Question

answer in about 500 words suggest ways to access and retention\ of child inschool

Answer 1

A LITERATURE REVIEW?

While EAC will be monitoring and evaluating the implementation of its current and future funded activities, there is an immediate need to summarize the current literature identifying key factors that affect access, retention and quality. This literature review responds to that need.



UNIVERSAL
PRIMARY EDUCATION

A number of countries have come very close to achieving universal primary education (see How did they do it?).

Unfortunately, the majority of poor countries and several others have yet to mark this achievement.

This review, authored by Dr. Mark Ginsburg and Pragati Godbole of FHI 360, points to 15 policy and programme interventions that the research literature has identified as key for access and retention.  It is important to focus on retention as well as access because, without retention, desired learning outcomes will be significantly reduced due to lack of participation in planned educational programmes.  And, learning outcomes are, at least partially, dependent on the quality of the education offer.  Thus, the literature that was reviewed addressed all three concepts:  access, retention and quality.

To clarify, access and retention can be analysed by focusing on rates of enrolment at a particular level of education. For example, the primary net enrolment rate is defined as the number of students divided by the number of children or youth of primary school age (Engel & Rose, 2011a and 2011b; Engel et al., 2011; Wils & Ingram, 2011). Alternatively or in combination, one can focus on the number and rate of out of school children and youth (Omoeva et al., 2013; UNESCO/UIS, 2005).

Educational quality has been defined in a variety of ways, focusing either on:

INPUTS 
(e.g., financial resources, teachers and other human resources, instructional materials and physical facilities);

PROCESSES
(nature of interaction in educational activities involving students, teachers, administrators, materials and technologies);

CONTENT
(knowledge, skills and attitudes being transmitted through the curriculum);

OUTPUTS
(relatively short-term consequences, such as students’ cognitive achievement, skills and attitudes); and

OUTCOMES
(longer-term consequences, such as school leavers’ employment, earnings, and civic participation) (Adams, 1993; Lockheed & Verspoor, 1990).

The relationship between access/retention and quality in education is also complex. For instance, increasing enrolment without a commensurate increase in educational inputs (e.g., classrooms, teachers) may lower the quality of education, whether defined in terms of processes, outputs, or outcomes (World Bank/IEG, 2006).

Additionally, improving educational quality – however defined – may increase enrolment, by encouraging families to send their children/youth to school and encouraging children/youth to remain in school (UNESCO, 2005).