Quality of education and the demand for education — Evidence from developing countries

QUALITY OF EDUCATION AND THE DEMAND FOR EDUCATION

- EVIDENCE FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

HERBERT BERGMANN

Abstract - The relationship between quality and demand is analysed using data from various countries, with special emphasis on Burkina Faso, Mall, and Tanzania. Four types of educational quality are postulated: value, output, process and input quality. The relative importance of quality compared to external efficiency and costs is assessed.

The paper is a reanalysis of existing studies. Qualitative data are complemented by simple analysis of educational statistics. The studies had different though overlapping foci: one study explored reasons for non-enrolment, drop-out and exclusion from school under the umbrella theme of the quality of education. Another one emphasised social demand in rural areas, with quality one of a number of topics. A third study looked at attitudes towards education and educational strategies, restricting itself to parents.

A primary level, the quality of education influences the demand for education. The relative importance of quality varies from one context to another. Quality influences the decision to enrol less than the decision to carry on. However, it affects enrolment to such an extent that moderate correlations have been observed between pass rates and repeater rates on the one hand, and enrolment rates on the other.

Value quality is mainly related to enrolment. Output quality is the criterion for selecting a school or a school system. Output, process and input quality affect dropping out and irregular attendance. Repetition, justified on unsatisfactory output quality, is related to input quality.

The decision to participate in education combines considerations of educational quality with an evaluation of costs, both direct costs and opportunity costs.

Zusammenfassung - Die Beziehung zwischen Qualit/it und Nachfrage wird mit Datenmaterial aus verschiedenen L~indern, insbesondere Burkina Faso, Mali und Tansania analysiert. Vier Arten der Bildungsqualit~it werden vorausgesetzt: Werte, Ergebnisse, DurchfiJhrung und Qualit~it der Beitr~ige. Die relative Bedeutung der Qualit~t im Vergleich mit auBerer Effizienz und Kosten wird bewertet.

Der Artikel ist eine Neu-Analyse bereits existierender Studien. Qualitative Daten werden dutch simple Analysen von Statistiken zur Bildung vervollst~digt. Die Studien hatten unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte, die sich auf gewissen Feldern iaberdeckten: eine Studie untersuchte Grtinde for die Nicht-Einschulung, Schulabbruch und SchulausschluB unter dem Gesamtthema der Bildungsqualit~it. Eine andere Studie befaBte sich schwerpunktm~iBig mit sozialem Bedarf in 1/indlichen Gebieten, wobei Qualit~t eines der Hauptthemen war. Eine dritte Studie bewertete die Einstellung zur Bildung und Bildungsstrategien seitens der Eltem. Auf Grundschulebene beeinfluBt die Bildungsqualit~it die Nachfrage nach Bildung. Die relative Bedeutung der Qualitat unterscheidet sich yon Kontext zu Kontext. Qualit~it beeinfluBt die Entscheidung zur Einschulung weniger als die Entscheidung weiterer Teilnahme. Sie beeinfluBt jedoch die Einschulung insofern, als dab gewisse Beziehungen zwischen der Anzahl der erfolgreichen Schulabg/inger und der Wiederholer auf der einen und Einschulungsquoten auf der anderen Seite festgestellt werden.

International Review of Education - lnternationale Zeitschrift fiir Erziehungswissenschaft - Revue lnternationale de l' Education 42(6): 581-604, 1996. © 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Die Qualit~t der Werte bezieht sich haupts~ichlich auf die Einschulung. Output- Qualitfit ist das Kriterium ftir die Wahl einer Schule oder eines Schulsystems. Out- put-, Durchffihrungs- und Input-Qualitiit beeinfluBt Schulabbruch und unregelmfiBiges Erscheinen.

Wiederholungen, die auf unbefriedigender Output-Qualitfit beruhen, hfingen eng mit der Input-Qualitfit zusammen.

Die Entscheidung zur Teilnahme an Bildung verbindet l~Iberlegungen zur Bildungsquali~t mit einer Einschfitzung der Kosten, sowohl direkte Kosten als auch Opportunitfitskosten.

R ~ s u m ~ - L'auteur analyse la relation entre la qualit6 et la demande, sur la base de donn6es provenant de divers pays en particulier du Burkina Faso, du Mali et de Tanzanie. I1 6tablit quatre crit6res de qualit6 p6dagogique: la transmission de valeurs morales, le taux de r6ussite, la m6thode et les investissements, et procSde ~ une 6valuation sur l ' importance respective de la qualit6 par rapport ~ l 'eff icacit6 l 'ext6rieur et aux cofits.

L 'ar t icle constitue une nouvelle analyse d'6tudes d6j~t r6alis6es, et compl&e des donn6es qualitatives en analysant les statistiques de l '6ducation. Les 6tudes ant6frieurs avaient 6t6 men6es selon diff6rentes perspectives qui se croisent en pattie: L 'une 6tudie les raisons de non-inscription, d 'abandon et d 'exclusion de l '6cole sous le thSme g6n6ral de la qualit6 de l '6ducation. Une autre met l 'accent sur la demande sociale dans les r6gions rurales, la qualit6 apparaissant comme l 'un des thSmes 6tudi6s. Une troisi6me se penche sur les comportements par rapport ~ l '6ducation et sur les strat6- gies 6ducatives, en se limitant aux parents.

Au niveau du primaire, la qualit6 de l '6ducation influence la demande en 6duca- tion. Lqmportance respective des crit6res de qualit6 varie d 'un contexte h l 'autre. La qualit6 influence moins la d6cision d' inscription que la d6cision de poursuivre. Mais elle agit suffisamment sur l ' inscription pour qu'on ait pu observer une corr61ation mod6r6e avec les taux de passage en niveau sup6rieur et de redoublement d 'une part, et les taux d' inscription d'autre part.

La qualit6 des valeurs morales se ressent en particulier sur l ' inscription. Le taux de r6ussite est le crit6re de s61ection d 'une 6cole ou d 'un syst6me scolaire. R6ussites, m6thodes et investissements influent sur l 'abandon et l 'assiduit6. Le redoublement, justifi6 par un taux de r6ussite insuffisant, est en relation avec la qualit6 des investissements.

Quant/t la d6cision de participer aux programmes 6ducatifs, elle semble d6pendre aussi bien de consid6rations sur la qualit6 p6dagogique que d'une estimation des frais, ~t la fois directs et occasionnels.

