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Comparing net enrollment rate to out of school children

 

Comparing net enrollment rate to out of school children:

A breakdown based on the overall level of on-age enrollment allows us to see to what extent the number of out-of school children reflects real challenges in access, compared to fluctuations of population or measurement error around administrative estimates, as might be the case in countries where the out-of-school rate is less than 5% (which is likely to fall within the margin of error in estimation).  For our analysis we divide countries into “high” (above 95%), “middle” (80-95%) and “low” (below 80%) NER to analyze the degree to which countries in these categories contribute to the global number of out of school children.  As with out of school children estimates, most country NERs are from 2005 to 2010.  Where countries do not report a NER from a date within this range, the closest year to the out of school estimate was used[1].  35.7 million, or roughly 62% of the number of out of school children in countries reporting NER, are in “low NER” countries, compared to 15.4 million (26.7%) and 6.8 million (11.7%) in “medium” and “high” NER countries, respectively.  Figure 4 shows country NER (on the left vertical axis) compared to its contribution to the global out of school number, expressed as a percentage (right vertical axis).  Countries are grouped according to the above-mentioned NER categories, and those included in the chart represent the largest contributions to the global out of school children estimate within each of these sub-categories.  As can be seen, the general trend is for countries with high on-age enrollment to make small individual contributions to the global out of school number.  However, countries with large populations can buck the trend to a considerable extent.  China, a country with a net enrollment rate of 96%, still manages to contribute roughly 7% to the global out of school children estimate.  As seen in other dimensions of analysis, the disproportionate share of out of school children represented by Nigeria is again illustrated here.  Interesting to note are two countries that approach our 80% “middle” NER threshold (Pakistan and Bangladesh) still have high out of school children numbers.

 


[1] a number of large countries did not report NERs, including Papua New Guinea, Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia, as well as countries that also did not report an out of school children estimate, including Libya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Zimbabwe.  In total, 15 of 18 countries that didn’t report NER also had a missing or outdated out of school estimate.

 

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