Dropping out from school: an analytical review

Reducing drop out is central to improving access to basic education. Most of those who do not attend school are children who have enrolled but who have crossed the threshold from regular attendance to regular absence. This paper provides an in-depth review and analysis of literature on dropping out from school, and focuses on children who have gained access, but fail to complete a basic education cycle. The main discussion is around why and how children drop out from school. The author does not present dropout as a distinct event, but rather a process where a range of supply-demand factors interact to influence schooling access.

The paper looks at literature in relation to household, community and social contexts of dropping out, as well as school supply and practices. It also explores what research is saying around pre-cursors to dropping out and factors which may influence retention. Finally, the study identifies gaps in research around dropping out and how research could address some of these.

Conclusions include:

• drop out from school can rarely be put down to one event or one impact. Rather drop out is influenced by a range of interacting factors, which are specific to individual contexts of each child
• households from poorer backgrounds who struggle to send their children to school often find the educational provision they receive lacking, increasing the pressure on children to withdraw
• poverty also interacts with other points of social disadvantage, with the interaction of factors putting further pressure on vulnerable children to drop out
• perceptions of how education will influence lifestyle and career possibilities/probabilities are shown to be factors in both early withdrawal and sustained access in different contexts.