Resumen - La relaci6n que existe entre calidad y demanda educacional se analiza usando datos de varios paises, con especial 6nfasis en Burkina Faso, Mali y Tanzania. E1 trabajo postula cuatro tipos de calidad educacional: calidad valor, calidad rendimiento, calidad proceso y calidad inversi6n. E1 estudio evalfia la importancia relativa de la calidad, en comparaci6n con la eficiencia extema y los costos.

E1 trabajo es un reanfilisis de estudios ya existentes. Los datos cualitativos se com- plementan mediante un simple anfilisis de estadisticas de la educai6n. Estos estudios muestran diferentes enfoques que se sobreponen: un estudio ha considerado las razones de la no matriculaci6n, del abandono escolar y de la exclusi6n de la escuela, bajo el tema central de la cal idad de la educaci6n. Otro estudio ha puesto 6nfasis en la demanda social existente en fireas rurales, compuesta por varios puntos entre los que tambi6n figura la calidad. Un tercer estudio ha contemplado las posturas y estrategias educacionales con respecto a la educaci6n, limitfindose a los padres solamente.

A niveles primarios, la calidad de la educaci6n influye en la demanda de educaci6n.

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La importancia relativa de la calidad varia de un contexto al otro. La calidad influye menos en la decisi6n de matriculaci6n q u e e n la de proseguir. No obstante, afecta a la matriculaci6n en la medida en que se han observado unas moderadas relaciones entre las cuotas de alumnos que pasan de grado y los que repiten por un lado, y las cuotas de matriculaci6n por el otro.

La calidad valor se relaciona principalmente con la matriculaci6n. La calidad rendimiento es el criterio para escoger una escuela o un sistema escolar. La calidad rendimiento, la calidad proceso y la calidad inversi6n afectan al abandono escolar y a la asistencia irregular. La repetici6n, just if icada con una calidad rendimiento insatisfactoria, se relaciona con la calidad inversi6n.

La decisi6n de participar en la educaci6n combina consideraciones de la calidad educacional con una evaluaci6n de costos, tanto de costos directos como de costos ocasionales.

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The World Conference on Education for All, Jomtien 1990, included quality for the first time among the major objectives of an international programme to improve education. Earlier on, the emphasis had been on expansion: " . . . in its early day of lending for education, the World Bank emphasized quantitative targets . . . but now explicitly incorporates quality issues into its appraisals of educational projects" (Gannicott and Throsby 1992: 224). It has become apparent that it does not make sense to expand a system when it is incapable of reaching its qualitative goals: " . . . expanding access to poor quality schooling is at best meaningless" (Kemmerer 1992: 48). Expansion above a certain level seems to reduce quality (Mitter and Sch~ifer 1991: 21; Cannicott and Throsby 1992: 236), while quality seems to determine the demand for education to some extent. However, it may not be a question of quality of education as such but rather the way in which the actors on the demand side perceive it and value what they perceive, and not all aspects of demand are affected in the same way.

After an attempt at defining quality and suggesting a theoretical framework, we shall discuss the issue with regard to primary education, with occa- sional references to secondary and higher education. We shall use evidence from various countries, with a more detailed treatment of three empirical studies from Burkina Faso, Mali and Tanzania.

The empirical evidence presented below draws on the following sources:

• a sector study on the quality of education in Burkina Faso, financed and conducted by the World Bank (see Bergmann 1991; Tankoano-Karaga 1991),

• a field study on the attitudes of parents towards education in Tanzania (see TADERG 1993),

• a field study on the demand for education in Mali (see Minist6re de l'Education 1989).

In addition, education statistics from Burkina Faso and Mali have been analysed. Evidence from open interviews, which has not been subjected to any treatment other than regrouping and calculating percentage distributions, is supplemented by correlation analysis. Data are available for school districts, covering examination results as well as enrolment, repetition and teacher qualification. More casual, impressionistic evidence has been found in a number of sources including a teacher development programme in Pakistan (Bude 1993a), a sector study on basic education in Niger (Bergmann and Iro 1992), and a large-scale project to improve low-quality urban schools in poor quarters in Chile (Cardemil 1993).

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The Burkina Faso study used a near random sample of 24 schools covering the whole country. Seven schools were selected in urban areas, ten in rural areas, and seven in intermediate, semiurban environments. Data collection was done in April 1991. Quality was assessed through

• specifically designed achievement tests which were very closely linked to the curriculum as actually taught,

• classroom observations, ° interviews with 488 parents, 86 teachers, and 333 school-age children, some

of whom were dropouts, while others had never been to school. These interviews focused on reasons for non-enrolment, repetition, exclusion of pupils from school, withdrawal by parents or dropping out by the pupils themselves. Questions were open and directed at focus groups (Tankoano-Karaga 1991: 32). The hypothesis was that quality issues would tum up, without having been suggested by the researchers, if they really mattered in the issues under discussion. The present paper will draw on data from these group interviews.

The study on Tanzania (TADREG 1993: 3), financed by SIDA, was directed entirely to rural areas. Fieldwork was undertaken during July-September 1992 in a sample of 16 villages in 15 districts and 12 regions of mainland Tanzania. It is a purposive sample, justified by reasons of physical and social accessi- bility. Both economic and school indicators are above national averages. Results might therefore be positively biased. The sample unit was the household with children of school age or older. A total of 702 household heads were interviewed. While household data was collected in individual interviews, parents' attitudes towards primary education were gathered both in individual interviews and in group discussions. The data presented below again rely heavily on the group discussions.

The study in Mali focused on rural areas with weak demand. Carried out by the Institut P6dagogique National in co-operation with the Institut Malien de Recherches Appliqu6es au D6veloppement, it was financed by the World Bank. Poor quality of education was included as one of several possible causes for weak demand. Field research was conducted in four regions selected according to their enrolment rates. In each region, one sector was chosen as representative of the region, and in each sector, three villages were selected. A total of 440 people were interviewed, 280 men and 160 women. Interviewers used participant observation (Minist6re 1989: 6) and an open interviewer's guide.

Defining the quality of education

While "quality of education" has become a central issue, it is hard to find a definition of the concept. Often, it is used in a matter-of-fact way. Neither Chapman and M/ihlck (1993), Ross and Postlethwaite (1992) Wolff et al.

