Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

REACHING THE MARGINALIZEDMeasuring marginalization in educationindividual and group disadvantage. The data aredrawn from Demographic and Health Surveysand Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys coveringeighty developing countries, including thirty-eightlow-income countries. 2 Data from these sourceshave been reconstituted to concentrate on keydimensions of education marginalization. Theanalysis presented in this chapter focuses onthree core areas:The bottom line: education poverty. Themarginalized typically fall below a socialminimum threshold for years of education.To measure absolute deprivation, this analysistakes four years as the minimum required togain the most basic literacy and numeracy skills.People aged 17 to 22 who have fewer than fouryears of education can be thought of as beingin ‘education poverty’. People with fewer thantwo years can be thought of as living in‘extreme education poverty’.The bottom 20%. Time spent in education isone indicator for the distribution of opportunity.Using the DME data set, relative marginalizationis measured by organizing individuals aged 17to 22 according to the number of years theyhave accumulated in education. The analysisthen uses the results to identify the individualand group characteristics of the bottom 20%– the 20% with the fewest years of education.The quality of education. Acquiring thelearning skills that people need to escapemarginalization means more than justspending time at school. What children actuallylearn depends on a wide range of factors,including the quality of education and homecircumstances. The analysis looks atmarginalization in learning achievementusing national and international evidence.Patterns of marginalization reflect underlyinginequalities in opportunity. One advantage ofthe DME data set is that it provides detailedinformation on individual and group characteristicsof the marginalized, including wealth, gender,location, ethnicity and language. That informationprovides insight into the weight of ‘inheritedcircumstances’. These represent conditionsover which people have little control but whichplay an important role in shaping theiropportunities for education and wider life chances(Bourguignon et al., 2007; Ferreira and Gignoux,2008; World Bank, 2005f).Measuring marginalization is not a narrowlydefined technical matter. It is an integral partof the development of strategies for inclusiveeducation. The DME data set helps increasethe visibility of the marginalized and provides aresource that can help inform policy design andpublic debate. Summary tables are presentedat the end of this section and the full data setis available in electronic form.The scale of marginalizationFalling below the minimum threshold —education povertyTime spent in education is one of the mostimportant determinants of life chances in allsocieties. There is no internationally agreedbenchmark for education deprivation analogousto the US$2.00 and US$1.25 a day internationalpoverty thresholds. However, people with fewerthan four years of schooling are unlikely to havemastered basic literacy or numeracy skills, letalone built a foundation for lifelong learning.Those with fewer than two years are likely to faceextreme disadvantages in many areas of theirlives. Of course, learning achievement ultimatelydepends as much on the quality of education ason time spent in school. But the four year and twoyear thresholds are bottom lines that this analysistreats as indicators for ‘education poverty’ and‘extreme education poverty’, respectively.Figure 3.1 uses these thresholds to provide asnapshot of education deprivation for sixty-threemostly low-income countries. It covers areference group of young adults aged 17 to 22.Even taking into account over-age attendance, thisis far enough beyond the standard primary schoolcompletion age to provide a credible picture ofwho has completed four years of education.Three broad themes emerge. The first is thescale of global deprivation and inequality. In richcountries, the vast majority of young adults in thisage range will have accumulated ten to fifteenyears of education. In twenty-two of the countriescovered by the DME data, 30% or more of 17-to 22-year-olds have fewer than four years ofeducation; in eleven of these countries, the figurerises to 50%. Nineteen of the twenty-two countriesare in sub-Saharan Africa, with Guatemala,Pakistan and Morocco making up the remainder.The second theme concerns cross-countrydifferences. On average, as one would expect,Measuringmarginalization isan integral part ofthe developmentof strategies forinclusive education2. Demographic and HealthSurvey data are collected aspart of the MEASURE DHSproject implemented by ICFMacro. Seehttp://www.measuredhs.com/.Multiple Indicator ClusterSurveys are collected byUNICEF. Seehttp://www.unicef.org/statistics/index_24302.html.139