Demographic and Socioeconomic Covariates of Primary School Pupils Attrition in Ethiopia

No Thumbnail Available

Date

2001-06

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Next to smvival, food, clothing and shelter, education is children's greatest need after the age of six or seven. Without education, chi ldren can do little when they become adults, to improve their living conditions and to participate in development activities. Primary education eqUIps people with the ski lls of literacy and numaracy and therefore contributes to poverty reduction by increasing labour productivity. Besides, primary education serves as a bridge towards slower population growth and plays a critical role in demographic transition. Past and current evidences in Ethiopia however, reveal that many primary school pupils are leaving the system at early stages. For instance out of 1,107,751 pupils enrolled in grade one in 1994/95, only 39.1 % of them completed grade four in 1998/99. This wastage is estimated to be more than Eth. Birr 186,850,423 .00. The 1998 Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS) also shows that 19.1 percent of the primary school pupils registered in the academic year 1996/97 have dropped out. This situation therefore, calls for a study to understand covariates of primary school pupils attrition and capture policy makers' and planners' attention to reduce this prevailing dropout problem. Thi s study uses the 1998 WMS data collected by the Ethiopian Central Statistical Authority. The data comprises a sample of 22,787 pupils regi stered in primary schools during the academic year 1996/97. The study applies the multivariate logistic regresslOn model to identify some mall1 demographic and socio-economic covariates of attrition. It also investigates differentials in xi dropping out of primary schools in Ethiopia, by age, sex, pupil's relationship to the household head, household size, pupil's marital status, di stance to the nearest primary school, place of res idence, household head' s educational attainment, pupil's working status, and household income. Besides, it tries to identify the covariates which most affect dropping out and establishes the magnitude and direction of the effects. Logistic regression analysis is appropriate for the prediction of a binary dependent variable as used in the present study. Preliminary analyses are also made using descriptive statistics. Six hypotheses regarding primary school pupils attrition were tested in the study. As a result, age-grade mismatch of the pupil, sex of the pupil, household size, urban rural place of residence, household income, and pupil 's working status are found to be significant 111 predicting pnmary school pupils attrition 111 Ethiopia. In this study, household Size and dropping out of primary schools were found to have inverse relationship, contrary to the general literature. Although not stated as hypotheses, other covariates included in the study such as, pupil's relation to the household head, pupil 's marital status, distance from the household to the nearest primary school, living in some of the regions, and household head's educational attainment were also found significant. Moreover, marital status of the household head, sex of the household head and working status of the household head were found to be statistically insignificant. Pupil 's working status, pupil's marital status and Afar region in this order were found to be the tlu'ee covariates with the strongest effect on primary school pupils attrition

Description

Keywords

PHD

Citation