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(1993) nor Gannicott and Throsby (1992) provide a formal definition although the term figures prominently in the respective titles. The OECD report features a chapter on the concept, with the observation that quality is often narrowly defined as "the level of cognitive results" (Mitter and Sch/ifer 1991: 44) see also Dore (1976: 96), who deplores the economists' emphasis on measuring things. According to Mitter and Sch~ifer (1991), quality has a descriptive and a normative dimension. Its most common implicit meaning is student achievement (Chapman and M~ihlck 1993: 1-22; Ross and Postlethwaite 1992). The Mali study links student achievement with the ability to function in the student's environment and to meet its needs (MinistSre 1989: 33). Referring to Latin America, Wolff et al. (1993: ii) discuss student achievement, repetition and promotion rates as (implicit) indicators of quality. Cardemil (1993: 9) states that the concept of quality seems to be linked to efficiency and achievement. Other connotations are seen in terms such as "school quality" (Gannicott and Throsby 1992: 225), "quality dimensions of schooling" (ibid.: 224), "improved school practice" (Chapman and M~ihlck 1993: 7), "the quality of education services provided" (ibid.: 7), "the quality of instruction" (ibid.: 13), and the "poor quality of the educational inputs" (Wolff et al. 1993: iii). The OECD report links the quality of education with overall societal values, adding a distinctly non-technical, non-pedagogical dimension (Mitter and Sch~ifer 1991: 40). Steffens and Bargel (1993: 27) distinguish between product and process orientation in attempts to define the quality of schools, which is equivalent to defining quality in terms of achievement or in terms of charac- teristics of the teaching/learning process.

A major definitional problem is that quality is not a system element like teachers, school books, pupils, or classrooms. Quality is an attribute of any element which can vary according to at least one aspect or dimension. 1 Since any element has a number of potential quality dimensions, perceived quality is subject to socio-cultural valuation.

Since education is a subsystem of human action, the definition of its quality will have to take its systemic nature into account. It might be useful, therefore to break it down into components. There could be competing or complementing definitions of the quality of education depending on which component(s) one chooses to emphasise. Education quality is the quality of the system components, and the overall quality hence depends on the quality of these components. There are several aspects to the quality of education:

• o u t p u t (student achievement), • p r o c e s s (teaching/learning interactions in the classroom, curriculum), • i n p u t s (human resources, material resources, time).

Each of these aspects is in turn made up of a number of variable elements. There is an additional aspect, more general in nature, which brings the

socio-cultural values of a society into play: the quality of the overall goals

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and objectives of education. This dimension in evident when, for instance, a classical education focusing on Latin, Greek and philosophy is more highly valued than an education centred around natural science, or when ideological elements are seen as an indispensable ingredient of quality education. This value quality of education is the degree to which the overall goals of the education system relate to a society's dominant value system.

The output quality of education is the quality of student achievement. It is the amount and the degree of perfection of learning according to the various levels of intellectual achievement, from recall to application and creative innovation. A minimum level of quality is full functional literacy and a fair mastery of basic mathematical operations including the capacity to apply them to simple everyday problems (see for instance Garcia-Huidobro and Bernadot 1993). The output quality of education depends on two main factors, the char- acteristics of the pupils and the quality of the process, and process quality depends on input quality. 2

Process quality is the quality of the teacher-pupil interaction in the teaching-learning process. It means the use of teaching methods suited to a given situation so that pupils' opportunities to learn are optimised. Usually, if classroom conditions permit, it means pupil-centred methods, full mastery of lesson content by the teacher, a calm and "orderly" learning environment, and the availability of the basic materials needed for pupil activities and exer- cises. It means error-free and relevant teaching content as much as absence of fear among pupils. The quality of the teaching/learning process depends on the quality of the curriculum, of its contents, methods and manner of implementation. The quality of curriculum implementation depends in turn on the teaching/learning materials, the working conditions, and the pedagogical skills of the teachers, the total instructional time, and on the importance assigned to quality by external agents. These factors depend, to a large extent, on the control exercised by the school and the parents themselves.

Input quality must be broken down into pedagogical and physical quality. Pedagogical quality is the degree to which inputs conform to professional standards for teacher competence, textbooks, teacher's guides and audio-visual materials, which physical quality refers to technical standards for the hardware.

The above scheme is an oversimplification, but it will serve for the purposes of this paper.

The perception of quality

Different categories of actors in education use different definitions of quality. The elements they use are the ones they have most information about - from the mass media among other sources, and from direct experience. Evidence from Burkina Faso, Mali and Tanzania illustrates this point.

Parents are keen observers of what goes on in school:

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• . . parents have for many years lamented the falling quality of the country's education system. The list of complaints is long, familiar, and depressing. Schools are collapsing for want of maintenance and repair; books and teaching materials are sometimes totally lacking; teachers are ill-trained and unmotivated; many pupils are still illiterate or semi-literate on completing primary school . . . (TADREG 1993: 1, emphasis added)

The Tanzania study indicates that parents in rural areas know their schools better than parents in urban areas. Their criterion for output quality is mastery of the "3 Rs". Given the relatively small size of rural communities, the fact that teachers live in the community, and that rural parents seem to be approached for contributions towards the upkeep and running of the school more often than urban parents, they know about teachers' behaviour, the availability of furniture, equipment, and teaching materials. Pupils talk about their experiences and often complain at home. Parents who have been to school themselves compare their experience with that of their children. This can be seen in difference of opinion between groups with different exposure to school. In Tanzania, cattle owners (mostly Masal) and female household heads (with fewer years of formal schooling than their male counterparts) were more positive about present-day educational quality and utility than farmers and male household heads. The Mall study quotes parents who complain that pupils spend much more time in school than they did before mastering certain skills thought to be important.

The demand for education

The demand for education can be broken down into two components: demand for access and demand to remain in the system. The demand for access leads to enrolment. The demand for continuation becomes evident in parents' desire to keep their children at school, and in pupils' desire to carry on. Demand reactions are enrolment, repetition and drop-out. The meaning of repetition depends on the legal context: Where education is compulsory and effectively enforced, it is not related to demand but depends on the assessment of a pupil's capacity to continue successfully in the next higher grade. Where education is not compulsory or where the law is not enforced, repetition depends on two decisions - one by the teacher, and one by the parents or the pupil, namely to use more schooling as an input for a fixed objective. This might be an implicit decision, reflecting a general decision taken at enrolment that a particular child will remain in school as long as possible, or an explicit decision pondering the merits of continuing versus dropping out in the face of unsatisfactory achievement. Dropping out occurs either because parents decide to stop using the service by taking a child out of school (referred to as WITH- DRAWAL in the following tables), because pupils themselves refuse to continue, or because the teachers as the "suppliers" of the service decide to

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exclude clients (referred to as REMOVAL in the following tables). A specific form is truancy, which is intermittent dropping-out.

