GENDER DISPARITY IN ENROLLMENT AND DROPOUT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION: THE CASE OF DEHANA WEREDA, AMHARA NATIONAL REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA.

Abstract

The study examined gender disparity in enrolment and dropout situation of primary school aged children of Dehana Wereda of Wag Himera Zone in Amhara Region located at 801 Km North of Addis Ababa. In the Wereda even though recent trends of enrolment and dropout are encouraging a large number of children, majority being girls, are still out of school. The specific objectives were to assess the existing gender based enrolment and dropout in primary education and to identify the major economic, cultural and parental factors in enrolment and dropout in primary education. A random sampling method was followed to select the PAs and household heads of enrolled, not enrolled and dropout categories of children proportionally for the study. Based on this, the necessary data were collected from a total of 150 household heads where in 116 were male headed and 34 were female headed and 150 primary school aged children in the selected households of the three categories. Pre-tested structured interview schedule was used for collecting the essential data and group discussion and personal observation were used to crosscheck the data collected through formal survey and also to generate additional contextual data. The data were analyzed using methods descriptive and econometrics. The logit model results revealed that the decision of enrolling and dropping out children from school were determined by a variety of factors. Birth order of the child, perceived costs of schooling, sexual harassment, lack of personal safety, presence of female role models, number of total children in the household, household heads’ attitude towards children’s education, household heads’ level of aspiration on children education, size of livestock holding and early marriage had a significant influence decision of enrolment of children to school, whereas households’ age, education level of the household, alternative labour use, social participation, cosmopoliteness, size of farm land holding and occupation of the head did not significantly affect the decision of sending children to school. With regard to dropout situation, education level of the household, birth order of the child, school distance, perceived costs of schooling, alternative labour use, lack of personal safety, presence of female role models, number of total children in household, level of aspiration, size of livestock and early marriage had a significant influence dropout situation, whereas, age of the household head, sexual harassment, household attitude towards children’s education, social participation, cosmopoliteness, and size of farm land did not significantly influence the decision made by household head to withdraw children out of school. Therefore, policy should address limited overall enrolment of school aged children and gender disparities in access to enrolment and constraining economic, cultural/traditional, parental and school factors. In general, lowering school distance, improving the rights and status of girls to primary education through legal actions, improving parents’ level of attitude towards xiii children’s education and diversifying the households occupation are essential to improve the provision of education at all levels to meet the millennium goal of universal education through improving access and reducing dropping out situations and disparities among girls and boys.