Educating out of poverty? Educational approaches to breaking the cycle of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa

1
Educating out of poverty? Educational approaches
to breaking the cycle of poverty in sub-Saharan
Africa

• Dr Pauline Rose
• Centre for International Education University of
  Sussex, UK

2
Millennium Development Goalsdo they add up?

• Education MDG
• all children complete primary schooling by 2015
• Poverty MDG
• half of the worlds population will remain poor
  by 2015

3

• Intuitively, a main means of escaping poverty is
  education taken in its broadest sense (formal and
  informal schooling, skills training and knowledge
  acquisition).
• Harper et al., 2003 545

4
Conventional wisdom
5
Educating poverty research?

• Considerable recent advances in poverty
  conceptualisation
• Recognises education as playing an important role
  in defining and reducing poverty
• But recognition is often based on narrow
  conceptualisation of education (human capital).

6
Translation into policy.

• Children of mothers who receive five years of
  primary education are 40 more likely to live
  beyond the age of 5
• DFID Girls Education Strategy, 2005
• Research proves that a farmer with at least 4-5
  years of schooling is more productive than
  someone who remains illiterate
• Ethiopia Education Sector Development Plan, 2000

7
Poverty of educational research?

• Seeks to understand dynamics within education,
  with particular concern for a broad set of
  learning outcomes
• Recognises the multi-dimensional political,
  economic, social processes that exclude children
  from enrolling, attending, participating and
  achieving in school.
• But limited concern with how children apply the
  knowledge, skills and understandings they gain at
  school in their lives after schooling
• Overall limited conceptualisation of educations
  role in reducing poverty
• Perhaps concern that holistic multi-dimensional
  approach to poverty detracts from in-depth
  understanding of specific causes of educational
  exclusion?

8
Exceptions...

• Longitudinal research in Morocco (based on
  ethnographic observation and statistical
  analysis)
• girls retained more academic skills than boys,
  but were much less likely to be employed, a
  finding which calls into question certain claims
  about the impact of schooled knowledge and
  literacy on employment in developing countries.
• Wagner, 1989 307

9
Source Rose and Dyer, 2006
10
Who has not completed school? - Ethiopia
Source DHS data (Filmer 2003)
11
Educational policy initiatives for breaking the
poverty cycle

• Untargeted primary school fee abolition
• Conditional cash/food transfers
• School feeding programmes
• Non-formal education provision

12
Abolition of primary school fees Malawi

• Access Pro-poor
• Massive increase in primary enrolment after 1994
  Free Primary Education, but poorest still most
  likely not to be in school, and continued low
  survival rates, particularly for poorest and
  girls
• Quality Anti- poor
• Large numbers of untrained teachers, large class
  size and limited facilities particularly for
  lower classes, with resources concentrated at the
  upper level where the poorest are less likely to
  be enrolled
• Increase in years of schooling required to
  achieve basic literacy and numeracy
• Relevance Anti-poor
• Qualification inflation Mass primary education,
  secondary a requisite
• Suitability of academic vs. vocational curriculum
  in schools
• Wide age range in lower classes
• Appropriateness of language of instruction
• Fit Anti-poor
• Schooling conflicts with child work, affecting
  girls and the poorest

Source Kadzamira and Rose, 2003
13
Alternative basic education - Ethiopia

• BRAC NFE model implemented via INGOs
• Addressing demand-side constraints timing,
  relevance, flexibility
• Opportunities for mainstreaming into formal
  schools? Post-schooling opportunities?
• Sustainability - exit strategy?

14
Breaking the cycle through PRSPs?

• there is no innovative teaching/learning reform
  proposed in the PRSPs that could be regarded as
  having been designed to address the specific
  needs of the poor while at the same time seeking
  quality improvement, relevance and meeting the
  target of integrating them in the development
  process
• Caillods and Hallak, 2004 75.

15
Where do we go from here?

• Need for evidence-based policy and strategies to
  recognise dynamics of education and poverty
  together
• Interdisciplinary research, bringing together the
  expertise of currently unconnected scholars of
  poverty and those of education
• Undertake research to shed light on how
  educational processes (in-school, and between
  school and communities/livelihoods) influence
  escape from poverty.
• Adopt longitudinal design, combining quantitative
  and qualitative methods.