Our hypothesis is that all of these decisions are, to a certain degree, influenced b y aspects of quality. We shall explore which of the two components of demand is more strongly influenced by quality, and what the relative importance of quality, external efficiency and cost considerations is.

Determinants of the demand for education

External efficiency

The main factor determining the volume of demand for education is probably the perceived external efficiency of education, its potential to provide access to income in general, and paid jobs in particular: "parents grow increasingly reluctant to send children to school at all because they see few advantages of schooling given the lack of employment opportunities for graduates" (Bude 1993a: 69). The frequent pattern of overcrowded classrooms in urban areas and half empty schools in remote rural areas can be partly explained by local or regional demonstration effects of the links between achievements in primary schools and further opportunities. This point is borne out very strongly by parents in rural Tanzania (see TADREG 1993).

In Mali, 52.4% of all respondents mention future employment as the major reason for sending their children to school; for 30.9%, it is the only reason (Minist~re 1989: 19). In this group, the readiness to enrol one 's children without any external pressure is highest (47.6% of respondents). It is lowest in the group of people who expect nothing, not even purely educational benefits, from school: 71.4% of this group would not send their children to school if the decision were left entirely to them. How this factor works

Table 1. Gross enrolment rates and pupil-teacher ratios by degree of urbanisation*.

Degree of urbanisation

Gross enrolment ratio Pupil: teacher

Districts Boys Girls ratio

Mean Std. Mean Std. Mean Std.

Capital district: high 1 87.3 0.0 77.8 0.0 75 0.0 Other urban areas: medium 5 43.3 14.5 27.1 11.6 57 4.9 Rural areas: low 24 28.6 10.8 16.7 7.3 51 9.9

Source: Ministry of Basic and Mass Education, Burkina Faso. * School districts have been classified as high on urbanisation if all their subdistricts are urban, as medium if at least one subdistrict is classified as urban, and as low if all subdistricts are classified as rural according to Burkina Faso standards.

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seems to depend on the economic context. In the urban areas of stagnant and slowly growing economics, it leads to the "diploma disease", 3 a seemingly perverse reaction, increasing the demand for ever higher levels of formal education.

• . . ; growing armies of secondary and university graduates for whom no slots can be found in the bureaucracy, and - despite these growing numbers of educated unemployed - relentless and growing pressure for more secondary schools and universities in order to 'widen opportunity': such, in the developing countries of the Third World, are the consequences of using schools as the chief means of sifting each generation into those who get the prize jobs and those who don't, and of letting the sifting function dominate.. , the school's ancient function of providing education. (Dore 1976: ix)

Accordingly, the demand for primary education seems relatively stable. This makes sense as long as the education received determines the access to jobs. It is sufficient that those without education have much less of a chance than those with education. Education then appears as an entry condition to the more interesting part of the labour market. In addition, at the time of enrolment, external efficiency is a remote consideration, six to ten years in the future, without any realistic possibility of assessing future economic development, let alone the labour market. In 1991, in Burkina Faso, only about five percent of all reasons for non-employment referred to poor external efficiency (see Table 2), although the labour market was stagnant due to the reduction of the civil service. The poorer a household, the more its decisions will be governed by short-term considerations. Costs, indirect but mostly direct, have a greater influence on the volume of demand. Opportunity costs play an important role. The Mali study illustrates this: " . . . even if the parents have a positive image of the school which would encourage them to enrol their children, they may refrain from doing so if they need their labour in the family. This factor has been stressed everywhere among the reasons restricting enrolment" (Minist6re 1989: 42).

Quality

Certain dimensions of the quality of education influence the demand for education, although only aspects "visible" to the relevant actors come into play. Where they lack the professional criteria to assess output and process quality, they refer to simple output indicators, such as pass rates, and to efficiency indicators such as repetition, as proxies for output, or to the quality of the factors used in the process - school building, furniture, equipment, school books, teacher discipline and pupil behaviour, with the underlying assump- tion that input quality determines output quality.

Demand for access The structure of demand in education systems with diversified provision clearly shows the influence of quality considerations. The demand for private

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schools, and the search for the best schools within reach of one's budget, illustrates the point. Decisions may be based on value, output, process quality or a combination of these.

Access and value quality. Value quality is often taken into account when denominational schools are chosen. Many Islamic countries provide examples of the refusal to take up modern education because of value quality considerations. Formal education was introduced by the colonial powers. Since these presented themselves as Christian powers, the colonised Muslim societies feared an attempt at conversion. 4 Niger provides but one of many cases in point:

The school introduced by the white man met with resistance by the population mainly because it was considered a 'mysterious and satanic institution where fol- lowers of Islam could hardly send their children (UNICEF 1989: 22). It was the school of the 'caffers' (infidels). Thus, parents used all means and tricks to avoid enrolling their children in a school which was seen as a real plague." (Bergmann and Iro 1992: 54)

The resistance to education led to the use of force to obtain enrolment, which was not conducive to calming suspicions, and to the creation of new forms of primary education which included religious instruction. This argument is still used today as the Burkina Faso study found out: "Muslim parents prefer to send their children to Koranic schools rather than the classical school in order, they say, to avoid the loss of cultural identity" (Tankoano-Karaga 1991: 32, emphasis added).

