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How many out of school children are there in Kenya?
Data Issues in Kenya
Competing definitions of primary education can lead to substantial variation in estimates of out of school children within countries, and internationally accepted definitions of primary are often shorter in duration than national definitions. A comparison of data from an administrative source and household survey data for Kenya yields unexpected results, with survey data suggesting school attendance rates in excess of enrollment rates. EPDC is working to understand the cause of these reported results.
Alternative measures of out of schoolchildren of primary school age in Kenya.
Primary school in Kenya consists of eight standards, officially corresponding to ages 6-13. The UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) however, treats only the first six standards of primary school (ages 6-11) as corresponding to ISCED level 1, which UIS uses as the basis for its primary-level calculations. Although the UIS justification is that this method preserves comparability across countries, most of which have 6 grades of primary (UIS, 2008), the result for Kenya is that UIS data are not fully reflective of the primary education experience there. As shown in the table to the left, treating only standards 1-6 as primary school drives the out of school rate from 11% up to 13%, because 7th and 8th graders are not considered. It also brings down the overall number of out of school children because it excludes 12-13 year olds.
Effective use of survey data requires attention to the structure of the dataset and an understanding of the context in which the data collection took place. A closer look at the 2009 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) illustrates how important this is - in particular, adjusting children’s ages to correct for the timing of the survey relative to the beginning of the school year is essential for obtaining accurate figures.
Discussion Question
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There exists a substantive discrepancy in the national-level estimate of out of school children between household survey and administrative sources. Administrative figures from the UIS database indicate that 17% of children aged 6-11 were out of school during the 2008 school year. Data from the 2009 Kenya DHS, when adjusted to match UIS methodology as closely as possible, suggest that the out of school rate for children in this age group is 13%. While it is not unusual to have a gap of several percentage points between measures from two different types of data sources, what is unusual is that the household-based attendance figure suggests a lower proportion of out of school children than the administrative-based enrollment figure. How can researchers and policy-makers account for the discrepancy between household survey and administrative sources?
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Possible explanation for discrepancy
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