Distance Education Programme on

Education Sector Planning

Module 3 – Unit 3
10-21 September 2012

Education sector diagnosis

Analyzing access, internal efficiency and equity in
education
 Unit 3
OVERVIEW

• What are issues in relation to access, internal

efficiency and equity?
• What is the difference between access and
participation?
• What does efficiency mean?
• What is understood by the term equity?
• What indicators can be used for the diagnosis?
• What are the limitations of some of these
indicators?
ACCESS
 Access - Issues

Issues
• Who needs education ?
• How many have access to it ?
• Who is excluded from it ? (A problem ?)
• Why ? (conditions of supply ? Demand factors ?)

Indicators
• Gross and net enrolment rates/admission rates, by age, gender, region, etc.
• Literacy rates, by gender, region etc.
• School-home distance, etc.
• No and % of out-of-school youth
• Etc.

Instruments
• Analysis of statistics (population census data; education statistics etc.) ;
surveys (household; school heads; other); consultations
Common reasons for low and inequitable access

Several factors play a role and they are

interrelated. A distinction can be made between:

reasons related to demand for schooling by

parents and children

reasons related to the supply of schooling

 Reasons related to demand

• Financial and economic factors:

 High direct costs of schooling (fees, uniform, transport etc)

 High opportunity/indirect costs: the child cannot go to work or

cannot take care of family members

• Parents’ perceptions:
 The parents are not interested in school
 The school offers content to which the parents are opposed
 Reasons related to demand - contd.
• Relevance-related factors:
 Inappropriate content: unrelated to job market
 Incapacity of the economy to provide jobs for the educated
 Inappropriate organization of the school: time-table, language etc

• Cultural factors:
 Parents oppose the content and values of the curriculum

• Quality factors:
 Child unfriendly pedagogy
 Poor quality of instruction due to poorly qualified teachers
 Reasons related to supply

Lack of education facilities

Lack of space (classes, seats) in the education facility
The nearest school is too far
School facilities have been damaged or occupied after a
natural disaster or conflict
 The school is of poor quality:
building is old and/or in disrepair after disaster or conflict
no toilet facilities
no separate toilet facilities for girls
no dormitory facilities for students whose home is far from school
 The school does not have enough resources like laboratories, play grounds, wells, canteen etc.
 Access and participation
Initial access has little meaning unless it results in:
 Secure enrolment, retention and regular attendance
 Progression through grades at appropriate ages
 Meaningful learning which has relevance
 Reasonable chances of transition to lower secondary
grades, especially where these are within the basic
education cycle
 More rather than less equitable opportunities to learn for
children from poorer households, especially girls, with less
variation in quality between schools

9
 Access and participation

ACCESS PARTICIPATION
Conceptually Focused on Focused on « system »
« population »
…access to school by Participation of school-
eligible population aged population in the
education system

Technically Admission rate Enrolment rate

Transition rate
Main access and participation indicators

ACCESS PARTICIPATION

• Net admission rate • Gross enrolment ratio

• Gross admission rate • Net enrolment ratio
• Transition rate • Completion rate
• % of over-aged • % of out of school
children youth
 Limitations of indicators
• Calculation require detailed demographic data (for example,
for different ages)
• Certain type of data are not available regularly (example:
Census every 10 years)
• The indicators on access and participation do not show the
pace at which pupils go through the system
• These indicators do not show the educational achievement
• International comparison needs to be made with caution
taking into consideration the context
INTERNAL EFFICIENCY
 Internal efficiency - Issues

Issues
• To what extent and at which pace do pupils/students
progress?
• What is the proportion of students promoted to the next
grade?
• What is the extent of repetition and dropout and which are
mostly affected groups?
• To what extent do those who enter the educational system
truly complete their studies and graduate?
• What is the actual ‘efficiency’ of the public resources spent
(on a given cycle)?
 Internal efficiency - Indicators

Indicators
• Promotion, repetition and drop-out rates
• Transition rates
• Survival rates
• Graduation rate
• Average student years required for completion of cycle

Instruments
• Pupil/student flow (cohort) analysis; research on main
causes of stated phenomena: analysis of data on educational
supply and studies on pupil performance and other aspects
of educational quality, on dropouts etc.
 Efficiency