In Mali, historically, the situation has been similar, although 91.8% of respondents do not feel that religious norms are against school enrolment (Minist~re 1989: 25). A minority, 10.9% of those who refuse to enrol their children in school, justify this on religious grounds (Minist~re 1989: 26). This open-minded attitude changes where girls are concerned, affecting both enrolment and the continuation of schooling. Certain local traditions stipulate that girls should marry as early as possible, a norm perceived as part of the religion. It is reinforced by the pregnancies among school girls, which not only lead to their exclusion from school but create problems for future marriage. On the whole, the opposition of Muslim parents to formal education seems to be rather limited today. As far as Tanzania (and probably Kenya) is concerned, "the idea that Muslims shun 'European' schooling for religious reasons is not borne out by the facts" (TADREG 1993: 37). 5

Access and output quality. Where different school systems coexist, they are often ranked according to assumed output quality. If parents have the choice between different school systems, their preferences become visible. Such a situation prevails in the Federal Republic of Germany since the German equivalent of the comprehensive school (Gesamtschule) sometimes exists side by side with the traditional secondary school types such as the Realschule and

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the Gymnasium. The history of the comprehensive school movement in Germany shows a mixture of value and output orientation: a majority of parents perceived the comprehensive school as performing less well acade- mically, according to the conservative mass media, but also to their perception of how teaching was organised and conducted. Others opted consciously for the Gesamtschule, valuing highly the political and ideological emphasis on equality of opportunities and the development of solidarity, prominent among the objectives of the Gesamtschule.

In Burkina Faso, enrolment decisions are linked to output quality. Output quality relates to poor learning achievements and examination results, but also to "wrong" learning (e.g. when individualism as a learning outcome is mentioned). In Mali, parents with strongly negative attitudes towards schooling mention as undesirable outcomes that

• children do not respect their parents, • school leavers consider themselves superior to their fellow villagers

(Minist6re 1989: 18); • school leavers become delinquents (Minist6re 1989: 49); • girls object to the traditional rules governing marriage (Minist~re 1989:

18), • school girls do not master the required domestic duties (Minist~re 1989:

24).

The study concludes that "the fear that their children may receive a bad education seems to be a factor which does not motivate parents to send them to school" (Minist~re 1989: 37). Some Burkinab6 parents perceive the poor results of children from peasant families as a bias against farmers. Suspicion of a bias in favour of the children of traders, teachers, other civil servants and well-to-do people is also reported from Mali: " . . . large numbers of children fail; only the children of civil servants are successful . . . . The school has lost some of its value as it is only the sons of the rich and the large traders who make progress" (Minist~re 1989:31).

For enrolment, all quality considerations taken together are more important than poor external efficiency: as can be seen from Table 2, output quality alone is about as important as external efficiency. However, direct costs, oppor tun i ty cos ts 6 and the negative attitudes of parents and pupils are more important than quality. The social actors mention similar reasons, their emphasis differs, however, according to their vantage point. Teachers stress value quality - preference for the Koranic school in this case - more than the parents who take the decisions. Some parents might not wish to use religion as a reason in an interview situation where university students are present. Teachers might reproduce a cherished stereotype. Parents seem most concerned about poor learning - it makes sending children to school useless.

This hypothesis is supported by the relationship across school districts between examination results, as measured by the pass rates at the primary school leaving examination in 1990 and grade six repeater rates on the one

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Table 2. Reasons for non-enrolment advanced by social actors in education in Burkina Faso (in % of all reasons given).

Social actors (respondents)

Reasons for non enrolment Parents Teachers Children Total

External efficiency 6.8 5.7 1.6 5.2 Value quality 5.7 12.7 6.3 9.4 Output quality 7.9 5.7 1.6 5.5 Process quality t.5 0.3 Input quality 0.6 0.3 Direct costs 44.3 44.3 12.5 37.7 Opportunity costs 15.9 13.3 23.4 16.1 Capacity problems 7.9 5.1 7.8 6.5 Attitudes 9.1 8.2 31.3 13.2 Others 2.3 4.4 14.1 5.8

Total 99.9 100.0 100.1 100.0

hand, and the gross enrolment rates in 1992 on the other hand, as can be seen in the table below:

Enrolment rates 1992 Overall Boys' Girls' Repeater results results results rates grade 6

Overall enrolment 0.439 0.431 0.440 -0.453 Boys' enrolment 0.427 0.409 0.426 -0.456 Girls' enrolment 0.440 0.440 0.441 -0.437

Source: Education Statistics 1990, 1992, Ministry of Basic and Mass education, Burkina Faso.

Both indicators are highly visible. Examination results are communicated to the parents, and the incidence of repeating is locally known. Although repeaters are part of enrolment, repeater rates correlate negatively with district enrolment rates. This only holds true for repeating grade 6, which provides a second and third chance of getting the primary school leaving certificate. The coefficients, though moderate, illustrate that parents faced with poor results and high repetition tend to be more reluctant over enrolment than parents who see better results. Data from Mali corroborate this finding: the higher the pass rate in the grade 6 primary school examination, the higher the overall enrolment rate. Correlation coefficients are 0.515 with the pass rate of those registered, and 0.414 with the pass rate of those who took the examination. In Tanzania, "The realisation that their children are not learning very much discourages many parents from sending their younger children to school" (TADREG 1993: 35). This feeling is widespread (74% of the parents

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interviewed, TADREG 1993: 28). The study concludes that: "The findings of this village survey confirm the widespread perception that the quality of primary education in Tanzania has reached such a low level that parents in many areas only send their children to school under duress" (TADREG 1993: 42).

Access and process quality. Perceived good quality of a school's curriculum enhances enrolment. A case in point is the teaching of English in some schools in a remote region in Pakistan: "More and more parents in Chitral district e.g. are ready to pay high school fees for their children if they are taught in English throughout. For them this is some kind of meaningful education, because they hope it will improve their children's chances in secondary education and later on the job market" (Bude 1993a: 41). Process quality is the decisive factor in parents' decision to enrol their children in schools which cost more than public schools. English serves as an indicator of process quality; it is not valued in itself but as a proxy for external efficiency, since parents feel that learning English enhances their children's chances. In Mali, parents were asked whether they considered the language of instruction in primary school, French, an obstacle to enrolment. Although in rural areas this language is foreign to all new entrants, parents requested it very strong: only 8.8 percent of the sample felt it to be an obstacle to enrolment; some of these would have preferred Arabic instead. The majority were unconcerned about short-term negative pedagogical consequences, their main argument being that mastery of French is a prerequisite for success in life:

They think that French has a wider social bearing than the other languages and is the language of the civil service. For them, mastering it means having a better grasp of administrative procedures, and running less of a risk of being cheated by civil servants. Parents quote example showing that the mastery of French is not only useful in Mali but also abroad. They have not had the chance to profit from a mastery of French, but their children should benefit from it. (Minist6re 1989: 44)

There is a very similar reaction among parents of American Indian origin in the highlands of Peru and Ecuador towards using local languages instead of Spanish as language of instruction. Their fear that this might jeopardise their children's opportunities for social mobility is so great that they ignore encouraging results which tend to show that pupils who start schooling in their mother tongue master Spanish as well as or better than pupils who do all their schooling in Spanish. The same reasoning shows up in the reaction of Tanzanian parents towards agriculture in primary education. Many parents perceive it as detrimental to the mastery of general subjects. The official emphasis on a subject whose importance for the future of their children they deny seems to increase their reluctance to send their children to school (TADREG 1993: 32).

