Children's Educational Completion Rates and Achievement: Implications for Ethiopia's Second Poverty Reduction Strategy (2006-10)

The major development objectives of the Ethiopian Government are to reduce poverty and improve primary school enrolment and educational achievement (SDPRP, 2002). However, education performance indicators show that only access¿related targets have been achieved, while educational quality declined in most respects. Drawing on a sample of 1,000 children aged 7.5 to 8.5 years old from twenty sentinel sites, the Young Lives project sought to understand the determinants of school completion and achievement at the household, community, regional and national levels across different regions of Ethiopia. The paper identifies the specific factors associated with primary school completion/dropout rates, and educational achievement and performance of children, and assesses the mechanisms through which these factors are influential