Educational inequalities among children and young people in Ethiopia

Designed constitutionally, the Ethiopian education sector has been one of the most important pro-poor sectors over recent years, with a percentage of public education spending to total government spending of 21 per cent, and to GDP 4 per cent in 2012/13. As the result of this, school enrolment (Grades 1-12) doubled from about 10 million students in 2002/3 to over 20 million in 2013/14. Coupled with the public educational expenditure, the government has also made a number of policy changes in different areas of the sector. Examples include the introduction of the “O” class programme and non-formal preschool service called the Child‐to‐Child delivery system aiming to address marginalised children who have little or no access to preschool education. Additionally, targeting better access, equity, efficiency and quality, some other reforms were introduced in line with the latest two Education Sector Development Programmes (2005/6-2009/10 and 2010/11- 2014/15). Of note is the General Education Quality Improvement Program, designed to support quality improvements for all primary and secondary schools, and the expansion of higher education, particularly at university level, where the number of public universities increased from eight in 2008/9 to 31, with more than 0.62 million students, in 2013/14.

Yet, in spite of the unprecedented enrolment at all levels, the education sector still resembles a pyramid, with varying degrees of access for different groups, where nine out of ten children of appropriate age are enrolled in primary education, two out of ten in secondary education and only one out of ten at university. There could be several reasons that explain the pyramid shape of the sector, and the disparity among various groups of individuals in particular. This paper analyses the educational inequalities that may exist among different groups of children and young people in Ethiopia using Young Lives longitudinal data collected over four rounds of surveys, for two cohorts of children born in 2001-02 (the ‘Younger Cohort’) and in 1994-95 (‘Older Cohort’).