Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
13
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 Brazil31, Ghana32, Pakistan33, China34, Turkey35 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.37 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.38 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.39 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)