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48 / CHAPTER 2
2
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
5. Cohort completion
rates following this
approach are computed
as the product of the
proportion of graduates
from primary school
(computed as the number
of graduates divided by
the percentage of new
entrants in the last grade)
and survival rates to the
last grade.
%
100
80
60
40
20
0
Figure 2.8: Survival rates to the last grade of primary education, 1998/1999 and 2001/2002
Survival rates (%)
100
80
60
40
20
0
Sub-Saharan Africa
Malawi
Equat. Guinea
Chad
Rwanda
Uganda
Mozambique
Ethiopia
Madagascar
Congo
Gabon
Kenya
Swaziland
S. Tome/Principe
Benin
Lesotho
Cameroon
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Togo
Burundi
Mali
Niger
U. R. Tanzania
Guinea
Senegal
Botswana
Cape Verde
Namibia
Eritrea
Zambia
2001 1998
Note: Only countries with a survival rate below 95% in at least one year are included. See source table for detailed country notes.
Source: Statistical annex, Table 7.
Figure 2.8 shows that there has been limited
change in survival rates since 1998, although
significant improvement took place in several
countries, e.g. Cambodia, the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, Namibia, Rwanda and
Zambia. On the other hand, sharp decreases
took place in Cameroon, Chad, Malawi and
Papua New Guinea.
School completion
UPE will be achieved only when all children
have access to and complete primary school.
Estimating completion rates raises
methodological issues; indeed, there is no
consensus on the very notion of completion.
Should one consider as having completed primary
Figure 2.9: Survival rate to the last grade of primary education and percentage
of primary school completers, selected countries, 2001
Survival rates to last grade
Percentage of primary school completers
Mauritania
Benin
Cameroon
Ghana
Togo
Burundi
Nicaragua
Niger
Colombia
Guinea
Ecuador
Venezuela
Bolivia
Cape Verde
Panama
Costa Rica
Mongolia
Kyrgyzstan
Mauritius
Belarus
Tajikistan
Sources: Statistical annex, Table 7; UNESCO Institute for Statistics database.
Arab States
Mauritania
Yemen
Morocco
Sudan
Lebanon
Saudi Arabia
Syrian A. R.
U. A. Emirates
Tunisia
Algeria
Oman
Kuwait
Bahrain
education all pupils who reach the last grade of
primary education, or only those students who
complete it successfully? And how should
differences among countries in the definition of
‘success’ be handled?
Moreover, most completion indicators
currently available are gross rates that include all
children of a cohort and do not distinguish
between children who do not complete primary
education because they had no access to it in the
first place and those who were enrolled but failed
to reach or complete the last grade. Only the
latter are relevant to an assessment of the
internal efficiency of a school system; as with the
computation of survival rates, it is preferable to
focus on children who did have access to primary
education and to estimate how many of them
successfully completed it. 5
Figure 2.9 thus displays, for selected
countries, survival rates to the last grade of
primary schooling and the proportion of students
in that grade who completed it in 2001. In most
countries, not all pupils who reach the last grade
of primary education complete it. This
phenomenon is particularly marked in sub-
Saharan Africa. While both school retention and
completion often reflect the state of education
quality, in some countries the latter may also
indicate that strong selection policies are being
applied because the number of places available in
lower secondary education is limited. Therefore,
improving the quality of education and expanding
access to secondary education are conditions for
UPE to be fully achieved.