Role of Push Out Factors and Process of Dropping Out

The male and female teachers and head teachers also reported some factors of dropping out linked with school.

5.6.1 Location of a School

With respect to the supply side, a large number of studies documented that having to travel a long distance to school was a dominant factor of dropping out in rural areas (Ampiah

& Adu‐Yeboah, 2009; Bilquees & Saqib, 2004; Chugh, 2011; Holmes, 2003; Sathar & Lloyd, 1994; Sawada & Lokshin, 2001; Seidu & Adzahlie-Mensah, 2010). Secondary schools are usually located in a big village or town away from the distant and scattered populaces. For many pupils, the long commute makes school inaccessible and too expensive for them to attend. In urban areas, where most secondary schools are located, the “means of transportation are generally well developed [… and the environment] is more conducive to long walks or rides to schools; this factor is less likely to influence the decision to drop out” (Bilquees & Saqib, 2004, p. 15).

In this study, the female teachers and head teachers corroborated this and reported that along with the inability to afford transportation to the long-distance schools, the girls’ parents did not allow them to walk long distances alone because of cultural constraints and fears for their safety. In a typical rural culture, a girl is usually escorted by a male family member when she leaves the house; without male accompaniment, her safety is at risk. For example, Maqsood, a headmistress of a secondary school reported:

In the last year, a servant of the local landlord grabbed a girl of class 9 and dragged her to nearby bushes to rape her when she was walking to school early one morning. Fortunately, some other girls who were also walking to school saw this incident from a distance and uttered a loud cry. The molester ran away before he committed his heinous crime of raping an innocent girl.

Another headmistress reported that some boys used to gather at deserted places and would bother school-going girls. She had to approach the police to overcome this problem. Therefore, some parents felt it was unsafe sending their daughters to a distant school on foot and they did not have enough money to pay for their transportation. Eventually, some girls

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stopped attending schooling. It is a responsibility of the government to extend the supply of secondary schools with easy access for girls or provide them with safe and free transportation facilities in the remote rural areas.

5.6.2 Lack of Facilities at School

The male and female head teachers consistently cited a shortage of secondary school teachers, overcrowded classes, insufficient classrooms, and a lack of physical facilities as reasons for pupils dropping out. For example, one headmistress said that she had 70 students in each secondary class, and another head had 450 secondary students and only five teachers for them. They also reported that they did not have enough rooms to accommodate all the students and the pupils had to sit on the ground in the open air. The male head teachers also showed similar views on overcrowded classes. All the interviews with male and female teachers and head teachers were conducted during school time, so when I visited the secondary schools in the research area I witnessed the overcrowded classes; in some cases, male and female pupils were sitting on the ground even in the severe cold weather.

Noureen, a female head teacher, complained about the lack of physical facilities in the following words:

We have been teaching science subjects like Physics, Biology and Chemistry since 1993 but do not have a science laboratory in school. The science students always miss the practical work, which is a compulsory part of the secondary school examination. Similarly, ten boys’ secondary schools (out of a total of 18) reported that they were accommodating 65-70 students in each class. They further argued that each lesson ran for 45 minutes and it was not possible to take the register at each lesson, check homework and teach a new lesson during this short period, which ultimately affected the quality of the education. Because of the poor quality of the education, the pupils could not do well in their exams and failed, heightening the dropout rate. This finding is consistent with some other studies (Abuya et al., 2013; Al-Hroub, 2014; Bridgeland, 2010; Mughal & Aldridge, 2017; Munsaka, 2011).

Both male and female teachers reported that the shortage of science and English teachers was another problem at secondary level. The subject specialists rarely stayed at schools located in remote rural areas, preferring to teach in big cities where they also often run their own private tuition centres in the evenings, or provide home tuition to the children of wealthy families. Thus, because of the lack of adequately qualified staff, the head teachers

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argued that the teachers from the primary and elementary sections taught the secondary classes and were less able to fulfil the learning needs of the secondary students. As a result, the students failed the board exams and did not come back to school to repeat the year under the same unqualified teachers (Mughal & Aldridge, 2017).

Overcrowded classes are common in schools across rural Pakistan where the pupil classroom ratio (PCR) is commonly used as an indicator to measure the quality of education provision. This ratio was 49 pupils per 1 teacher in secondary classes in Punjab in 2014-15 (GoP, 2017). However, the PCR is often higher in remote rural areas because teachers from urban areas are less willing to move to small villages to teach; almost all the head teachers reported this problem and some of them said that the PCR in their schools was as high as 70:1. Shortage of classroom space was another problem reported and was associated with higher PCR. In 2014-15, 607 primary, 499 middle and 177 high schools were functioning without appropriate premises in rural Pakistan (Gop, 2017).