Drop Out, Enrollment and Poverty: Policy Implications

Debate around the factors responsible for the drop-out phenomenon in elementary education focuses largely on two positions: (a) that parents, under economic compulsions, tend to “withdraw” their children from school, (b) that the schools themselves tend to “eliminate” certain kinds of pupils. The first position dominates the debate and tends to focus on factors external to the educational system. It adopts a macro socio-economic perspective and fits in well with the concern over the quantitative performance of the elementary education system. The more critical second position also adopts a macro perspective, reflecting, however, on the system of education itself, its pedagogical practices, content and institutions. It may be argued that the continued focus on quantitative measures like drop out and enrollment is misplaced. Yet, for better focussing of educational reform, a synthesis of both these approaches is called for. Firstly, enrollment and drop-out data can be used to identify micro-locations which are – educationally speaking – ‘problematic’. Such locations may show high enrollments but poor educational performance and correspond to the ecologically high-risk and bio-diverse pockets. Policy intervention should focus specifically on the ‘quality’ of schooling in these areas. The paper concludes that the correspondence of poor educational performance with poverty of a particular nature that exists in these environments has to be recognized in order to facilitate a shift of educational planning from centralized and uniform policies towards innovative localized approaches.