Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
54
2.3 POLICIES AND STRATEGIES RELATED TO EDUCATION IN THE OIC REGION
Interventions addressing poverty
In the OIC, education is “constitutionally free” in 39 of the member countries but
unfortunately this does not mean that it is actually free in practice.149 In fact, in 26 of the 39
countries it is reported that some fees continue to be charged at the primary school level. 150 Given
the significant gaps between poor and rich children in many member countries it is an important
first step to reduce fees that prevent children’s access to education. In this respect, fee abolition
or fee reduction has been implemented in a number of OIC countries in the last decades. Uganda
eliminated the fees in public schools in 1997, Cameroon in 2003 and Mozambique in 2004.151 In
Uganda, after the fee reduction in 1997, the primary net enrolment rate increased from57 percent
in 1996 to 85 percent in 1997.152 A tremendous improvement in coverage of poor children was
also achieved with poor girls’ enrolment increasing from 46.1 percent in 1992 to 82.0 percent in
1999, and from 55.7 percent to 85.3 percent for the poor boys in the same time period.153
Eliminating school fees is generally not enough to improve access given that other costs
are associated with education including costs of books or uniforms and cash transfer
programs could be useful at this point. Many cash transfer programmes have been
implemented in the OIC, generally having positive results for children’s education outcomes.
Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey are among the member countries
implementing conditional or unconditional cash transfer programmes to improve education
outcomes.154 The results for increasing enrolments or decreasing dropout rates are promising.
For instance in Indonesia, a scholarship programme (JPS) was implemented in 1998, distributing
monthly transfers to primary and secondary school students to alleviate the negative impact of
the 1997 economic crisis in the country. The scholarships were targeted towards the poor and
results of an impact evaluation of the programme suggest that 10 percent of the children aged 10-
12 would have dropped out if the programme had not been implemented.155 The results of the
programme were strongest for poor children living in rural areas. As another example, the pilot
cash transfer programme Tayssir implemented in Morocco was also successful. This cash transfer
programme, implemented in 2006, aimed to increase the school enrolment rates in rural areas.
Conditional and unconditional - but specifically labelled for education - versions of the
programme were implemented and the unconditional one was found to be more effective by
decreasing the drop-out rate by 76 percent and increasing re-entry by 82 percent.156
149 UNESCO (2008) and Tomasevski (2006)
150 UNESCO (2008) and Tomasevski (2006)
151 Grogan (2009)
152 Essama-Nssah (2011)
153 Bertoncino, Murphy, and Wang (2002)
154 According to the countries included in the systematic review Snilstveit et al. (2016).
155 Sparrow (2007)
156 Benhassine, Devoto, Duflo, Dupas, and Pouliquen (2015)