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The Stock of Schooling: Education Participation

It is useful to distinguish between stocks and flows. The enrollment rate is a flow, and the per- centage of the population who have ever been to school is a stock. Data on the latter may be calculated from population census or survey data. Figure H.3 shows the results from com- bining the data from GLSS1-4 and the GSS/OED survey. The sample is all those aged 10 and over, which is more than 56,000 people.134_{The par-} ticipation rate (percentage having attended school) was calculated on an annual basis for

age cohorts based on the year of birth. Seven years were added to the year of birth to give the age at initial enrollment and decade averages cal- culated from these figures (sample sizes are too small for annual data until the 1980s).

The figure shows a continual rise in the per- centage of the Ghanaian population aged 10 and above who have attended school (the partici- pation rate). This does not mean that the enroll- ment rate was always rising. There have been periods in which it fell, such as the late 1970s. But the participation rate continued to rise, albeit more slowly. This happens because there is both an inflow to the stock of new enrollees and an outflow from those who die. If those dying are less educated than the average, which is expected to be the case in Ghana (since they are old and so were of school age when the enrollment rate was far lower than today), then this fact will exert an upward pressure on the participation rate. For this reason stock data are

A N N E X E S Primary JSS Grade 1 82.0 JSS1 79.7 Grade 2 83.8 JSS2 79.9 Grade 3 81.9 JSS3 76.5 Grade 4 81.5 Grade 5 83.2 Grade 6 82.4 Primary 82.5 JSS 78.7 A t t e n d a n c e b y g r a d e T a b l e H . 1 4 Public Private 20 or less 58.7 16.3 23.1 20–30 39.1 55.3 30.1 More than 30 2.2 28.4 46.9 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 No. of observations 3464 1158 286 1988 2003 H o u r s s p e n t i n s c h o o l i n p a s t 7 d a y s b y p r i m a r y a n d m i d d l e / J S S s t u d e n t s T a b l e H . 1 5

not a good measure of current educational per- formance.

Literacy

The most commonly used stock measure is lit- eracy, usually taken as literacy among those aged 15 and above. Literacy is most commonly measured indirectly. That is, the actual indica- tor is based on the percentage of the population who have received at least five years of primary education, i.e., completed P5 in the case of Ghana. Alternatively, literacy may be self- assessed. The GLSS questionnaire asks if each household member can “read a newspaper in English.”

Data from test scores cast doubt on the valid- ity of both these measures. Data from the Cri- terion Reference Test show that only 60 percent of P6 students achieve mastery level in English, the other 40 percent should not really be con- sidered literate but are according to the indirect definition. The 1988 and 2003 GSS surveys administered a simple eight-question, multiple- choice test to all those aged 9–55. In 1988, chil- dren who had reached P5 scored an average of 2.2 — little better than guessing. By 2003 this had improved to 4.7, but a large percentage (42 per- cent) were still scoring 4 or less, which means

that they can barely read.

The GSS data also allow us to analyze the reading ability of those claiming to be literate on the self-assessed question. Table H.16 shows the percentage who replied they could read a newspaper in English according to their test score. In 1988, over 80 percent of those scoring between one and three marks out of eight replied that they could read. Although the situ- ation is not so bad in 2003, more than a third of those scoring 4 or less claimed to be able to read.

Taking these factors into account, it is inter- esting to compare different literacy estimates (Table H.17). The highest estimates are those reported in World Development Indicators, fol- lowed by the indirect method based on those having at least five years of schooling, with self- reported literacy some way behind. Lowest of all are the test-based estimates, but even these are over-estimates since those aged 55 and above (approximately 10 percent of the sample population) did not take the tests, and their lit- eracy may be assumed to be lower than that of those aged 15–55.

As it is a stock indicator, the literacy rate is likely to only change slowly. It can continue to rise even when enrollments are falling so long

B O O K S , B U I L D I N G S , A N D L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S 1 5 8 S c h o o l p a r t i c i p a t i o n r a t e s ( p e r c e n t e v e r a t t e n d e d s c h o o l ) b y d e c a d e o f i n i t i a l e n r o l l m e n t F i g u r e H . 3 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s Decade

as the percentage of those attaining five years of education remains above the percentage among those leaving the denominator (i.e., dying). A more sensitive measure, which is among the MDG indicators for education, is lit- eracy among those aged 15–24. Table H.18 shows that this measure has risen by 20 per- centage points in Ghana between the two sur- veys, equivalent to a 40 percent increase in literacy. This improvement can be attributed to school quantity and quality through an account- ing decomposition:

Literacy = 

The percentage change in literacy is the sum of the percentage change in school quality (measured as the proportion of school attendees who are literate) and the percentage change in enrollments (given as an age-specific attendance rate). The results of this calculation, given in Table H.18, show that school quality accounted for a bit more than half (57 percent) of the increase in literacy.

Mean Years of Schooling

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used mean years of schooling as a com- ponent of the Human Development Index for several years, although it has now been dropped (literacy is still part of the index). The World Bank’s World Development Indicators reports mean years of schooling, as calculated by Barro No. in school Total no. No. literate No. in school No. literate Total no. A N N E X E S 1988 2003 0 48.5 29.2 1 78.2 44.0 2 86.8 50.5 3 82.7 57.1 4 82.3 53.6 5 86.5 67.2 6 97.4 78.6 7 97.5 88.2 8 96.6 90.1 P e r c e n t r e p l y i n g t h e y c a n r e a d a n e w s p a p e r i n E n g l i s h t a b u l a t e d a g a i n s t t e s t s c o r e o n s i m p l e E n g l i s h t e s t T a b l e H . 1 6 1988/89 2003

Reported literacy rate 681 ₇₁2

Population completing P5 or higher 48.5 62.2

Self-reported literacy 43.2 51.1

Scoring 5 or more on simple English test 36.7 44.8

Note: 1. 1990; 2. 2000. Source for reported literacy rate is World Development Indicators, other data calculated from GLSS2 and GSS/OED survey.

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