Gender Ratio for School Dropout

To eliminate gender disparity in education, it is important to promote access and participation to schools for girls, so that they increase their opportunities in life. This indicator therefore assesses whether there is a gender imbalance in the rate of students’ school dropout.

Calculate the indicator’s value by using the following methodology:

1) Use this guidance to calculate the percentage of girls and boys who enrolled but did not complete the given grade in the given school year.

2) Convert the percentages to fractions (for example, changing 18% to 0.18).

3) Divide the fraction representing girls’ dropout rate by the fraction representing boys’ dropout rate (for example, 0.25 divided by 0.18).

4) Interpret the result in the following way:

   - the closer the resulting ratio is to 1, the greater is the parity between girls’ and boys’ school dropout (i.e. there is not significant gender imbalance)

   - a ratio greater than 1 indicates a disparity in favour of boys

   - a ratio lower than 1 represents disparity in favour of girls

1) If the ratio shows significant disparity between boys’ and girls’ school dropout, assess the reason for such gender imbalance. This can be done by conducting semi-structured interviews with the school teachers, parents and children. The number of conducted interviews depends on the information you receive – continue with interviews only until the respondents start repeating what you heard during the previous interviews and their responses do not provide any new insights (i.e. you reached data saturation). The enumerators can first interview the parent (ensuring that the child does not hear the interview) and then request the parent to conduct a brief interview with the child (ensuring that the parent does not listen to or observe the interview). The enumerators must be trained in the key principles of interviewing children. They should also be trained in unpacking the respondents’ answers. For example, during a survey in Lebanon, many parents were listing „transportation” as a barrier to girls’ education, but the actual problems were 1) lack of money for transportation, 2) limited security during transportation, and 3) parents not being comfortable sending their daughters to school alone by bus.