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Staying in the system Usually, children once enrolled are expected to remain in school. In many cases, "promising" children 7 are kept in school in spite of high costs, and often, the wider family will contribute. Little is known about the number of pupils who abandon school despite good results. Data from Burkina Faso show that such cases do exist: out of 28 references to drop-out, eight (28%) mention good results. Repetition is relatively well documented as part of the annual education statistics. The exact pattern of the repeater rates depends on the legal framework in each country (see Table 3).

Table 3. Overall repeater rates in primary schools, Burkina Faso and Niger (%).

Country/Grade* CP1/CI CP2/CP CE1 CE2 CM1 CM2

Burkina Faso 1991 10.7 10.5 14.4 14.3 15.2 43.3 Niger 1990 2.5** 9.9 12.3 13.3 17.5 41.7

Source: Burkina Faso: Ministry of Basic and Mass Education, Education Statistics; Niger: Bergmann and Iro 1992: 72. * Designation of grades: Burkina Faso/Niger. ** In Niger, repetition in 1st grade is not allowed.

The teacher's decisions that a pupil should repeat is usually accepted in the hope that the child will profit from the extra year and finally complete the respective level of schooling. The high repeater rates in grade 6 show that pupils and parents want the primary school leaving certificate. Repeater rates in the final grade would be higher still if teachers allowed pupils to stay longer than eight to nine years in school. In Burkina Faso, parents and teachers alike see repeating as offering a second chance to a child who, for various reasons, has not been learning well. In addition to, and sometimes as an explanation of poor results, the following reasons are given:

• late development, young age, prolonged illness • problems at home leading to learning difficulties, • hope that the child will become more conscientious, • provision of a second chance, • family honour, pressure of parents on the teacher (Tankoano-Karage 1991:

44).

Repeater rates are higher, the poorer the examination results: In Burkina Faso, in 1991, the following correlation coefficients between the repeater rates in grade 6 and pass rates were observed across school districts:

Pass rate boys, all schools -0.522 Pass rate boys, public schools -0.481 Pass rate girls, all schools -0.392

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Correlation of repeater rates in grade 1 with pass rates is positive, around 0.41, indicating that early repetition might be beneficial if pupils have to master a foreign language at the very beginning of schooling. Repeating is related to teacher qualification, an aspect of input quality. The repeater rate correlates with teacher gender and qualification levels as follows:

Percentage of female teachers -0.5190 Percentage of qualified teachers - lnstituteur -0.4475 Percentage of student teachers - Instituteur -0.1329 Percentage of student teachers - Instituteur adjoint 0.1620 Percentage of unqualified teachers 0.5146 Percentage of National Service Volunteers 0.5231

Dropping out: Withdrawal and exclusion Reasons for discontinuing schooling are high costs, the need for children's work, or disappointing learning results. 8 These reasons are not necessarily independent of each other. The higher the direct costs of schooling, the more urgent the work requirements, the more cogent these arguments appear, and there is a trade-off between school achievement on the one side, and additional costs and/or children's contribution, on the other. Parents consider output and process quality. Confronted with disappointing learning results, many parents argue that their son would be better employed working on the farm, or that their daughter should get married as soon as possible so that they can benefit from the bride price. Others reason that things might improve. This they do by appraising both the potential of their child and what goes on in school. But if there is teacher absenteeism, lack of discipline and violence towards pupils, some parents expect no improvement.

Dropping-out and quality The studies establish a relationship between withdrawal, exclusion or volun- tary dropping out and the quality of education. In Tanzania, while official figures (latest estimates from 1980) were quite positive, with a national attendance rate of 83% and a truancy rate of 1.6%, data from other village studies show widespread lack of attendance, depending on the time of the year and the grade under study. Although no estimates for temporary or permanent dropping-out are reported, interview data indicate a fair amount of it. School leavers and parents advanced the following quality-related reasons for truancy or dropping out:

• little prospect of passing the final examinations; • poor learning results - basic literacy and numeracy are not guaranteed by

the primary school cycle (TADREG 1993: 38); • heavy work on the school farm without any remuneration, to the detri-

ment of "academic" subjects (TADREG 1993, Annex 6); • lack of equipment and teaching materials.

597

Parents mentioned as additional reasons:

• few chances to go on to secondary school because of poor learning results;

• "Because parents have lost hope and faith in their school as a means of upward social mobility, they do not care if their children were enrolled or dropped out before finishing Std. 7" (TADREG 1993 Annex: 21);

• no useful skills learned; • the risk of pregnancy due to the behaviour of unmarried male teachers; • actual pregnancies, a reason for expulsion from school; • a lack of concern by certain teachers; • violence of teachers against pupils (corporal punishment); • poor relations between parents and teachers which prevent concerted action

against truancy.

Direct and opportunity costs are also mentioned, most of the time in combination with poor output quality, sometimes poor external efficiency. The main parental concern with costs is cost-effectiveness, rarely the absolute level of costs or, to put it the other way round, the degree of poverty. The "quality" reasons for definite withdrawal, dropping out and irregular attendance are output, process (agriculture badly taught and practised in the curriculum, lack of equipment and teaching materials, teacher behaviour), and input quality (poorly designed school books). For Burkina Faso, the picture is much more detailed but does not contradict that of Tanzania.

Where parents withdraw a child or pupils drop out by themselves, achievement is hardly mentioned as a direct cause. Process quality and input quality seem much more important, accounting for 47% and 50% of all quality-related answers. They refer nearly exclusively to teachers. For process quality, corporal punishment is the most important complaint, followed by "bad behaviour" in general, often drunkenness. Although teachers are not directly mentioned, we can safely assume their share of responsibility, given the distribution of the teaching force between rural and urban areas. As in Tanzania and Mali, pregnancies and teachers' "immoral behaviour" are alluded to. All items under input quality refer to teachers, be it lack of discipline (absenteeism) and low morale or simply poor qualification. Parents are aware of teachers' responsibility for poor learning results. In Tanzania, some parents explained the near illiteracy of Standard-Seven leavers by the "low qualifi- cations of teachers and too much shamba work. UPE teachers 9 (untrained primary school leavers) are incompetent and therefore prefer shamba [school farm, HB] work to teaching" (TADREG 1993, Annex: 4). Their assessment of the teacher as the main factor of output quality seems well justified. And rural populations are at a disadvantage. Data from Burkina Faso show how teachers of varying qualification levels are distribution according to the degree or urbanisation of the school districts.

