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Universal Primary Education Program and Educational Outcomes in Rwanda

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Universal Primary Education Program and Educational Outcomes in Rwanda Master Degree Project in Economics Universal Primary Education Program and Educational Outcomes in Rwanda Alexandre Nshunguyinka Supervisor: Nadine Ketel Master Degree Project No. 2016:163 Graduate School Universal Primary Education Program and Educational Outcomes in Rwanda Author: Alexandre Nshunguyinka Supervisor: Nadine Ketel, PhD In fulfillment of MSc in Economics, 2016 19th September, 2016 Abstract To evaluate the impact of the” Universal Primary Education” (UPE) policy on primary schooling outcomes in Rwanda, which was adopted in 2003 and consists of free school fees to enroll in primary education, I merge two cross-sectional surveys, being EICV 2000/01 and EICV 2005/06 collected before and after the onset of the UPE respectively. The identification strategy uses linear probability model for completion and attendance in primary education with age and region fixed effect and also with a combination of the use of interaction terms regression. Also given that advanced age at school entry which has been historically associated with early primary school dropout, I check whether the enactment of the UPE leads to delayed enrollment in primary school in Rwanda. I find that UPE has increased overall attendance and especially for the poor children. In contrast, the completion in primary school decreases in the post-UPE but I find no evidence of the UPE effect on poor children to complete primary education. I also find that UPE program has increased late enrolment in primary education and which might be the reason behind the negative effect of the UPE on completion in primary school. In conclusion, I argue that UPE is prone to be a good policy but needs some complementary policies such as free lunch program, subsidizing uniforms to retain children in primary school until they finish. The results are robust to the use of binary logistic regression estimates. Copyright © 2016 Alexandre Nshuguyinka. All rights reserved Keywords: Universal Primary Education Program; Primary school attendance; Primary school completion; Delayed enrollment; Rwanda JEL Classification: I22, I28, I38 i Acknowledgements: First of all, thanks be to God for achieving my goal. Second, I honestly owe Nadine Ketel a great debt of the gratitude for her enthusiastic and insightful guidance throughout the project. Furthermore, I would like also to extend my appreciations to my family, mother, brothers, and sisters for always being beside me from the very start to the end of my pursuit. Also, great thanks to the Swedish Institute (SI) for granting me a scholarship to undertake this master of economics. I am also grateful to Dr. Nkurunziza Emmanuel who provided me with datasets that I have used for this master thesis. I finally thank my lecturers, employees in the economics department at Graduate School, Vianney, Martin, Josephine as well as my classmates for your encouragement and good discussions throughout my master’s program. Your great support will always come in my mind. May God bless you all. ii Table of Contents I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 II. EDUCATION SECTOR IN RWANDA: Comparative Review .......................................... 3 II.1. Rwandan education policy background ............................................................................... 3 II.2. The 1998 education policy review: Recovery and development ......................................... 5 II.3. UPE in Rwanda: Analytical review ..................................................................................... 7 III. EXISTING EMPIRICAL EVIDENCES: Critical review ................................................... 9 III.1. Theoretical framework ....................................................................................................... 9 III.2. Evidence on the UPE in other countries........................................................................... 11 IV. KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS, DATA AND METHODOLOGY ............................... 17 IV.1. Key Research Questions .................................................................................................. 17 IV.2. Data .................................................................................................................................. 17 IV.2.1.Household Survey Data ..................................................................................................... 18 IV.3. Methodology .................................................................................................................... 23 IV.3.1. Empirical Specification .................................................................................................... 24 VI.3.2. Delimitations, Potential Problems and Mitigation............................................................ 29 V. EMPIRICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................. 31 V.1. Attendance patterns in primary education ......................................................................... 31 V.2. Delayed enrollment ........................................................................................................... 35 V.3. Completion patterns in primary education ........................................................................ 38 V.4. Robustness Check.............................................................................................................. 41 VI. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS ......................................................... 43 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 45 iii List of tables Table 1: Estimated cost in primary education per person, 1998 ..................................................... 6 Table 2: Data description by gender ............................................................................................. 18 Table 3: The role of age and the time of exposure to UPE : Completion ..................................... 19 Table 4: Descriptive statistics for attendance in primary education ............................................. 20 Table 5:Descriptive statistics for Completion in primary school ................................................. 20 Table 6:The effect of the UPE on attendace in primary education ............................................... 31 Table 7:The effect of the UPE on attendance by the poor ............................................................ 34 Table 8:Regression results for the delayed enrollment in primary school after the UPE in 2003.36 Table 9:Beseline model for completion ........................................................................................ 38 Table 10:Regression results for the effect of the UPE on completion by the poor ...................... 40 iv List of acronyms UPE: Universal Primary Education MINEDUC: Ministry Education in Rwanda MINECOFIN: Ministry of Economic Planning and Finance IMF: International Monetary Fund EICV: Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages or IHLCS: Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey MDGs: Millennium Development Goals UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNECA: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa ADB or AFDB: African Development Bank GDP: Gros Domestic Product SFC: Security and Future Commision PRA: Participatory Rural Appraisal FARG: Fond d’assistance de rescapes du Genocide TTCs: Teacher Training Colleges OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OED: Operations Evaluation Department WFP: United Nations World Food Program v ” And if you think education is expensive, wait until you see how much ignorance costs in the 21st century.” President Barack Obama, 2013 I. INTRODUCTION The development of human capital in Sub-Saharan African countries is still an important issue in development economics. Usually, the development of human capital starts with education. Many least developed countries are still struggling to build up their human capital through making education more accessible for all people. Particularly, the Rwandan human capital stock deteriorated massively after the Genocide against Tutsi and war in 1994. Due to the genocide, more than 800000 mostly young and educated people died and many others were left injured (inactive). Besides, due to the exposure to the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, there is a decline of 18.3 percent among children to complete primary education. This indicates how the Rwandan human capital was spoiled by that tragedy (see Richard et al. 2008, Agüero et al. 2012). Furthermore, owing to this issue of education in developing countries, Rwanda included, the prime target of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 is to reduce the number of uneducated people among African youth. This converges to 2015 as the target year for all children in the world to complete primary school, and for boys and girls to have equal access to education at all levels (MINEDUC, 2003). In the past ten years, several Sub-Saharan African countries, including Rwanda, have instituted measures aimed at this goal by eliminating primary school fees in government-aided (public) schools and this is referred to as Universal Primary Education (UPE) program. The goal of my study is to evaluate the impacts that the universal primary education policy might have had on schooling outcomes in Rwanda. This is very important for the case of Rwanda because, in
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