In which Grade am I?: Exploring the age-grade distribution of children enrolled in primary grades across the Global South

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Inclusion and social justice in education for marginalized children

Proposal

Since 2015, there have been intensive efforts to design global metrics intended to measure and track countries’ progress towards the SDG targets and their respective indicators. SDG4 sets bold and ambitious new targets that emphasize the quality and equity of education. To achieve this goal, active efforts are needed to identify the most disadvantaged children. Identifying these children requires an understanding of where they are most likely to be found as well as the different forms of disadvantage they experience. Across the developing world, the hardest to reach children are often found in the hardest to reach areas and may not be in school. Even when children are enrolled in school, they may start school late, attend school irregularly, repeat grades and drop out. When children do attend, they may be enrolled in schools that are not listed in any official records. And even when they attend school, they may not meet the norms for age or ability levels that are expected of children in their grade.

To date, the proposed methods and approaches to obtain data to measure progress towards achieving SDG4 have focused on regionally and globally comparable measures of learning from school-based assessments. These types of assessments are grade-based, meaning that the target population is all the students at a particular grade level. In developed countries, assessing student achievement by grade maximizes the opportunity to link educational achievement to policies, curriculum, and institutional practices.

However, in contexts where a significant proportion of children start school early or late, attend school irregularly, repeat grades and drop out, children may not always be in the age-appropriate grade. From a developmental perspective, expecting similar outcomes from children of different ages can be problematic. However, because grade-based assessments assume that children in the same grade have similar characteristics, the impact of variations in important variables like age remain invisible.

This paper will explore recent findings from an ESRC-funded ‘Impact Acceleration’ project to increase the impact of existing data collected by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) through secondary data analysis. The project is a partnership between the University of Leeds Social Science Institute and the People’s Action for Learning Network (PAL Network) to explore the age-grade distribution of students enrolled in primary grades in a number of PAL Network countries located across the Global South. The PAL Network is a south-south collaboration working across three continents to assess the basic reading and numeracy competencies of all children, in their homes, through annual citizen-led assessments. In this paper, age distribution will be considered in light of the country policy and practice regarding age of entry, promotion and retention. The paper will examine the relationship between age and learning levels within a given grade, exploring whether correct age-for-grade distribution is more common in earlier grades, government schools, poorer villages, poorer households or for girls or boys. The paper will further explore whether children who are the correct age for their grade are more likely to be learning foundational skills in literacy and numeracy.

Authors

• Steffi Elizabeth Thomas, Senior Associate, ASER Centre

• Hannah-May Wilson, People's Action for Learning (PAL) Network