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Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:

The Key to Escape from Poverty

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1.2 BOTTLENECKS AND BARRIERS

This section will continue with outlining the effect of each barrier on children’s access in the

World and continue with policies and strategies that are applied in general to overcome them.

Poverty

Poverty puts children at a disadvantage in access to education.

Poor children are more

likely to be out of school compared to rich children. A study using the latest Multiple Cluster

Surveys (MICS) and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted between 2008 and 2012

of 63 countries finds that on average 7 percent of children of primary or lower secondary school

age who are from the richest households are out of school as opposed to 24 percent of children

in the poorest households.

29

Looking at the marginal impact of poverty and controlling for age,

gender, household head’s education and location of the household, the same study found that in

56 of the 63 countries household wealth is a significant determinant of access to education.

30

Studies carried out in Brazil

31

, Ghana

32

, Pakistan

33

, China

34

, Turkey

35

provide further evidence

that household income and parental education are strongly linked with a child’s access to

education.

36

In other words, children from poor economic backgrounds are more likely to be

out-of-school, start school over-age, or drop out.

Poverty is a barrier to children’s access to education for a number of reasons.

Firstly,

education incurs direct financial costs. Even when school attendance is free, additional spending

on books, uniforms, transportation, and informal fees may make education unaffordable for

poor families.

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Secondly, the opportunity cost of education may be too high for poor families.

They may prefer this time to be spent on income-generating activities to create additional

income for the household. Child labour is prevalent in the world with 15 percent of children aged

5 to 14 estimated to be participating in some kind of labour activity.

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Children who stay out of

school often remain in a vicious cycle of low education low earnings and a low socioeconomic

status.

Poverty also hinders children’s learning outcomes.

Poverty not only blocks access to

education, but also hampers children’s learning abilities. Research shows that children from low

socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be low performers in mathematics.

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Children living in

poorer households not only have limited access to educational materials but they also might

have a lower access to educated individuals in the household who could nurture them

29 Hattori (2014)

30 (Hattori, 2014)

31 (George Psacharopoulos & Arriagada, 1989)

32 (Lavy, 1996)

33 Burney and Irfan (1995)

34 (Brown & Park, 2002)

35 (Tansel, 2002)

36 (Clemens, 2004)

37 UNESCO (2008)

38 (UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) & UNICEF, 2015)

39 (OECD, 2008)