Global Out-Of-School Rates: Primary Education
Introduction
What is the out-of-school rate?
The out-of-school rate is defined as the proportion of children and young people in the official age range for the given level of education who are not enrolled in pre-primary, primary, secondary, or higher levels of education.
According to the United Nations Children Fund(UNICEF), “Access to primary education is a basic right of every child. An effective primary education can build a solid foundation and open avenues for future success. With its profound implications on both the individual and society, primary education plays a crucial role in reducing extreme poverty and promoting social changes. The Sustainable Development Agenda acknowledges the importance of primary education in Goal 4 which stipulates that by 2030, the world should ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, including a target on universal access to primary education. Though there are varying standards, primary education is typically designed for children 6 to 11 years of age.”
It is believed that the Sub-Saharan region has the highest out-of-school rates of all countries in the world. Is this true? Is it also true that only children from rural communities miss primary education? The author hopes to get answers by analyzing this dataset.
Dataset
The dataset reports the Out-of-school children rate of Primary School children across 202 countries. It was first obtained from Kaggle.com and then replaced with an updated version downloaded from the UNICEF website. The data had 17 columns:
1. ISO3(Internationally recognized country code designated by International Organization for Standardization to all countries in the world)
2. Country
3. Region(regional groupings of countries. They include:
EAP East Asia and the Pacific
ECA Europe and Central Asia
LAC Latin America and the Caribbean
MENA Middle East and North Africa
NA North America
SA South Asia
SSA Sub-Saharan Africa)4. Sub-region(sub-regional groupings of countries. Read more here. They include:
EAP East Asia and the Pacific
EECA Eastern Europe and Central Asia
ESA Eastern and Southern Africa
LAC Latin America and the Caribbean
MENA Middle East and North Africa
NA North America
SA South Asia
SSA Sub-Saharan Africa
WCA West and Central Africa)5. Development Regions (Economic developmental stage of the country)
6. Total (Total % of children out of school)
7. Female (% of females out of school)
8. Male (% of males out of school)
9. Rural (% of children out of school and resides in Rural areas)
10. Urban (% of children out of school and resides in Urban areas)
11. Poorest (% of children that fall in the Poorest Wealth quintile)
12. Second (% of children that fall in the Second Wealth quintile)
13. Middle (% of children that fall in the Middle strata of the Wealth quintile)
14. Fourth (% of children that fall in the fourth strata of the Wealth quintile)
15. Richest (% of children that fall in the Richest strata of the Wealth quintile)
16. Data Source
17. Time Period (the year(s) in which the data collection (e.g. survey interviews) took place.)
Data Cleaning
I cleaned the data following the steps below:
Added two columns to write the region and sub-region in full.
Added 10 new columns to convert total, gender, location and wealth quintile to percentage.
Searched for duplicate, but no duplicate was found.
Converted to table.
Summarized with pivot table.
Data Analysis
In this analysis, I answered the following questions:
Which countries have the highest out-of-school rate?
Which Region has the highest out-of-school rate?
Is the highest out-of-school rate in the least developed countries?
Are all the out-of-school children from rural areas?
What is the proportion of female to male out-of-school rate?
Which countries have the highest out-of-school rate?
Represented as “Countries with the Highest Out-of-School Rates” on the dashboard.
We can see above that except for Afghanistan, which is in the South Asia region, the nine other countries on this list are Sub-Saharan. This shows that, to date, Sub-Saharan Africa still has the highest number of primary school-age children out of school, as high as 72% in South Sudan.
Which Region has the highest out-of-school rate?
Represented as “Out-of-School Rate by Region” on the dashboard.
The treemap above aligns with the bar chart for countries. It shows 74% of the global out-of-school children are in Africa.
Is the highest out-of-school rate in the least developed countries?
Represented as “Out-of-School Rate by Development Level” on the dashboard.
The chart above shows that the answer to the question asked is positive. Of the total out-of-school rate globally, 77% are in the least developed countries, which the United Nations described as “low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development.”
Are all the out-of-school children from rural areas?
Represented by “Residence of Out-of-school Children ” on the dashboard.
Contrary to the view that all out-of-school children live in rural areas, the chart above shows that a good percentage, sometimes as high as half of school children, live in urban areas.
What is the proportion of female to male out-of-school rate?
Represented as “Out-of-School Rate by Gender” on the dashboard.
We see above that the female out-of-school rate is higher than the males across the board. However, asides from Afghanistan which is the only Asian country on the list that has an almost 50% difference, all other countries on the list are closing the disparity gap.
Data Visualization
I put all five charts into a dashboard to enhance easy understanding of the data and added slicers to enhance easy view and modification. View here for better experience.
Insights
Of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of 6–11 years (UN primary education age, varies across countries) out of school. Although UNESCO and many NGOs have made efforts in recent years, all working towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 4, awareness is still essential to help parents, especially those in rural areas, to see the importance of education. If these parents, who had no access to education, don’t get the correct exposure and help they need, we will probably continue telling the same old tales by 2030.
Recommendations
Everyone should, in their own capacity, get involved in reducing the number of children roaming the street when they should be in school. Doing as little as raising awareness in our neighbourhoods, sharing posts on social media and donating to the cause when we get the opportunity to will help us reduce these outrageous numbers one child at a time. In case you don’t know any NGOs, organizations like TheBlackGirlsDream and TeensTrustFoundation focus on helping more African children get access to quality education. You can check them out online and see how you can get involved.
Conclusion
I am passionate about children getting a quality education, so this dataset piqued my interest the moment I saw it. However, it saddens my heart that there are more kids than I can imagine without access to education. I am sharing this hoping more of you get aware and spread the news. Let’s get more African children in school.
