Chapter 1. Access to Quality Education
3. Zones of Exclusion: A model for identifiying the enrolment status and vulnerability of
Policies and strategies to increase access and increase completion rates need to consider many factors. The Zones of Exclusion model developed by the Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE) draws attention to many points at which students are vulnerable and the factors which need to be addressed for students to be able to sustain their engagement in and successfully complete their schooling. As can be seen from the graphs above, having enrolled in a level of schooling is, of itself, not sufficient to ensure the benefits.
The use of word “Exclusion” in this model may appear confronting but it makes the point that children who are failing to learn are usually those whoattend intermittently, drop out or are never enrolled,and are not exercising an equal choice in that they cannot control the factors that lead to their inability to complete a quality education. These factors can include a mix of home, social and school factors such as family circumstances and obligations, distance, difficult or expensive travel, poor quality teaching, lack of basic resources for learning, the emotional impacts of frequent failure coupled with the daily experience of social inequity (from lack of uniforms or money for snacks at school and extra-curricula activities). For some teenagers in both rural and urban areas, the experience of schooling can be so unrewarding and irrelevant that even intermittent low-paid, unskilled work is a more attractive option3.
The model below identifies 6 zones of exclusion. The % within each Zone above is for illustrative purposes.
As Indonesia moves to 12 years of universal education, and has set ambitious targets for higher education the model has been extended to 10 Zones, using 2012 Household Survey data on enrolment.
Figure 13. Zones of Exclusion Model: CREATE 20074
As Indonesia moves further towards a higher middle income country the issue of preventing drop-out and maintaining engagement will become more complex and more difficult to solve than just the provision of buildings and teachers. In many parts of Indonesia, except perhaps the most physically challenging and disadvantaged regions, the majority of out-of school youth will increasingly be drop-outs and children attending intermittently, rather than children who have never attended schooling. This is an opportunity cost for the nation and a lost opportunity for the individuals and their families. It also has potentially negative social and economic consequences for communities and families which could be avoided.Teachers can identify at-risk students well before they drop out and must be able draw on pedagogical, community, social and financial support to maintain student engagement.
3.1 Adaptation of the Zones of Exclusion Model to Indonesian context.
Figure 14 below shows the % of children aged 6-15 in Indonesia in 2012 who can be regarded as being in each of the Zones above. The key features are -
• Many children at age 6 (50.16%) have already enrolled in primary school and 30.67% are enrolled in pre- school.About 4% of children aged 7 fall into Zone0, having not yet enrolled in primary school. Including children aged both 7 and 8 yearsit is estimated that 241,000children need to be enrolled urgently, as late and over-age enrolment are associated with both dropout and learning failure.
• About 1 million over-age students (aged 13-15), are still in primary school. These could be children who enrolled late, children who repeated a grade, children of itinerant workers, children who were not able to travel to school at an earlier age because of distance or lack of transport, etc. In addition, about 320,000 children from this age group become primary school drop-outs. This signals a serious problem of internal inefficiency in primary schooling in which students who have been able to access schooling at least once are not maintained.
• The vulnerability of students at transition points is clearly indicated by the large % of students, (about 500,000 in number) aged 13-15 who fall into Zone 4, discontinuing their education at the end of primary schooling.
As noted earlier, national data masks quite large variations between and within provinces. The success of the policy for Nine Years Compulsory Basic Education must be assessed taking into account how well the education system at local level has been able to respond to the needs of these children.
Figure 14. Educational zone of children aged 6-18 in Indonesia by age, 2012
Source: Suharti’s calculation using data from SUSENAS, 2012
0%
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Age
Z‐10: Completed SSS but didn't continue to HE Z‐8: Dropout in SSS
Z‐9: Currently enrol in SSS
Z‐7: Completed JSS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐5: Dropout in JSS
Z‐6: Currently enrol in JSS
Z‐4: Completed PS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐3: Dropout in PS
Z‐2: Currently enrol in preschool Z‐1: Currently enrol in primary sc.
Z‐0: Never/not yet enrol in school
Zone Enrolment status
0 children who have not/never enrolled at school or pre-school 1 children who are currently enrolled at pre-school but do not complete 2 children who enter primary school and are still enrolled at this level
3 children who enter primary schooling but drop out before completing the primary cycle 4 children who completed primary school but did not continue to junior secondary school 5 children who enter junior secondary school but drop out before completing it.
6 children who are currently enrolled in junior secondary school but at risk of dropping-out 7 children who completed junior secondary but did not continue to senior secondary school 8 children who currently enrolled at senior secondary school and are at risk of dropping out 9 children who dropped out from senior secondary school
10 children who completed senior secondary but did not continue into higher education
Separate analyses of enrolment data for children aged 6 – 15 years by poverty quintiles highlights crucial issues in terms of equity.
• Of children who did not complete primary school (Zone-3) and who did not continue to junior secondary school after graduating from primary schooling (Zone-4) almost half are from the poorest families (Figure 15).
• More specifically, of the 1.3 million children aged 13-15 who fell in these two zones, about 46%
were from the poorest quintile (poorest 20%).
• A disproportionate number of poor children aged 13-15 were still in primary school, having possibly enrolled late or having repeated a grade or their education may have been disrupted by school- level factors such as poor supervision, high absenteeism of teachers and a lack of qualified teachers as the data show that disadvantaged areas do not have equal provision of qualified teachers or quality schools. Even in less disadvantaged areas, the better-resourced schools tend to enroll high performing students from better-off families.
The different patterns for the top and bottom quintiles are a stark reminder of the need for education policies to be informed by analysis of enrolment and completion data at sub-national level and by population characteristics such as poverty quintiles.
Figure 15. Educational Zone of Indonesian children aged 6-18 from the porest and richest quintiles, 2012
a. Poorest 20% (Quintile 1)
b. Richest 20% (Quintile 5)
Source: Suharti’s calculation using data from SUSENAS, 2012
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Age
20% Poorest
Z‐10: Completed SSS but didn't continue to HE Z‐9: Dropout in SSS
Z‐8: Currently enrol in SSS
Z‐7: Completed JSS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐6: Dropout in JSS
Z‐5: Currently enrol in JSS
Z‐4: Completed PS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐3: Dropout in PS
Z‐2: Currently enrol in preschool Z‐1: Currently enrol in primary sc.
Z‐0: Never/not yet enrol in school
0%
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Age
20% Richest
Z‐10: Completed SSS but didn't continue to HE Z‐9: Dropout in SSS
Z‐8: Currently enrol in SSS
Z‐7: Completed JSS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐6: Dropout in JSS
Z‐5: Currently enrol in JSS
Z‐4: Completed PS but didn't continue to JSS Z‐3: Dropout in PS
Z‐2: Currently enrol in preschool Z‐1: Currently enrol in primary sc.
Z‐0: Never/not yet enrol in school