Global Education Digest 2012 - International Reading Association

SECTION 2 / Learning achievement: Differing policies and practices regarding grade repetition
As illustrated in Figure 13, repetition rates for poor or
rural pupils are at least five percentage points higher
than those for rich or urban pupils in 13 countries.
Moreover, these disparities are compounded by a
gap in attendance rates in 10 countries. In Belize,
Cambodia, Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda,
Swaziland and Uganda, poor children are not only
less likely to attend school but more likely to repeat
as well. In Cameroon and Togo, it is rural children
who face the largest disparities in attendance and
repetition (World Bank, 2003).
The highest repetition rates are found in Malawi,
Rwanda and Togo, where about one in three
primary education pupils repeat a grade. In Rwanda
and Malawi, pupils from poor households are about
50% more likely to repeat than those from wealthy
households. Repetition rates in urban areas are
higher than in rural areas in Burkina Faso, which
is an exception to the usual pattern among the
countries shown in Figure 13 (Coulidiati-Kielem,
2007).
It is important to note some other exceptions.
Poverty and rural location are not linked to
significantly higher repetition rates at the primary
level in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Namibia, Niger and
Sierra Leone. Moreover, household income is not
linked to disparities in GARs in these countries: the
GAR of poor and rich children differ by less than 10
percentage points.
2.6 INEQUITY TENDS TO DECLINE AS
CHILDREN MAKE THE TRANSITION TO
SECONDARY EDUCATION
Figure 14 compares the repetition rates in primary
(ISCED 1), lower secondary (ISCED 2) and upper
secondary (ISCED 3) education in sub-Saharan
Africa, based on data from 29 countries that
represented 84% of the primary school-age
population in that region in 2010. For each level of
education and group of disaggregation, the graph
highlights the mean repetition rate across the 29
countries. 8 National values are represented by hollow
grey markers that surround the regional average.
Repetition rates that exceed 30% are not shown
in the graph but were taken into account in the
calculation of mean values.
In general, repetition rates tend to decrease by level
of education – with the average rate for all children
falling from 12% at the primary level to 10% for lower
and upper secondary education. Boys are somewhat
more likely to repeat a grade at the primary level,
but this small gap closes at the secondary level of
education.
Geographic location and household wealth account
for far greater disparities in repetition rates than
gender. Yet, these disparities tend to decrease
as children advance from primary to secondary
education. The average repetition rate in primary
education is 13% in rural areas and 10% in urban
areas. At the lower secondary level, the repetition rates
for the two groups are 11% and 9%, respectively, and
at the upper secondary level the difference between
the repetition rates of urban and rural pupils shrinks to
less than one percentage point. 9
The biggest gap exists between children from the
poorest and richest household wealth quintiles: 14%
of primary school pupils from the poorest households
repeat a grade, compared to 10% of those from the
richest households. At the lower secondary level of
education, the gap between the two groups is much
smaller: 11% of the poorest children repeat a grade
compared to 9% of the richest children. At the upper
secondary level, the repetition rate of children from the
richest households is 10%, which is the same as at
the primary level. Very few children from the poorest
households enrol in upper secondary education, so
8 Mean repetition rates are not weighted by each country’s population. The
focus of the analysis is thus on countries, giving each country the same
weight, and not on the school-age population in the region.
9 In theory, the repetition rates for the total student population in the first
panel of Figure 14 should lie between the urban and rural repetition rates
in the third panel. However, this is not observed for the upper secondary
level of education, because the repetition rates by location and household
wealth were calculated from a smaller group of countries due to limitations
of data, including small sample size for some groups of disaggregation.
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