| Abstract: | The study examined gender disparity in enrolment and dropout situation of primary school
aged children of Dehana Wereda of Wag Himera Zone in Amhara Region located at 801 Km
North of Addis Ababa. In the Wereda even though recent trends of enrolment and dropout are
encouraging a large number of children, majority being girls, are still out of school. The
specific objectives were to assess the existing gender based enrolment and dropout in primary
education and to identify the major economic, cultural and parental factors in enrolment and
dropout in primary education. A random sampling method was followed to select the PAs and
household heads of enrolled, not enrolled and dropout categories of children proportionally
for the study. Based on this, the necessary data were collected from a total of 150 household
heads where in 116 were male headed and 34 were female headed and 150 primary school
aged children in the selected households of the three categories. Pre-tested structured
interview schedule was used for collecting the essential data and group discussion and
personal observation were used to crosscheck the data collected through formal survey and
also to generate additional contextual data. The data were analyzed using methods descriptive
and econometrics. The logit model results revealed that the decision of enrolling and
dropping out children from school were determined by a variety of factors. Birth order of the
child, perceived costs of schooling, sexual harassment, lack of personal safety, presence of
female role models, number of total children in the household, household heads’ attitude
towards children’s education, household heads’ level of aspiration on children education, size
of livestock holding and early marriage had a significant influence decision of enrolment of
children to school, whereas households’ age, education level of the household, alternative
labour use, social participation, cosmopoliteness, size of farm land holding and occupation of
the head did not significantly affect the decision of sending children to school. With regard to
dropout situation, education level of the household, birth order of the child, school distance,
perceived costs of schooling, alternative labour use, lack of personal safety, presence of
female role models, number of total children in household, level of aspiration, size of livestock
and early marriage had a significant influence dropout situation, whereas, age of the
household head, sexual harassment, household attitude towards children’s education, social
participation, cosmopoliteness, and size of farm land did not significantly influence the
decision made by household head to withdraw children out of school. Therefore, policy
should address limited overall enrolment of school aged children and gender disparities in
access to enrolment and constraining economic, cultural/traditional, parental and school
factors. In general, lowering school distance, improving the rights and status of girls to
primary education through legal actions, improving parents’ level of attitude towards
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children’s education and diversifying the households occupation are essential to improve the
provision of education at all levels to meet the millennium goal of universal education through
improving access and reducing dropping out situations and disparities among girls and boys. |
