Choosing to leave: gender and secondary school dropout in Indonesia

• In Event: Gender issues in secondary school transition, participation and learning outcomes

Abstract

In the 23 years since the first World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, the percentage of children globally who enroll in school has increased dramatically (Lewin, 2009). This is also the case in Indonesia, where the primary net enrollment rate was 95% in 2010 (UNESCO, 2012). Net enrollment at the secondary level in Indonesia lags, however—less than 70% of secondary school-aged youth are attending (UNESCO, 2010). Furthermore, the national-level data masks significant variation at the provincial level, with gross enrollments ranging from 59% to 105% at the lower secondary school level and 36% to 109% at the senior secondary school level (UNESCO, 2010).

The variation in secondary-level educational participation becomes even more complex when we examine the patterns by gender. In some provinces, girls are more likely to enroll in secondary school than are boys; in other provinces, the opposite is true (UNESCO, 2010). The lack of female attendance in some provinces is particularly perplexing given that girls tend to perform well in primary school. For example, in a survey of 1,089 fourth graders in 10 Indonesian districts, Suryadarma, Suryahadi, Sumarto, and Rogers (2006) found that 57% of the students scoring in the top quartile on a mathematics exam were female. If transition to secondary school were based solely on merit, we would expect to see at least as many girls as boys enrolled. Patterns of educational participation that vary by gender indicate that a country has not met the Millennium Development Goal 3A: to “eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education” (United Nations, 2013).

Little research has been conducted that attempts to explain Indonesia’s gendered patterns of secondary enrollment. In Muslim countries, religion is often blamed for gender gaps in education. In an extreme example, the Pakistani Taliban has violently attacked girls’ schools in an attempt to curb female enrollment (Fazl-E-Haider, 2013). However, Indonesia’s patterns suggest a more nuanced picture. In Aceh province, which is religiously conservative and has implemented Sharia law, girls are more likely than boys to attend lower secondary and equally likely to attend upper secondary. In contrast, in Banten province, which is close to the capital and more modernized, girls are less likely than boys to attend both levels of secondary school (UNESCO, 2010). Cultural factors beyond religion may also relate to girls’ school attendance. One recent study linked kinship norms, such as matrilocal residence patterns, to girls’ enrollment in Indonesia (Rammohan & Robertson, 2012). Poverty is frequently linked to dropout in the literature on girls’ school participation (Hunt, 2008). However, given that the percentage of the urban poor living in poverty is higher in Aceh than in Banten, poverty may have different effects on girls in Indonesia than elsewhere (Statistics Indonesia, 2013).

To examine the relative importance of gender, religion, poverty, and other variables in determining dropout risk, fifty in-depth interviews with male and female dropouts were conducted across two sites in Banten and Aceh. The interviews focused on decisionmaking around dropout and the factors that could be leveraged to keep other young people in school. The findings suggest that reasons for dropout are indeed gendered, though perhaps not in the ways that might be expected.

Author

• Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski, Florida State University