Pupils are excluded from school for poor achievement. French, the language of instruction, leads the list, closely followed by mathematics. The few cases

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Table 4. Quality-related reasons for withdrawal or exclusion from primary school (number of answers, all respondents).

Items of educational quality Withdrawal Exclusion

Output quality - poor learning results in general 3 23 - poor results in French 1 15 - poor results in Maths 13 - poor results in Science 9

subtotal 4 60

Process quality - corporal punishment - bad behaviour of teachers - teacher's lack of calling, no stimulating

approach to teaching - late start of school year - no information on results to parents - lack of teachers, teacher transfer - lack of teaching material

3 8

10 3

8

2

subtotal 62 1

Input quality - poor teacher qualification 32 - low professional morale 20 - teacher absenteeism 14 - not enough parental supervision

subtotal 66

132 63 Total

where process or inputs are mentioned refer indirectly to achievements - in one case, parents complained of having been poorly informed about their children 's learning results, implying that they would have taken corrective action. Teachers ' reference to lack of parental supervision points in the same direction. Pregnant school girls are usually excluded f rom school. Often, teachers are responsible.

While this table suggests that output quality is related to teacher qualification, the correlation coefficients of Table 6 show how strong that relationship is across school districts.

Social actors emphasise different aspects of quality as reasons for withdrawal and drop-out, as can be seen from Table 7.

Children seem to be most aware of the role of poor learning results. However, to them, it is not the main quality issue, corporal punishment being more important. Teachers are aware of this situation, but they mention other teacher-related elements as well, as much with regard to process as to input quality. Parents are more aware of input than of process quality. One reason might be that Burkinab6 parents are less concerned with corporal punishment

599

Table 5. Proportion of teachers of different qualification levels and pass rates in the school leaving examination according to the degree of urbanisation of school districts.

Degree of Qualified Student National Total Pass rates Pass rates urbanisation of teachers teachers Volunteer unquali- - boys - - girls - school districts Service l ied

Personnel

High 74.9% 21.4% 3.2% 3.7% 60.7% 53.5% Medium 57.6% 29.2% 11.3% 13.1% 51.5% 45.6% Low 48.3% 31.6% 17.3% 20.0% 47.7% 35.1%

Source: Ministry of Basic and Mass Education, Burkina Faso. Note: Qualified teachers include "instituteur" and "instituteur adjoint", Student teachers include students for both levels; National Volunteer Service Personnel are people drafted for a one-year service and prepared for teaching during a very short course; Total unqualified includes the former category plus people on special mission to schools.

Table 6. Correlation of teacher qualification (percentage of teachers with different qualification levels per school district) with pass rates at the first school leaving examination.

Pass rate at first school Qualified Student National All leaving certificate teachers teachers Volunteer unqualified (C.E.P.E.) Service teachers

Boys, all schools 0.34 -0.09 -0.41 -0.39 Girls, all schools 0.24 -0.03 -0.33 -0.33

Table 7. Reasons for withdrawal or dropping-out from primary school and quality by social actors (number of answers).

Items of educational quality Teachers Parents Children

Output quality - poor learning results 1 4

Process quality - corporal punishment 18 6 14 - bad behaviour of teachers 6 4 - teachers' lack of calling and approach to teaching 3 - late start of school year 1 - lack of teachers, teacher transfer 8 - lack of teaching material 2 2

Input quality - poor teacher qualification 24 8 - low professional morale 6 14 - teacher absenteeism 9 5

TOTAL QUALITY 72 42 18

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Table 8. The relative importance of school quality in decisions concerning the demand for education by social actor.

Social actors

Teachers Parents Children Total

Reason for decision Non- Drop- Non- Drop- Non- Drop- Non- Drop- on demand enrol- out enrol out enrol- out enrol out

ment ment ment ment

Quality 19.0 61.0 1 3 . 6 41.9 9.4 23.1 15.5 44.9 External efficiency 5.7 6.8 1.1 1.6 5.2 0.7 Direct costs 44.3 1 7 . 9 4 4 . 3 30.1 12.5 37.7 17.0 Opportunity costs 13.3 7.3 15.9 3.2 23.4 43.3 16.1 15.3 Insufficient capacity 5.1 4.9 7.9 4.3 7.8 6.5 3.4 Negative attitudes 8.2 5.7 9.1 17.2 3 1 . 3 28.2 1 3 . 2 15.3 External conditions 4.4 3.3 2.2 14.1 5.1 5.8 3.4 Total percentage 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Total N 158 123 88 93 64 77 310 294

- they practise it themselves. Another reason might be that they know little about process quality, given the number of parents with personal school experience. They put much more emphasis on "low professional morale", which encompasses teacher absenteeism, but also the motivation to do a good job.

Social actors differ greatly with respect to both the emphasis on quality considerations concerning the demand for education, and to the importance attached to different dimensions of quality. They all agree, however, that quality is much less important for entry into the system than for remaining there. Teachers are much more quality-conscious than parents and children, and they refer more often to learning results than the other two groups. Children put most emphasis on what goes on in the classroom, since they are the ones who experience it directly and suffer from undesirable teacher behaviour.

S u m m a r y a n d c o n c l u s i o n

This paper distinguishes between four types of educational quality: value, output, process and input quality. The relationship between quality and demand has been analysed using qualitative and quantitative data from various countries, with special emphasis on Burkina Faso, Mali, and Tanzania. The relative importance of quality compared to external efficiency and costs has been assessed.

