Key Research Questions and Propositions

CREATE seeks to explore five key clusters of questions.

• What are current patterns of access and exclusion, who are currently excluded from basic education at different stages, and why are they excluded?
  
  
• What strategies are most effective in meeting the basic educational needs of those who are excluded? To what extent are alternative forms of service delivery viable?
  
  
• What options are available to improve progression, completion and transition rates? How can drop before primary completion be reduced? How can re-entry of drop-outs be eased?
  
  
• What options exist to maintain and improve transition rates into lower secondary grades in pro-poor ways? What effects do declining transition rates have on primary completion?
  
  
• What are the political, social and economic conditions under which EFA has been achieved? Where progress has faltered what are the reasons for this? How has expanded access had an impact on social mobility and the intergenerational transmission of poverty?

Some Research Propositions

This list represents some of the ideas on which CREATE is working. These are expressed as propositions some of which imply hypotheses. These propositions are included to generate discussion and some will be explored in empirical case studies in selected districts, through secondary data analysis, and from thematic reviews. These propositions have to be located in the different system contexts. Thus some may hold in the communities we undertake research, but will not necessarily hold in other communities or at national level. For example gender disparities at entry to primary and in rates of progression through to completion by age vary considerably between communities. In some cases girls enrol later and in other cases earlier than boys. In some areas selection to secondary school is gender fair, but in others it is unequal for structural and other reasons. Analysis of secondary data from national data bases also has limitations. Propositions that hold at national level may or may not be reflected across several countries. Cross national comparisons therefore have to be approached with awareness of system specificities and judgements made about when this level of unit of analysis is plausibly valid and when it is not. These propositions have been shared with PICs who will develop additional system and location specific propositions as the CREATE research programme develops.

Some CREATE propositions are* :

1. Most children currently out-of-school have had the opportunity to attend school and have done so. The problem is that they have not persisted successfully through to higher grades. Most out-of-school children are in households where either they or their siblings attended school for a period. The MDGs and EFA therefore depend on much higher levels of retention, as well as efforts to include the minority who never enrol from households where no children participate.


2. Children who never enrol are in households where either i) they could have enrolled but did not (best solution is to extend the reach of the existing system and ensure there is effective demand) or ii) they are in households where enrolment was not feasible structurally (best solution depends on diagnosis – fragile (local) state, nomadic lifestyle, migrant status (legal/illegal?), excluded as a result of disability etc.).


3. Overage entry to primary school and delayed progression as a result of repetition and interrupted schooling are primary causes of non-completion of basic education. If not resolved this will delay or prevent the achievement of the MDGS and Dakar Goals. Patterns differ but where completion rates are lowest, over age enrolment is greatest. Females tend to be especially disadvantaged as a result of likely exit around puberty. In much, but not all, of SSA the preponderance of the boy child at secondary level is due more to differential persistence to much older ages, than to discrimination on entry.


4. Rapid massive expansion in some primary school systems has produced gross over enrolment in grade 1, high drop out from grades 1-3, and slow improvements in enrolments in grade 6 and 7. In the worst cases, gross enrolments double or more in the lowest grades, and output from grade 6 or 7 remains static after a generation of EFA children have passed through the system. Overall primary Gross Enrolment Rates appear to improve. However, internal efficiency remains low, as do completion rates.


5. Achieving EFA and the MDGs depends on the enrolment and successful completion of the “last 20%” in most low enrolment countries. This is likely to be a problem substantially located in areas where population is widely dispersed and where primary schools are likely to be small - over 80% of primary schools in India appear to have three or less teachers. Effective multi-grade teaching and learning is therefore essential based on a restricted number of core curriculum subjects, appropriate learning materials, and the adoption of multi-grade pedagogies.


6. High rates of enrolment growth increase polarisation by the socio-economic status of households. This is likely to be true where quality is rapidly degraded, high cost private providers support differentiated demand, and competition for desirable schools intensifies (especially at the transition from primary to secondary). This effect may be compounded where radical curriculum change is introduced at the same time as rapid expansion – early adopters benefit disproportionately, and late adopters are left behind.


