2.2.6 Strategies for curbing school drop-outs in schools
A cursory analysis of educational systems makes it clear that in order to define the meaning of premature leaving, we are necessarily obliged to bring in the notion of educational ‘stage’. Here are also international reasons for doing so; without this notion, it would be impossible to establish comparable statistics between States with the same type of education system. As for comparing the statistics of countries with education systems of varying types, this will always remain uncertain. For the reasons already given, a drop-out is here defined as a pupil who leaves school before the end of the final year of the educational stage in which he is enrolled.
It follows from Oputa (2008) that this definition that leaving school after the completion of a compulsory cycle without going on to the succeeding cycle does not constitute drop-out. If, for example, in a particular education system it is decided that after the completion of a six-year cycle of primary or basic education, only 30 per cent of the normal age-group needs to proceed to junior secondary schooling, then the 70 per cent of pupils who at that point finally leave the school system and satisfactorily enter employment would not be said to have abandoned their studies prematurely. Similarly, if it is current national policy that children should remain at school to complete a nine-year cycle, but that subsequently only half of them should go on to secondary education, then the other half cannot be termed ‘drop-outs’. In terms of the internal efficiency of their school system, they would be ‘leavers’ but not ‘premature leavers.
High drop-out in the first stage of type B or C systems is clearly very serious. Not only is it symptomatic of a defective operation of the system, but since the cycle itself is short, those who drop-out before the end are not likely to have strengthened basic literacy and numeracy to the point where it becomes resistant to forgetting. It is now known that those who drop out in the early years of schooling are much more likely to decline into illiteracy than those who complete the cycle. The same comment holds true for drop-out from equivalent grades in systems of type A. On the other hand, dropping out during the seventh or eighth year, although representing an educational loss in terms of the system’s objectives, is unlikely to carry the same implications of being effectively a total educational loss.
In general, when systems of type A are subject to the same degree of grade by grade drop-out as those of type B or C, they are likely to appear less efficient in the production of graduates at the first level. This suggests some of the caution that must be exercised in comparing systems of different types in terms of wastage attributable to drop-out. At the second level of education, the notion of dropping out assumes an altogether more complex aspect. The fact of not finishing a given stage (between the ages of twelve and fifteen or fifteen and nineteen) continues to be a sign of operational deficiency, all the more striking because entry to it was on the basis of selection.
Moreover, while common indices can be used to express the operational deficiency associated with drop-out, both the magnitude of the problem and the comparisons between countries on the basis of these indices are disturbed by the variety of characteristics of the system, especially the different school enrolment rates. If, to take a hypothetical example, in two separate countries with comparable education systems (B or C), the drop-out rate during the second or third stage is appreciably the same, but in the first case the school attendance rate is 80 per cent, whereas in the second case it only 25 per cent, the relative magnitude of wastage attributable to dropout is not the same, although in each case a loss is sustained.
In countries with education systems of type B or C, there is often in fact a certain prestige value attached to the different sections or branches of the second stage, even if this is not recognized under the law. It is common for the education authorities and public opinion to agree that the classical type of secondary school is superior to the scientific type which, in turn is superior to a vocational or prevocational training school or again, to parallel classes in primary school. Hence, a pupil can drop out of one of the ‘superior’ schools for the purpose of entering one of the ‘inferior’ schools. 0yetakin and Odunayo (2013) say that such a transfer can scarcely be regarded as a case of dropping out from the education system. It is one of the ways in which systems seek to introduce flexibility into the administrative classification of pupils into discrete types of school. While such systems can claim that they have made provision for the adjustment of education to the pupil, transfer between schools must be regarded as a very crude form of educational guidance.
Certainly, a high rate of such transfers would point to operational deficiency of the system. Since drop-out as it is defined above is not related to the existence or duration of compulsory schooling, leaving school before the minimum age would not be regarded as dropping out. It follows also from the definition that those who leave before the end of a cycle, but who have satisfied the compulsory education laws by staying at school until they have reached the minimum age, would be regarded as dropouts. Moreover, even in countries which do not have compulsory education, a child who left school before completion of the stage in which he had registered would be regarded as a drop-out. These implications of the definition that has been adopted must be noted since in some cases they conflict with more general notions of ‘premature leaving’. Normally countries which have laws compelling school attendance interpret leaving before the minimum age as premature leaving. The term ‘premature leaving’ may also be applied in another sense by countries which provide for universal education beyond the minimum age of school leaving. Thus, in some countries where compulsory education may cease after nine or ten years of schooling, it is generally thought desirable that all children should complete the twelve years that are provided.
Bedi and Garg (2000) that the idea that a certain length of schooling ought to be regarded as desirable for all children is impossible to apply universally. The period of human immaturity through which young people go before they enter the adult world varies with the complexity of their cultural environment. So long as there are differences among nations in this respect, it is unlikely that agreement will be reached upon minimum or optimum lengths of schooling for all young people. Moreover, it is not only a question of maturity. It depends also on how a nation perceives that children beyond a certain age might best receive their education.
The existence of a variety of forms of further education, whether nationally or locally organized, permits education to continue beyond the age which schools provided. The linking of such education with responsible employment may legitimately be regarded as a more flexible and effective way of providing for the continuation of studies. There are those who deny this line of argument, maintaining that the provision of further education which overlaps with the period of attendance for which schools provide is an unnecessary duplication of resource; and leaves the continuation of studies to chance, since those who are most at risk at school are most likely not to take advantage of the further education provision. However, as the concept of education throughout the whole of the life span begins to take hold and as the folly of isolating school systems from their social and economic context is recognized, so further education is seen to be an inevitable element of a system’s provision and not as a salvage operation for premature school leavers.
Drop-out, whether voluntary or involuntary, is the most convenient event to observe in identifying the failure of a system to hold children within it. Its validity is open to question since even a little education may be considered to be valuable and the flexibility of a system in permitting drop-out before the end of a cycle may in fact serve to adjust manpower needs, particularly at the second level. It is rare for children to leave school before the end of the period of compulsory education. Nevertheless, not all of these countries are yet able to provide facilities for all children in all districts within the compulsory age limits, nor do they all enforce the compulsory education laws effectively. In some cases, a proportion of children leave school prematurely. Furthermore, Babalola (2013) is of the opinion that the periods of compulsory schooling vary in length. In over three quarters of the countries in this group the compulsory period is eight or nine years, but there are countries where it is as low as four or five years, e.g. Portugal and Turkey, while in some of the states of the United States of America it is as high as twelve years. For this reason the proportion of children in each group who are attending school varies considerably throughout the senior primary and the junior secondary cycle.
Mundia (2014) opines that the highest rate of school drop-out usually occurs among those age groups for whom the specialized cycle of senior secondary schooling is provided. Such rates do not, however, give an estimate of premature leaving, unless the prior judgment is made that all children should continue with full-time schooling until the age of 17 or 18 years. If, on the other hand, the cycle-of schooling concept is accepted, the dropout rate could be determined only from statistics of the enrolment and the leaving of pupils in each of the specialized courses available to them at this level.