Monitoring Drop Outs

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Monitoring Drop Outs

• Albania, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Mongolia, Slovakia,
  and Tajikistan
• Virginija Budiene
• Education Policy Center, Vilnius University,
  Lithuania50th Anniversary Conference of the
  Comparative and International Education Society
  (CIES)Hawaii, March 14-18, 2006

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Monitoring Drop Outs

• Monitoring Initiative of the Network of Education
  Policy Centers
• Supported by Education Support Program of the
  Open Society Institute

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PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES

• Central Europe (Latvia, Slovakia)
• South East Europe (Albania)
• Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan)
• Mongolia

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GOALS

• To identify the depth of the problem
• To raise awareness about the issue of school
  dropouts
• To assess the actual influence of different
  factors
• To assess the content and implementation of
  existing regulations / legislation
• To develop recommendations based on the findings
  
• To provide background for advocacy activities
  on DO issue

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METHODOLOGY

• Cabinet research
• Analysis of regulations and legislation
• Review of the official and other sources of
  statistics on DO
• International overview of DO issues
• Field research
• Questionnaires
• Individual interviews
• Focus-groups

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The scope, factors, challenges

• The study indicated
• the true scope of not-enrolled, not attending and
  dropped out children is not known.
• Country studies signaled a rising trend among
  schools to manipulate their enrolment and
  attendance figures.
• The study indicated that the most frequent cause
  of dropping out is poverty, and the second most
  frequent cause is a lack of motivation.
• This suggests that policy advocacy in relation
  to dropouts should focus on making school
  cultures supportive rather than punitive, and
  should promote initiatives that mitigate the
  effects of poverty in communities and families.

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Dropouts Common pitfalls

• Definitions they differ among and within
  countries
• Statistics no reliable, comparable and
  consistent data
• Misreporting blame culture or school funding
  depends on the enrollment

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Albania figures on drop-out rate

• according to the Ministry of Education and
  Science, school drop-out numbers were highest in
  1991-92 (6.31) and decreased to 2.3 by 2001.
• according to UNICEF, only 82 of children who
  enrol in grade 1 continue to grade 5
• other Albanian sources state that more than 35
  of students between the ages of 10-14 drop out,
  mostly because of poverty but also and this is
  significant! because of poor school quality

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Mongolia, Comparative Figures on Drop-Out Rate,
2003-2004
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Kazakhstan figures on drop-out rate

• According to the Kazakhstan MES (2003-2004),
  2,943 students were detected who didnt attend
  school for more than 10 days without a valid
  reason (rate of non-attendance and quitting the
  school is 0,095 0.1).
• The Kazakhstan Statistical Agency shows that in
  2002-2003, there were 1,120,005 children of
  primary school age, whereas the MES data for the
  same year show 1,103,675 children actually in
  primary schools. The difference is more than
  16,000 or about 1.4 of the age group.
• Have the missing children ever enrolled in
  school at all, and therefore do not show up in
  MES non-attendance and drop-out figures?

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DO Survey Samples
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Limitations of the survey

• There were three main limitations to the survey
• small sample size (if at all possible
  representative DO sample),
• no standard definition of dropouts in each
  country,
• semi-standardised survey instruments.
• Consequently, this cannot be considered a
  rigorous comparative survey.
• However, it has value as an exploratory study
  and it provides insights into an under-explored
  phenomenon from a perspective closer to those who
  feel it most.

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Dropouts common reasons

• Poverty
• Lack of motivation
• Family factors
• School climate
• Poor academic achievements

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Do you believe school guarantees a better
future?
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Would you prefer to attend school again?
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• International overview ( by Johanna Crighton) and
  country reports by each of the six NGO Policy
  Centres that include recommendations for local
  policy makers can be found at

http//www.epc.objectis.net/Projects/Drop-outs
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• It is not enough to measure the size of the
  problem of non-attendance or drop-out, or to
  count however accurately how many youngsters
  of compulsory education age are not in school.

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• The key point is that all these children should
  be in school and if they are not, where are
  they? And who are they?
• Why are they not where society intends them to
  be, for their own good as well as for the good of
  society?

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• Once we have a clearer understanding of these
  questions, we can start to think about answers
• answers that go beyond the simple responses of
  compulsory schooling laws, enforcement, and data
  collection on school attendance.

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Policy Challenges

• Study suggests that policy advocacy in relation
  to dropouts should focus on making school
  cultures supportive rather than punitive, and
  should promote initiatives that mitigate the
  effects of poverty in communities and families.

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• School Dropouts
• Different Faces in Different Countries

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Albania

• A child who has dropped out from school
• believe that school is no good for future
• be employed to help family
• have poorly motivated teachers
• have unemployed parents
• has a large family and have communication
  problems among members.

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Kazakhstan

• drop-out is a hidden problem in Kazakhstan
  (according to the official statistic there are
  only 0.2 percent children dropping out from the
  school system). Thus it is not considered on the
  national level and it is not a topic for broad
  discussion in society.
• For years of independence new groups of children
  at risk appeared street children, children
  from disadvantages families and oralmans
  (Kazakh families repatriate from China, Iran,
  Mongolia, Uzbekistan, etc), social orphans.

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Latvia

• Compulsory schooling is 9 Grades, but students,
  if not graduating, must sit at school until age
  of 18
• Most dropouts have problems in these subjects
  Math, Sciences, English, Latvian lng, and
  History.
• Parents of dropouts have low level of education.
• Parents are employed, but have low income.

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Slovakia

• The Slovak term for dropout relates just to
  children who finish compulsory education without
  finishing their primary education. Children
  registered but absent excessively are referred to
  as notorious truants.
• Transition from primary(9 years) to secondary
  school is the risky period for children who
  tend to leave school early. At risk children and
  children from socially disadvantaged family
  environments, especially Roma children, rarely
  reach secondary school and often finish
  compulsory schooling in lower grades of primary
  school.
• The issue of school dropouts is discussed very
  little, there is also a lack of data and
  insufficient school statistics related to the
  issue and factors leading to school dropouts.

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Mongolia

• Based on the results of the survey, the following
  are the most common reasons why children drop
  out. They are broadly categorized into reasons
  that are considered as policy focus areas and
  understudied areas.
• Policy Focus Areas
• Poverty/low income or lack of means of
  subsistence
• Child-labor related reasons such as herding, need
  to earn a living to help support the family, and
  need to take care of siblings or older members of
  the family
• Migration
• Lack of dormitories
• Teacher discrimination
• Systemic problems of the education system.

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Tajikistan

• Based on the results of the survey, the main
  reasons why students drop out of school are the
  effects of poor economic conditions, which drive
  children to work at an early age and therefore
  quit school. An external circumstance considered
  as another reason on why students drop out was
  the 1992-1997 civil war, which caused forced
  migration and rendered those who migrated as
  refugees.