. Then utilizes analytic induction to consider how these characteristics may influence the school processes identified. The findings suggest that rural community influences are not immutable, and that communities can both constrain and enable structural and cultural aspects of schools which shape effective instruction, depending in large part on how the school mediates the community′s influences. Then offers suggestions for research and development in rural schools.

In recent decades, the responsibility for the financing of compulsory education in rural China has rested with townships and villages which, with limited tax authority and uneven revenue capacity, increasingly relied on a plethora of arbitrarily imposed fees for funding. To reduce farmers’ fiscal burdens, in 2000, the central government installed a series of rural taxation reforms. Correspondingly, the central government shifted the administrative responsibilities of rural compulsory education to the county level in 2001, and implemented a series of policies to make up for the loss of revenues to education. Using a provincial-level dataset from 1998 to 2006, we examined whether and how the rural taxation reforms affected the adequacy and equity of compulsory education finance in China, addressing related theoretical and policy implications from the perspective of intergovernmental fiscal relations.

This paper draws on research which began in 2006 with students in a graduate course on rural education. Its purpose was to find out what graduate students saw as current issues of rural education, how that compared to the literature, and what they thought supporting agencies such as government and universities needed to be doing to advance rural education. This paper focuses on presenting the findings and initiating a dialogue that leads to further conceptual understanding of ruralness.

The inquiry design and implementation is grounded in theories of constructivism and personal practical knowledge.

Some of the more common issues for participants in the study such as, curriculum delivery; bussing; teacher training; insecurity in teacher allocations; and threats of consolidation, are synonymous with the literature. The data also points to the need for research in rural schools and rural communities which is set within a rural‐based theoretical framework.

The study is conducted within the context of one Canadian province using participants from one specific setting. Therefore, the findings represent a localized instance of both curriculum research and literature review.

The study may serve to illuminate issues which can be expanded and become more global in its practicality.

The paper provides an example of curriculum research that is founded on the work and learning experiences of students and their instructor. This knowledge can play a significant role in determining future curriculum design; curriculum implementation; teacher training, recruitment, and retention while enhancing community development in rural areas.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the disparities in social awareness and use of the internet between urban and rural school children in the North of Vietnam.

A total of 525 pupils, aged 9-11 years old, randomly selected from seven urban and rural schools, who are internet users, participated in the study and consented to responding to a questionnaire adapted from an equivalent European Union study. A comparative statistical analysis of the responses was then carried out, using IBM SPSS v21, which consisted of a descriptive analysis, an identification of personal self-development opportunities, as well as issues related to pupils’ digital prowess and knowledge of internet use and internet safety, including parental engagement in their offspring’s online activities.

The study highlights the fact that children from both the urban and rural regions of the North of Vietnam mostly access the internet from home, but with more children in the urbanized areas accessing it at school than their rural counterparts. Although children from the rural areas scored lower on all the internet indicators, such as digital access and online personal experience and awareness, there was no disparity in awareness of internet risks between the two sub-samples. It is noteworthy that there was no statistically significant gender difference towards online activities that support self-development. In relation to safe internet usage, children are likely to seek advice from their parents, rather than through teachers or friends. However, they are not yet provided with an effective safety net while exposing themselves to the digital world.

Although the Vietnamese national curriculum on the computer science subject does not explicitly cover the use of the internet and its related aspects, the majority of children who took part in this study claimed to have used the internet in their learning activities. This emphasises the urgent need for the Ministry of Education and educators in the country to not only improve information and communication technology facilities in schools, but also to revise the computer science curriculum in order to provide a supportive environment for learning development and collectively advocate the dynamics of internet use in order to ensure safe access and use by the children.