Global Education Digest 2012 - International Reading Association

SECTION 5 / The costs of school failure
High repetition and dropout rates are also associated
with inadequate levels of basic learning achievement
in reading and mathematics. Indeed, results from
SACMEQ III in Southern and Eastern Africa showed
that most countries with poor pupil performance
in reading and mathematics (e.g. Lesotho, Malawi,
Uganda and Zambia) shared the same characteristics
with regard to repetition and early school leaving
(Hungi, 2011). This is also true for low-performing
primary education systems in Central Africa (PASEC,
2010), namely Chad and the Congo. In Latin America
and the Caribbean (LLECE, 2006), low levels of
pupil performance at the primary level were found in
Guatemala and Nicaragua – which have high rates of
grade repetition and early school leaving. At the same
time, these large-scale learning achievement studies
showed that countries with high levels of pupil
performance (for example, Botswana, Costa Rica,
Mauritius and Tanzania) also had more moderate
repetition and dropout rates.
A wide range of different factors can influence levels
of student learning and, consequently, lead to grade
repetition or early school leaving. Which factors
are most relevant and how they interact with other
factors tend to vary by context – between countries
or within population groups (urban/rural, rich/poor) in
a single country.
Previous sections of this report have demonstrated
the importance of student, family and school/
classroom factors for grade repetition and early
school leaving. For example, high rates of repetition
and early school leaving have been associated with:
pupil’s age, gender, motivation, household income,
child labour, command of the instruction language,
educational attainment/illiteracy of parents, urban/
rural location, as well as the educational resources of
the school, instruction conditions, teaching quality and
non-standard assessment of student performance.
It is important to note that these are just some of the
determining factors related to the education system
and family background of the pupils.
From a gender perspective, UIS data show that,
on average, boys are more likely to repeat a grade
in primary education than girls. On the other hand,
girls – typically from low-income households or rural
areas in sub-Sahara Africa, for example – are slightly
more likely to leave school early mainly due to their
responsibilities for the care of younger children, the
gender division of labour in the household economy
or early marriage (Ndaruhutse, 2008). In such cases,
high repetition rates would not explain early school
leaving, nor would learning achievement or schoolrelated
factors. Consequently, measures to enhance
learning in this context may not directly address the
causes of early school leaving.
5.2 GRADE REPETITION AND EARLY
SCHOOL LEAVING ARE COSTLY, BUT TO
WHAT EXTENT?
A number of studies have considered grade
repetition and early school leaving from the
perspective of inefficiencies in the use of resources
(UNESCO/IBE, 1971; UNESCO, 1976, 1980, 1998,
2005). Every pupil who leaves school without
completing the full course of compulsory education
or achieving the learning objectives (e.g. foundation
skills in reading, writing and numeracy) represents
lost investments in addition to lost opportunities
at the level of the individual and society. A pupil
who repeats a grade consumes an additional year
of educational resources, potentially limiting the
capacity of the education system, increasing class
size and the cost per graduate. Yet, in certain
contexts, the pedagogical effects of repetition can
increase the repeater’s learning and labour market
productivity.
There are two broad approaches for estimating the
costs of repetition and/or early school leaving. One
focuses on the direct costs and the other takes
into account indirect costs. Direct costs reflect how
much resources are used in education systems
and, thus, are typically based on per-student or
per-graduate costs. The most basic approach is
simply to multiply the number of repeaters by perstudent
cost – though this can overstate the actual
resources required to accommodate repeaters
in the education system. Based on the cost per
54