In general, grade-specific enrolment is a much better indicator of how flows of students through a system change than aggregated enrolment rates that use estimates of the school-age population. Raw enrolment numbers organized by grade only have the errors and uncertainties of the original data. How they change in relation to the number of children in the population nominally associated with each grade is a good indicator of changes in participation that can be easily understood.14 This can be done for boy and girls separately and the results compared in the light of the balance of boys and girls in the child population.
Gross intake rates (GIRs) capture enrolments in Grade 1 as a proportion of the relevant school-age population. Though these are composite indices, if they are at a single grade level they do not have the problems of aggregation across grades and changing composition by age associated with GERs, NERs, and GPI. The GIR is the total number of new entrants in the first grade of primary education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population of the appropriate entrance age. The gross intake rate to the last grade of primary (GIRLG) is defined as the number of students entering the last grade of primary education compared with the number of children in the appropriate age group in the population. Both, therefore, offer grade-specific enrolment rates and can be calculated for boys and girls.
Changes in GIR reflect changes in enrolments in Grade 1, which should track the growth in the population of school-age children when
14. This assumes a degree of consistency in any systematic errors that may result in over- or under-counting. The direction of travel of the numbers enrolled is likely to be more reliable than the actual number counted.
Planning goals, objectives, targets, and indicators
there is universal access. Where there are out-of-school children, GIR should increase faster than the underlying growth rate in school-age children as enrolment rates improve. Tracking the rate of change year on year will be a good indication of whether targets to enrol all children in Grade 1 are likely to be met.15
Similarly, the GIRLG allows changes from year to year to be interpreted with less uncertainty than the GERs and NERs for a whole cycle. The number of children in the last grade of a cycle should approach the number in the age group of children appropriate to that grade. This should grow faster than the rate of growth of the school-age population until universal access and completion has been achieved. However, the GIRLG does not provide any information as to whether or not those completing the last grade of the cycle have learned anything.
An improved indicator would associate the GIRLG with the proportion of those completing the last grade who reached threshold levels of achievement related to national curriculum goals. The same is true for secondary completion rates at different levels. More generally, a primary yield indicator (PYI) may be preferred. The PYI is the number of children who complete the last year of the primary cycle in a particular year, multiplied by the proportion who satisfy minimum learning criteria set by the national curriculum and divided by the number in the relevant school age group. This captures the spirit of an expanded vision of access, which insists that educational participation has to be coupled with learning outcomes. New formulations of educational targets and indicators should adopt the PYI16 or a derivation in the spirit of a similar learning indicator.17
15. This needs to be linked to data collection on the age of entry.
16. This depends on data being available. Most countries have national assessment data that allow judgements to be made on the proportions of those who sit primary and secondary school examinations who reach minimum levels of achievement. International benchmarking tests are less widely available and may be difficult to administer. They are not essential to inform policy using indications of learning yield, which can be based on national data.
17. Learning indicator may be a preferred descriptor to the PYI, providing it is understood to include not only level of performance on assessments but also the proportion of all children who achieve the level.
Educational access, equity, and development: Planning to make rights realities
The GIRLG can also be refined through the use of an on-schedule graduation rate (OSGR). This seeks to compare the numbers of children completing a cycle who are of the age appropriate to the grade level with the total number in that age group. In the case of primary school cycles with an age of entry of 6 years and a duration of six years, this translates into the number of children completing Year 6 who are 12 years old. In low-enrolment systems this rate may be as low as 20 per cent. Using the OSGR gives a proxy indicator of the extent of over-age enrolment. Since in many countries over-age children are known to perform worse and be more likely to drop out, this is an important dimension to capture (Lewin and Wang et al., 2011).
The single most important intervention that can improve evidence-based decision-making on participation is likely to be regularizing information on children’s identity and school progress. At a minimum, all children need, or need to be given, a birth certificate and a unique identifying number that can be used throughout a school career to track progress, even if they change school, civil status, or even their given name. This is a most basic function of a state (to know who its citizens are), and of an education system (to know who is taking part and what they may be learning).