7. Enrolment rate indicators conceal low levels of daily attendance which lead to poor achievement and drop-out. In some systems child attendance may average less than 60% on a given day. When this is coupled with irregular teacher attendance this may result in the loss of more than half of all learning time. Indicators of attendance have to be included in measures of progress towards the MDGs and EFA.


8. Private (i.e. unsubsidised, for profit) providers will not contribute significantly to achieving EFA and the MDGs. Private providers will not be the provider of last resort to the poor and will predominantly capture differentiated demand from failing public providers amongst households with relatively high income. Other non-state providers (not for profit NGOs) will have limited reach and capacity to reach out to the poorest without public subsidy. Large scale public subsidy of such NGOs is unlikely to be the strategy of choice for most States.


9. Poor attendance, low achievement, and subsequent drop out are health and nutrition related in complex ways. Greater integration of sentinel health and nutrition monitoring in schools, coupled with access to services that ameliorate common health and nutrition problems, should improve access and retention.


10. The non-school fee costs to households of primary schooling are becoming far more important for exclusion than the charging of formal school fees. Informal and additional fees are charged widely for services, and other contributions are invited or expected. Other costs to households can be high (transport, uniforms, learning materials, food). In general, capitation systems that assume that fees will be zeroed if schools receive capitation payments under-fund capitation and fail to replace lost income. The effects are perverse if they subsidise those willing and able to pay. Capitation systems may be discredited if schools continue to charge to replace income they lose.


11. At secondary school level fees and financing remain central to problems of expanded access. Mass secondary education in SSA is unattainable at current levels of cost and teacher productivity for reasons of demography, income distribution, and teacher labour costs. No country with a public cost per student ratio of secondary to primary of more than 2:1 is likely to provide mass access to secondary schooling. No household much beyond the 20th percentile of household income will be able to afford unsubsidised private secondary schooling in much of SSA. Nor will such households be able to afford public secondary schooling as currently configured.


12. In those countries with high entry rates, overall GERs at primary, and completions rates greater than 90% more balanced investment is needed between educational levels than normative benchmarks for investment in primary (FTI etc) suggest.  EFA will not be achieved, and nor will gender equity at primary and secondary school, with 60% or more of resources allocated to the primary cycle.  Many grants and loans and GBS agreements apply this as a conditionality.


13. Full time residential, pre-career training of teachers is expensive and often unlikely to be able to train the volume of new teachers needed to meet demand in expanded systems.  Alternative systems of training are needed which have higher throughput, shorter lead times, and more ability to deliver support to teachers as and when needed. Experience with teacher education using techniques of distance education and information technologies has yet to demonstrate cost effectiveness, except in middle income environments.


14. Supply side problems (e.g. not enough schools and teachers) are being replaced by demand side problems of access, especially where entry rates are high and drop out and non-completion excessive. EFA is unachievable without understanding and addressing these problems (of quality, relevance, effectiveness, falling perceived rates of return, high opportunity costs etc). Effective demand problems are especially evident in upper primary and lower secondary.


15. Migration (cross border, internal, related to urbanisation and to internal displacement) is changing the landscape of educational access. It manifestations require new approaches to reach migrant children, migrant children within households, and children left behind by migrant households. Information on migrant flows is largely absent at systemic level, and provision is largely unplanned.


16. Child labour inside and outside the household does not necessarily impede access and attendance. There are likely to be threshold effects below which the impact of such child labour is minimal (or even positive if it increases household income and affordability). The impact of different types of child labour on younger and older children is likely to be differentiated. The effects will vary considerably depending on the nature, extent, and conditions under which child labour occurs. Legislation may have little impact on the problems that arise in different community contexts.


17. The sustainability of EFA depends on effective long term planning that recognises demographic certainties, financial realities, lead times for expanded service delivery (teacher training and deployment, classroom construction), and forward liabilities, especially those related to expanded secondary schooling. Without this, quality will degrade with expansion, demand will fail, and public costs will become unsustainable without very high levels of external dependence.

* These propositions are presented in no particular order of priority.