Definition:

Total enrolment in primary education, regardless of age expressed as a percentage of the eligible official primary school-age population in a given school year. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is widely used to show the general level of participation in the capacity of primary education. It is used in the place of net enrolment ratio (NER) when data on enrolment by single years of age are not available. It can also be used together with the NER to measure the extent of over-aged and under-aged enrolment.

At the inception of the 1988 – 2003 Education Policy of The Gambia, a commitment was made to increase the GER from 60% in 1988 to 75% by the year 2003, the end of the policy period.

Having achieved a GER of 70% by 1996, exceeding the targeted 65% at midterm, government has revised the GER target upwards to 90% by 2003.

Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1 show the GER trend from 1991/92 to 1998/99. The trend shows a steady increase from 59% in 1991/92 to 71.7% in 1998/99 for both sexes. This implies that while 59 out of every 100 children in the Gambia attended school at the beginning of the period, the corresponding figure reached almost 72 in 1998/99 – an average annual increase of 1.59%. For the male, the figure rose from 70% in 1991/92 to about 78% in 1998/99, representing and average annual increase of 0.98%. Although the GER for girls still trails that of boys, the increase from 47.9% in 1991/92 to 65.6% in 1998/99 clearly shows that the average annual increase of the GER for girls (i.e. 2.21%) is growing faster than that of boys as shown in Table 5.1. This further suggests that the call for the education of girls is bearing fruit.

Table 5.3a, b, and c show the GER by Region in 1991/92, 1994/95 and 1998/99. These three years represent the beginning, the middle and the end of the period being assessed. They are chosen both as a result of their significance during the period as well as for ease of analysis.

In Region 1, the GER has declined from 82.9% in 1991/92 to 66.9% in 1998/99, showing a drop of 16 percentage points over the period. This decline could be attributed to the high in-migration of 4.6% to this part of the country, recorded during the 1993 Census. In other words, the influx of people to this Region from the other parts of the country outstrips the rate at which school enrolments are growing. In absolute terms, the enrolment of this Region has increased from 28,842 in 1991/92 to 37,532 in 1998/99 representing an increase of over 30%.

For Region 2, the GER has increased from 76.8% in 1991/92 to 88.8% in 1998/99 showing and increase of 12 percentage points during the period. Following the, opening of primary schools in the rural part of the country coupled with expansion of facilities in existing schools, the enrolment in Region 2 has increased from 26,408 in 1991/92 to 44,467 in 1998/99 - an increase of 68% over the period. According to the migration figures of the 1993 Census, this Region is equally affected by in-migration (i.e. 20.9%) as Region 1. However, unlike Region 1, the increase in population in this area is matched by a corresponding increase in school enrolment. Hence the continuous increase of the GER.

For the other Regions, given the fact that prior to 1994/95, the current Regions 3 and 4 together constituted Region 3 while the current Regions 5 and 6 represented Region 4, the trend analysis will be divided in two parts. The first part will look at the four Regions prior to 1994/95 while the other part will use dis-aggregated figures for the two Regions, separating Regions 3 & 4.

Concerning Regions 1 & 2, the situation regarding the GER is as described above given that the geographical features of these two Regions have remained the same through out the period being assessed. For the other Regions however, the GER of both sexes for all the Regions has been increasing during this period. Despite the increase, there has been a vast difference between the Regions. For example, while the GER for Region 1 has declined from 82.9% in 1991/92 to 77.7% in 1993/94, the corresponding figures for Regions 3 and 4 were 55.9% and 32.6% in 1991/92 respectively and 66.5% and 37.8% in 1993/94 (Table 5.2).

Looking at the gender GER, as with most indicators the female figures trail that of the male but the worst affected region being Region 4 where, in 1993/94, only about 28% of the female population were in school (Table 5.2).

Table 5.4 uses Disaggregated figures. When the disaggregated figures are used, it could be observed that the GER has been increasing over the years albeit marginally in Regions 5 and 6. For example, while 24.2% of the children in Region 6 were enrolled in school in1991/92 (Table 5.4), the 1998/99 figure reached 51.6% (Table 5.3c) of the children in the region. Although the figure in 1998/99 is more than double what it was in 1991/92, there are still about 48 out every 100 children who are still not enrolled in the conventional schools. For regions 3 and 4, both have increased but a greater percentage increase is registered in region 4 than in region 3(Table 5.3c & 5.4), showing that access to primary education was greater in Lower River Division (Region 4) than North Bank Division (Region 3).

While no attempt is being made to compare the four regions that existed prior to 1994/95 and the six regions created afterwards, it is interesting to note that with the disaggregated figures for the affected regions, the GER for Region 4 has been consistently higher than that of region 3. This suggests that the low GER registered in Region 3 prior to 1994/95 can be reasonably attributed to the low GER in region 3. For Regions 5 & 6, the same can be said about the low GER in Region 6 being responsible to a large extent, for overall low GER of the previous Region 4. As a matter of priority for strategies to increase access, Regions 3 & 6 could be considered as top priority, hence the policy pronouncement on priority areas alluded to earlier.

