Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
71
since 2005, they also remain low in 2015 with just 43.9%of children finishing 5 years of education
and 35% finishing 8 years of education. In 2015, the 5 regions with lowest access to schooling are
Kaffrine, Diourbel, Louga, Matam and Tambacounda.
They range from high-density areas with many schools (Diourbel) to low density areas
(Tambacounda) and from high poverty regions (Kaffrine) to relatively well-off regions (Louga)
(see Annex 2).
Ethnicity/Language: Using ethnicity as a proxy for language, the DHS findings would seem to
point to discrimination against the Wolof population or at least language acting as a barrier to
entry to school (See . However, the Wolof are not a minority and these results are
misleading (see Section 3 which points to political and cultural reasons i.e. some of the regions
with a majority Wolof population happen to also be regions with strong anti-colonialist political
activism that leads to families preferring non-formal religious schools instead of the main formal
secular French system).
Table 6 Education outcomes by ethnicity of the household
Ethnicity of the household Attendance in
school
(6-11 year olds)
Attendance in
school
(12-15 year
olds)
Finishing 5
years of
education
(12-15 year
olds)
Finishing 8
years of
education
(16-18 year
olds)
2005 2015 2005 2015 2005 2015 2005 2015
Wolof 44 38.3 43.3 49.5 25.4 33.1 12.7 28.4
Poular 49.7 54.4 47.2 58.6 25.4 42.5 10 29.1
Non-Senegalese 51.9 56.3 38.6 71.3 26.1 44.8 14 20.9
Soninke 60.9 61.2 64.3 87.7 31.3 51.4 23.9 47.4
Madingue 61.4 61.8 59.9 69.9 30.8 51.9 15.4 33.6
Serer 56.1 70.6 52.8 76.1 26.2 48.8 17.8 38.1
Other 69.9 82.6 70.4 84.2 39.9 51.8 23.4 57.9
Diola 83.1 84.4 90.5 92.6 44.1 77.1 23.6 66.1
Note: Authors’ calculations using DHS 2005 and DHS 2015
Disability. There is not much information about disability in the DHS data. However the 2013
Census provided information on out of school children and access to schooling of children with
mild or severe disability: the number of children aged 7 to 16 living with a disability is 35,369 of
which 23,425 are "out of school". This corresponds to an out of school rate of 66%for this category
of children, whereas it is 47% for Senegal as a whole. There are 20,481 children living with a
disability who have never attended school, or about 87.5%, when only out-of-school education is
considered. Disabled children are therefore disproportionately affected and suffer particularly
acute low schooling access rates.