Survival analysis of dropout rate at the basic school level: (Case study: Northern Ghana)
Loading...
Date
2009-08-08
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Development and growth cannot be experienced in any part of the world without good education. Basic education is one of the effective investments in improving economies, reducing illiteracy, creating self-reliant and healthy society. In view of this, government and NGOs have constituted various policies and intervention programmes to make sure children of school going age enroll, attend and remain in school till completion (at least the basic level). Despite these efforts, studies have shown that dropout rates remain high in rural areas and in the three northern regions of Ghana. The purpose of the research is to estimate the probability of a child dropping out of school at some point within the basic level in Northern Ghana. Data was obtained from the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports on annual enrollment levels for each district for the years 2000 to 2007. Survival Analysis which is a time to event analysis was used to investigate the effect of gender and region on survival time (i.e. time before dropout). Particularly, the Kaplan-Meier method was utilized for plotting the survival and hazard functions. Log rank test was used to compare the survival curves. The Cox Proportional Hazards Model was used to fit the data. Findings indicated that the region of a child has significant effect on the potential of his/her dropout of school. On the other hand, gender had no significant influence on a pupil’s dropout rate. The analysis also indicated that the Upper West region has the lowest hazard of dropout and Northern Region has the highest Hazard of dropout of school. It was also discovered that on the average, the potential of a child dropping out of school occurred mostly at primary 2, 5 and 6. It is suggested that interventions to reduce dropout rates should not be focused only on female pupils but on male pupils as well.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department Of Mathematics in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Mathematics.