Table 5.1: GER trends by gender - 1991/92 to 1998/99

Definition:

The net enrolment ratio is enrolment in primary education of the official primary school age group expressed as a percentage of the corresponding population. The NER gives a more precise measurement of the extent of participation in primary education of children belonging to the official primary school age.

The policy is silent on net enrolment ratio because the priority is currently to capture as many children in school as possible irrespective of their age.

Table 6.1 shows that the Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) for all sexes grew significantly over the period 1991/92 to 1998/99. The NER for female, however, still trailed that of male 64.2% for male against 55.4% for female. Over the period NER for male children grew from 54.2% to 64.2% whilst the corresponding figure for the female students rose from 38.5% to 55.4%. This shows that even though the proportion of the girls of official school going age lagged behind that of boys over the period, there is a strong indication that the rate at which this cohort of girls is being enrolled is higher. Similar to the GER, this shows that the proportion of girls within the official school age grew faster than that of boys. It is interesting to note that for both sexes the difference between the GER and NER is greater than 10 percentage points. Clearly, this shows that for both boys and girls, the number of children outside the official school age bracket is significant. Out of a dire need recognised by the government to encourage parents to send children to school, the high percentage difference between the GER and NER through out the period shows that access to education is not restricted to the official age only.

In table 6.2a, b and c, the regional trends for NER from 1991/92, 1994/94 and 1998/99 are shown. Unlike Region 5 and 6 where the NER are low – ranging from 40.2% in 1994/95 to 58.1% in 1997/98 for Region 6 and from 28.8% to 43.9% for Region 5 - in Region 1 & 2 where demand for school places is higher, the NER’s are significantly higher. This shows that in the region with lower demand for places, the proportion of the children of official school age (7-12) is lower than where the demand is higher. Clearly, given the fact that less emphasis is placed on enrolling children of the right age to schools in some regions, the gap between the GER and the NER in these regions tends to be much higher. For example, whereas this difference is as high as 12 percentage points in Region 5 in 1998/99, it is about 8 percentage points in Region 1. The same is true for Region 6 indicating that there is still a high reluctance to enrol children in school. In these two regions the preference to madrasas education is higher. Preliminary analysis of data on madrasas shows that a good number of children who are not enrolled in conventional schools are enrolled in the madrasas.

Similar to the GER, the NER for the different sexes show that boys still have a higher participation rate than girls both at the national and regional level. Furthermore, the regions exhibit similar variations in terms of participation of official school age as they did with the GER. Therefore no attempt will be made to discuss this further.

Definition:

Public current expenditure in primary education expressed as a percentage of GNP shows the share of the value of the total national production of good and services in a given year that has been devoted to primary education.

Public current expenditure per pupil in primary education expressed as a percentage of GNP per capita in given financial year measures the average cost of a pupil in primary education in relation to the country's GNP per capita. Both indicators, when compared with similar indicators for other levels of education, also measure the relative emphasis given to investment in primary education.

In the absence of any policy pronouncement related to expenditure on education as a percentage of GNP, the proportion of government recurrent expenditure spent on education is used here. Government has committed itself to providing about 22% of the total budget to the education sector.

The average expenditure per pupil as a percentage of GNP per capita was 15.5% over the period and had steadily increased from 13.3% in 1990 to 17.8%, experiencing some slight fluctuations over time. It dropped below the average in 1993 to 13.7%. Its explanation lies largely in the negative growth in GNP of – 6.5% in the same year while enrolment continued to increase by 6.9% in the same period. Per pupil cost reached its peak of 18.2% of GNP per capita in 1995, falling slightly to 17.8% in 1996 (Table 7.1 & Figure 7.1).

The share of expenditure on primary as a percentage of GNP rose from 1.2% in 1990 to 2.0% in 1996, averaging 1.6% annually over the period (Table 7.1 & Figure 7.1). Its proportion experienced a slight drop in 1993 to 1.4% by 0.1% from the previous year, picking up the next year to 1.7%. The deep trough in 1993 seen in all the indicators could thus be attributable to an economic depression during that year reflected by a negative growth in GNP. The PER (p24) reveals that if all households spent the national average as a percentage of per capita income, the lowest income quintile would be spending 2.0% on primary education compared with 1.1% for the richest quintile. With a larger school age going population and far less resources, the cost burden on the poor is quite evident. Thus even though per pupil expenditure as a percentage of GNP per capita has shown an upward trend over the period, its distribution could be skewed; with the poor at a more disadvantaged position. The PER (p22) intimates that subsidy per capita for the richest quintile is double that of the poorest quintile. This could be explained among other factors by the following:

1. that enrolment of the rich children is higher than the poor;
2. that the higher the level of education, the greater the rich-poor difference in enrolment; and
3. that the proportionate share of per capita subsidy increasingly accrues more to the rich at higher levels.

Studies have shown that social returns to education are higher at the primary level whiles private returns are greater at other levels of education. Given this fact and that government priority is on basic education, redress of such imbalances could be arrived by redirecting resources towards basic education and deliberately targeting the poor and vulnerable groups like girls in society. The scholarship scheme for girls and needy students is one such measure.