Gender Ratio for School Attendance

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 attendance.

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

1) Calculate the percentage of girls and boys attending primary school in the given time period (for example, grade 5) by following this guidance.

2) Convert the percentages to numerical value (for example, changing 82% to 0.82).

3) Divide the fraction representing boys’ attendance by the fraction representing girls’ attendance (for example, 0.9 divided by 0.82).

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’ attendance

   - 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’ attendance, assess the reasons 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.