Sibling and gender effects on children’s chance to continue primary education in Rwanda

Abstract

Rwanda has made a huge effort to arrive at universal primary education, but many children do not qualify to sit the leaving exam before they reach the age of 14. Using the Heckman probit model on data from the Integrated Household Living Conditions Surveys 2000 and 2011, this study explores the school careers of 12,539 children ages 13-17 who had the opportunity to continue primary education. The combination of extreme poverty and having younger siblings or being an orphan or foster child, still leads to very high dropout rates regardless of gender. To improve completion rate for primary education, Rwanda should put more emphasis on disadvantaged children from larger families.