The paper is a reanalysis of studies, in one of which (Burkina Faso) the author was personally involved. The qualitative data have been complemented by simple statistical analysis of education statistics. In all three cases, we could

601

not go back to the original interview data. In addition, the studies had different though overlapping foci: the Burkina Faso study explored reasons for non-enrolment, drop-out and exclusion from school under the umbrella theme of the quality of education. The Mali study emphasised social demand in rural areas, with quality one of various interview topics, whereas drop-out, withdrawal and exclusion were referred to only marginally. The scope of the Tanzania study was wider and narrower at the same time, looking at attitudes towards education and educational strategies restricting itself, like the Mali study, to parents. Thus, direct comparability of findings is weak. We are all the more encouraged by their complementary, which points towards underlying mechanisms strong enough to assert themselves through quite different research approaches. Truly comparative research across several countries would be fascinating.

As a general conclusion, we can say that the quality of education has an influence on the demand for education at primary level. Despite method- ological limitations, the evidence suggests that quality is an important demand factor since it is perceived and taken into account by the relevant social actors. But the relative importance of quality varies from one context to another. In Burkina Faso, quality considerations taken together are more important than external efficiency while for certain social actors, the direct costs of schooling are more important than quality. Both in Mali and Tanzania, external efficiency seems such more important for enrolment than quality, but then, the interviews followed different patterns and varied in their main emphasis.

Quality influences the decision to enrol less than the decision to carry on. However, it seems to affect enrolment to such an extent that a moderate correlation has been observed between pass rates and repeater rates on the one hand, and enrolment rates on the other.

Value quality is mainly related to enrolment, be it the decision whether or not to enrol one's children or choice of school. Value quality is probably a "dormant" orientation: under normal, "peaceful" conditions, only a minority take it into account. It can, however, be activated by political forces where there are art as of cultural and religious conflict. Low incidence of overt value orientation at any one time is not automatically reassuring for the future.

Very often, output quality is also the criterion for selecting a school or a school system. In such cases, output quality is probably used as a predictor of external efficiency. It tells parents whether the school in question will, on average, equip pupils to compete successfully in the labour market.

Quality issues are most important for decisions in the course of schooling. The reasons for withdrawal or dropping out and for irregular attendance are output, process and input quality. Not surprisingly, these types of quality are interrelated, input quality via process quality to output quality. Repetition, justified on unsatisfactory output quality, is demonstrably related to input quality as measured by teachers' level of qualification. Certain types of quality are unequally distributed across a country's territory. Since they are linked, this produces a quality gradient peaking in the capital, declining through other

602

urban areas and reaching its minima in remote rural areas. It runs parallel to the gradient of economic opportunities concerning wage employment, agricultural and non-agricultural self-employment. Both gradients affect the demand for the provision of education. Initially, enrolment disparities might have been due mostly to regional disparities in labour markets with their premium on education. Economic success is often linked to and brings about urbanisation, with relatively better relations of life than in purely rural areas, in Africa as well as elsewhere. Those with the required qualification tend to move towards urban areas as soon as possible. Quality of education is, among other things, a function of available resources. The allocation of funds is influenced by pressure groups, and the urban population is usually more vocal, politically more threatening than its rural counterpart. Because of the difference in conditions of life, teachers usually prefer urban areas. The least qualified, least experienced have to accept posts in remote areas. These ten- dencies produce a combination of the poorest learning results and the worst economic opportunities, and tend to discourage demand.

Direct costs and opportunity costs are an important criterion for decision- making, in particular for the decision to continue education. Cost considerations systematically relate four elements: the probability of external efficiency, the perception of quality, direct costs, and the economic or social value of the alternatives foregone by schooling. Where the latter are not so prominent, direct costs of sending children to school acquire more relevance (TADREG 1993, Annex: 14). Mali and Tanzania provide many examples of such reasoning (Minist6re 1989: 20, 34; TADREG 1993, Annex: 2), 4. It is important in this respect that output quality, and sometimes process and input quality are taken into account.

Where schooling is universal and knowledge and cultural competence are highly valued, enrolment of children at the appropriate age is so self-evident that it seems astonishing that it could be a matter for decision-making. However, for countries and/or social groups to whom formal education is an innovation, this is the case. This leads to the following hypotheses: (1) The less education is culturally valued for its own sake, the less it is institution- alised, the more purely economic considerations of costs and benefits govern the demand for education. Education is perceived as a vehicle of social mobility. (2) The larger the segment of a population that can make a decent living according to local standards without schooling, the weaker the economic pressure for education. (3) The more realistic alternatives there are for a life without formal education, the slower will be the process of institutionalisa- tion of education. (4) The poorer a household, the more its decisions will be governed by short-term considerations. Cost seems to be much more important for the demand for education than external efficiency. This being the case, there is a real short-term and long-term choice between enrolment and non- enrolment, between carrying on and dropping-out, and such choices can be analysed using an economic model. Such a model should, however, explicitly incorporate quality issues among its variables.

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Notes

1. Only dichtomous factors, factors with only two states - presence and absence - will not have a quality dimension. Such factors might be very rare, indeed. However, for every non-dichotomous factor, one might want to know whether differences in quality affect a factor's effectiveness.

2. The parallel to an ordinary production process is, however, limited by that the "raw material" is not passive but highly active in the process. Part of the quality of the process is the way in which it stimulates active learner participation, in line with the learner's potential.

3. See Dore's analysis (Dote. R. 1976). 4. It is quite probable that the elites of the Sahelian societies knew about the Spanish

policies after the reconquest of Andalucia, and the historic memory of the crusades certainly was (and still is) alive.

5. The reasoning behind this assertion is, however, indirect: "According to the 1978 census, net enrollments in the coastal areas [predominantly Muslim, HB] were 68 percent, compared to a national average of 61 p e r c e n t . . . " (TADREG t993: 37). Islam did not lead to the establishment of large-scale states with their own centres of Islamic learning, as was the case in West Africa.

6. The French term used here is "manque h gagner" (Tankoano-Karaga 191: 31). 7. One might ask "promising what?", and at least in the African context, it is the

promise of a bright career and future for the child with the hope for side benefits for parents and friends.

8. "Some countries are showing increasing drop-out rates in primary s c h o o l s . . , as it becomes no longer a primary certicate but a secondary o n e . . , that is necessary to secure any chance of a job, parents m a y . . be easily discouraged - particularly if they discover in their child's first few years at school that he is not showing the kind of academic promise that offers real hope of getting far up the examination ladder." (Dore 1976: 99)

9. Teachers employed for the UPE (Universal Primary Education) campaign in the mid-seventies.

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Documents

Quality of education and the demand for education — Evidence from developing countries