Stumbling blocks to universal primary education: Repetition rates decline but dropout rates remain high
The latest edition of the Global Education Digest reveals the urgent need to address the high numbers of children repeating grades and leaving school before completing primary or lower secondary education. New data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that about 32.2 million primary pupils were held back a grade in 2010, and 31.2 million dropped out of school and may never return.
Entitled Opportunities Lost: The Impact of Grade Repetition and Early School Leaving, the Digest presents a wide range of UIS data and indicators to better identify the millions of children that are falling through the cracks in education systems and leaving school, often without being able to read or write. The report is complemented by an online interactive tool allowing users to visualise repetition and dropout rates by grade in the region and country of their choice, and an infographic entitled Too many children are slipping away.
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The greatest challenges to completing primary school are found in three regions:
The Digest also highlights some potential good news, namely that the global repetition rate has fallen by 7% between 2000 and 2010 even though there were more children in primary school, with enrolment rates rising by 6% during the same period. Yet, high repetition rates persist in many countries. Every child starting school today risks repeating a year, or more, in the Arab States, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
In countries such as Burundi or Togo, a child starting school today can expect to spend two or three years repeating a primary grade. In the case of Burundi, if the resources spent on repeating a grade were instead invested in enrolling new pupils, the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) could grow by 1.3%, according to the Digest. Overall, it is estimated that each year of real education a child receives (not repeating a grade) could increase his/her individual earnings by 10% and lift annual GDP globally by 0.37%.
In general, girls are less likely than boys to start school but boys are at greater risk of repeating grades and dropping out, according to the Digest. The age of pupils can be another determining factor: under-age pupils are more likely to repeat a grade, while over-age pupils tend to leave school early. Yet, according to the data, the most important issues shaping educational opportunities are household wealth and geographic location. In general, poor children living in rural areas are more likely than urban children from rich households to repeat grades and leave school before completing primary education and attaining basic foundational skills.
“We cannot afford to ignore these findings from both a moral and economic perspective,” said Hendrik van der Pol, UIS director. “The world has just a few short years to make good on the promise to fulfill every child’s right to primary education by 2015. The data in the Digest show that school systems are reaching more children but losing them due to inefficiencies, which lead to grade repetition and early school leaving. It is far more difficult and costly to reach children once they leave school than to address the barriers and bottlenecks in the systems.”
Regional findings:
Additional resources: