Does attending a rural school make a difference in how and what you learn?

Abstract

The rural education landscape once consisted of one-room schools where a single teacher educated, took care of and supervised students of diverse ages. While multi-grade teaching is still common in many schools, particularly in primary education, increased government spending, better transport networks and higher social expectations have given way, in many instances, to larger schools with several classrooms, teachers and grades, and a greater variety of learning opportunities. Have these changes attenuated the traditional rural-urban gap in academic performance? Are students in rural schools still less likely to go into higher education than students in urban schools? And what makes rural schools different from urban schools more generally?