“optimal relationship between input and

output”
– Achieve a targeted output with a minimum input
– Achieve a maximum output with a given input
 Efficiency in education
• Educational Output
external efficiency
- knowledge, skills, attitudes, passing the final exam,
passing the entrance exam of the next cycle, etc.
internal efficiency
- maximum number of pupils who complete the cycle
successfully within the prescribed period
 Efficiency in education
• Educational Input (pupil-year)
human resources
- school heads, teachers, school staff, etc.
material resources
- textbooks, classroom equipment, school
furniture, school building, etc.
 Flow of students
Drop-out during 2012

Enrolment in Grade 1
in 2012

Repetition for Grade 1 Promotion to Grade 2

in 2013 in 2013
Basic indicators for internal-efficiency
Cohort analysis based on dropout rates, promotion rate and repetition rate

Promotion rate

Repetition rate 100%

Drop-out rate
 Cohort
• Cohort -- a group of persons who jointly
experience a series of events over a period of
time
• School Cohort -- a group of pupils who enter the
first grade of a given cycle in the same school
year and subsequently experience promotion,
repetition, drop-out, or successful completion of
the final grade
 Assumptions in flow analysis
• no additional new entrants
• definition of the limit of the number of years
for repeating
• hypothesis of homogeneous flow behaviour
regardless of previous behavior
• flow rates remain the same through years
Other indicators requiring cohort analysis

• Wastage ratio
• Co-efficient of efficiency
• Survival rates
• Average # of years taken by a graduate
• % of wastage accounted for by drop-out
• % of wastage accounted for by repetition
 Wastage ratio example
• Ratio between the real Unit Cost (UC) per graduate
and the ideal UC per graduate.
• If the real UC = 5 and the ideal UC = 4
=> Wastage ratio=1.25 (would cost 1.25 times as much
as the ideal situation)
• This means
– In order to produce 1000 graduates, it would costs 5000
pupil-years.
– If we spend 4000 pupil-years, we could produce 800
graduates.
 Coefficient of efficiency
• Inverse of wastage ratio
• Interpretation – “how much efficiency is there in the
actual situation” compared to the ideal situation.

• Example: If the wastage ratio is: 1.25

• The coefficient of efficiency is: 1/1.25= 0.8

• Interpretation: The actual situation is about 80%

efficient compared to the ideal situation.
 Further discussions

• Pros and cons of automatic promotion

• More flexible education systems (grade
skipping, re-entering)
• Definition of « wastage »
• Notion of learning achievement
• Relation between progression/efficiency and
learning achievement
EQUITY
 Equity - Issues
Issues
• Are there population groups (by region, ethnic group, gender, income
etc.) who
• have lower participation rates?
• receive education of lower quality?
• than others?
• If so, why ?
• Socio-cultural factors
• Resource allocation
• other supply factors?

Instruments
• Analysis of statistics; household surveys; analysis of public expenditure on
education (by level etc.)
 Equity - Indicators

• All access and participation indicators can be

disaggregated to measure inequalities by
gender, age, region, etc.
• Ratios are common indicators used to
measure inequalities
– For example the Gender Parity Index (GPI) is the
ratio between GER of girls / GER of boys
 Equity of access in education
• Can be examined in analyzing the disparities in access to education
of the following groups:

– Boys vs. girls

– Students with physical or mental handicaps
– Across socio-economic groups
– Across identity groups
– Students in crisis situations (i.e. refugees/IDPs - victims of natural
disaster or conflict)
– Nomadic populations
– Social minorities
 Equity in education
• Can be examined in analyzing the disparities in access to
education according to place of origin:

– Rural vs. urban

– Across administrative entities (regions, states, districts, etc.)

– Geographic zones with specific climate-related challenges (drought, flooding,

earthquake, etc.)

– Etc.
 Policies for equity in access to education

• Measures implemented under equity policies rely

on the identification of the causes of disparities
and identified "injustices". They are mainly
operating at two levels: at the level of the offer
and level of the demand for education
 Policies for equity in access to education

Example: Fighting disparities between boys and girls

• Policies linked to the offer.
– Cause : absence of separate latrines for girls and boys = >
construction of separated latrines
– Cause : high cost of school fees = > free schooling
– Cause : distance to school => more relevant school
mapping
– Cause: low performance of girls due to the absence of
female teachers => measures to encourage the
recruitment of female teachers
– Etc.
 Policies for equity in access to education

Example: Fighting disparities between boys and girls

• Policies linked to the demand.
– Causes: prejudice on the cultural model-mediated by
schools = > reform the curricula to make them more
relevant and raise awareness among the population
– Cause : opportunity cost => strengthen the relevance
of curricula and improve the external effectiveness
of the education system
THANK YOU