Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
10
1.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY
Children may have difficulties in access to education due to a number of barriers and
bottlenecks which need government attention for developing special policies and
programs.
Not all children have equal access to quality education around the world and lacking
access is not random. Circumstances that children are born into often determine their chances
of accessing quality education. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds may have no control
over these circumstances that systematically turn into barriers and bottlenecks in front of access
to education.
This report firstly takes an overview in the world and in OIC countries into the status and
trends in access to education
. Secondly the report considers barriers and bottlenecks to
access and policies and programs that are in place to address these bottlenecks. In this
conceptual section of the report the status of access to education and barriers to access are
generically defined for the whole world. Policies and programs that address these bottlenecks
are also exemplified with programs from across the world. In the next section, the conceptual
framework is applied to OIC countries in particular looking at status of access to education,
bottlenecks and barriers to access and policies and programs that improve access in these
countries.
In the second part of the report where we consider case countries in detail, we apply the
same conceptual framework in more detail and take the framework to microdata at the
household level
. These barriers are analysed in the country case studies at the household level
using microdata coming from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) carried out in case
countries. Using these micro datasets, the report looks at the link between circumstances
(opportunities) and access to education services over time for four case countries: Jordan,
Pakistan, Senegal and Turkey.
In each of the case countries, Human Opportunity Index for access to education at the
primary and secondary levels is calculated over time looking at a decomposition of the
index between increases in coverage and redistribution of services to the poor.
A
decomposition of changes in the human opportunity index over time and the components of
what contributes to inequality of opportunities is also calculated using a Shapley decomposition
in these cases. Hence the microdata analysis in each case study provides the main bottlenecks
to access for the case countries as can be evaluated using household level data.
Figure 1illustrates the conceptual framework of the report.
Children may be prevented
from access to education due to a number of circumstances which turn into barriers. Apart from
child or household related circumstances like poverty, gender or disability system wide
problems also prevent children from accessing schools or even when they have access their
achievements could stay low due to low quality of education. Yet as depicted in the figure these
barriers could be overcome by policies and strategies of governments.