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University of Southampton Research Repository Eprints Soton University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES DIVISION OF SOCIAL STATISTICS AND DEMOGRAPHY School Attendance at Basic Education in West Africa by Mamusu Kamanda Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES Doctor of Philosophy SCHOOL ATTENDANACE AT BASIC EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA by Mamusu Kamanda The proportion of children entering primary school at the stipulated age in 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa was 57%. For the same year, the net attendance ratios for primary and lower secondary education were 76% and 47% respectively. These figures are correlated in that delayed school enrolment increases the risk of dropout which in turn shortens the school life expectancy for children. These observations are the motivation behind this research. By writing this thesis, three substantive research questions have been explored: (1) what is Sierra Leone’s progress towards achieving universal basic education (2) what are the determinants of school attendance at basic education in West Africa and (3) does living in a community with more educated mothers enhance children’s school attendance at basic education. Three countries have been used: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana. Sierra Leone and Liberia have been used to reflect poor and post-conflict states with transitional and premature education systems respectively. Ghana is representative of middle income and politically stable countries with more advanced education systems in the region. The most recent Demographic and Health Survey for the three countries are used for analysis. Four empirical chapters are presented. The first chapter addresses research question 1. It applies simple statistical analyses to United Nations indicators for evaluating progress towards universal education. The second and third chapters answer the second research question and the final chapter answers the third research question. These three chapters employ multilevel statistical techniques to model the determinants of primary and junior secondary school attendance. The second empirical chapter focuses on the interaction between household and community poverty with the aim of investigating whether the attendance of poor children suffers more than affluent children by residing in a poor community. The third empirical chapter explores the determinants of junior secondary school attendance with the aim of deducing whether there are significant differences between post-conflict countries and more stable countries. The final chapter focuses on the relationship between mothers’ education and school attendance at basic education, arguing that living in a community with a high proportion of more educated mothers enhances the likelihood that a child will attend school, irrespective of the child’s background. The results from the first chapter show that the realisation of UBE is distant in Sierra Leone. There has been a decline in the number of children entering primary education; junior secondary education has however doubled although it remains low at 21%. Children from the poorest households are the most excluded from school followed by rural children and girls. The results from the second empirical chapter showed that there is a significant interaction between household and community poverty where poor children living in poor communities experience a greater depreciation in their probability of attending school than more affluent children who live in the same deprived environment in Sierra Leone. No such interaction was found in Liberia or Ghana. In the third empirical chapter, the sex of the child, agricultural livelihood within a community, household wealth and area of residence were significant in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Ghana, sex of the household head and maternal orphanhood were significant. The hypothesis of the relationship between mothers’ community education and children’s school attendance for the final empirical chapter was confirmed. i ii Contents List of Tables: .................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................................... ix Declaration of Authorship................................................................................................................. xi Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... xiii Definitions and Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... xv 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Statement of the problem .................................................................................................... 1 1.2. What is the progress towards achieving universal basic education in Sierra Leone? .......... 4 1.3. What are the determinants of school attendance at basic education in West Africa?........ 6 1.4. Does living in a community with more educated mothers enhance children’s school attendance? .................................................................................................................................... 10 1.5. Structure of thesis ............................................................................................................... 13 2. Literature review ...................................................................................................................... 15 2.1. Assessing Education for All ............................................................................................... 15 2.1.1. Universal Primary Education ....................................................................................... 19 2.2. Determinants of children’s school attendance .................................................................... 26 2.2.1. Demand side ............................................................................................................... 28 2.2.2. Supply side determinants ........................................................................................... 46 2.3. School attendance and mothers’ education ....................................................................... 52 3. Data ............................................................................................................................................ 61 3.1. Demographic and Health Surveys ....................................................................................... 62 3.2. Integrated and Household Survey ...................................................................................... 66 3.3. Study population ................................................................................................................. 67 3.4. Response variables ............................................................................................................. 69 3.5. Explanatory variables .......................................................................................................... 70 3.6. Limitations of data .............................................................................................................. 74 4. What is the progress towards achieving universal basic education in Sierra Leone? ........ 79 4.1. Basic education policies and the state of basic education in Sierra Leone ........................ 83 4.2. Data .................................................................................................................................... 86 4.2.1. Demographic and Health Surveys ............................................................................... 86 4.2.2. Integrated Household Survey ..................................................................................... 89 4.3. Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 89 4.4. Results ............................................................................................................................... 90 iii 4.4.1. Have primary and junior secondary school attendance increased significantly since the introduction of universal basic education? ............................................................................ 90 4.4.2. Are the differences in school attendance ratios between rural/urban areas as well as the poorest/richest households more pronounced
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