Global Education Digest 2012 - International Reading Association

SECTION 3 / Early school leaving: Lost opportunities, lower potential
TABLE 1. How many children leave primary school before reaching the last grade?
Number and share of children entering the 1 st grade who will leave school early by sex and region,
2000 and 2010
Absolute number
Share
of world
total (%)
Dropout rate to the last grade of primary
education (%)
2000 2010 2010 1999 to 2000 2009 to 2010
REGION
MF (000) %F MF (000) %F MF MF M F MF M F
Arab States 1,126 47.6 1,004 49.7 3.2 17.6 17.4 17.8 12.9 12.5 13.4
Central and Eastern Europe 224 44.5 189 38.5 0.6 4.3 4.6 4.0 4.5 5.3 3.5
Central Asia 54 58.0 21 36.6 0.1 3.2 2.6 3.8 1.6 1.9 1.2
East Asia and the Pacific 3,366 44.8 2,999 42.4 9.6 9.2 9.7 8.6 9.3 10.1 8.3
Latin America and the
Caribbean
North America and
Western Europe
2,648 42.2 2,240 45.8 7.2 20.2 22.5 17.8 17.0 17.8 16.1
122 ** 43.5 ** … … … 1.3** 1.5 ** 1.2 ** … … …
South and West Asia 14,406 44.9 13,539 47.5 43.4 35.0 34.2 35.9 33.3 33.2 33.4
Sub-Saharan Africa 7,008 46.7 11,066 47.7 35.5 40.3 40.1 40.5 42.1 42.1 42.1
WORLD 28,955 45.2 31,207 46.9 100.0 22.1 22.6 21.6 23.2 23.5 22.8
Note:
The dropout rate to the last grade of primary education is defined as 100% minus the survival rate to the last grade of primary education.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics database.
absolute number of early school leavers occurred
almost entirely in one region: sub-Saharan Africa,
with its share of the world’s early leavers jumping
from 24% to 36%. But headcounts provide only part
of the story; the dropout rate (see Box 2) provides
a clearer indication of incidence among changing
regional populations.
Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest dropout rate,
which increased from 40% to 42%, meaning that
more than two in five children who started school
in 2009 would not reach the last grade of primary
education. In South and West Asia, the dropout
rate remained high at 35% in 1999 and 33% in
2009 – meaning that for every 100 children who
start primary school, 33 will leave before the last
grade. Latin America and the Caribbean had the
next highest dropout rate (17%), which fell by
3 percentage points since 1999. In Central and
Eastern Europe and in East Asia and the Pacific,
the dropout rate remained almost unchanged at
4% and 9% respectively between 1999 and 2009.
In the remaining regions, the dropout rate has
fallen over the past decade, especially in the Arab
States (from 18% to 13%).
At the regional level, there was little difference
between girls and boys leaving primary school early.
The dropout rate for girls was slightly lower than that
for boys in every region except the Arab States and
South and West Asia in 2009. There, the rate among
girls was slightly higher than for boys. However,
larger differences can be found at national and subnational
levels, where children at risk are often hidden
in the data.
While beyond the scope of this section, the problem
of early school leaving is also found at higher levels
of education, especially in more developed countries
where upper secondary education is usually
considered to be compulsory (see Box 3).
3.3 EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING BY REGION
How have regional and national patterns of early
school leaving changed over the past decade? This
discussion will focus on the three regions with the
greatest incidence of early school leaving: sub-
Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and Latin
America and the Caribbean.
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