Will Raising Compulsory School Attendance Reduce Dropouts?

Abstract

An increasingly popular government initiative to achieve quality education and prevent students from dropping out of school is the raising of compulsory schooling years. Using exploratory research design, this study determined whether the duration of compulsory schooling predicts students’ dropout rate. Data mining techniques were used in exploring the data sets of 90 countries worldwide. To fit the data with the appropriate model, a polynomial regression analysis was used with an acceptability level pegged at R-Sq = 85% and above. Results revealed that the increase in the number of years of compulsory education decreases the dropout rate until it reaches the saturation point of 13 years. Beyond the saturation point, dropout rate increases. The study recommends for government initiatives and interventions to improve student engagement for countries implementing compulsory schooling beyond 13 years.

Keywords: length of compulsory schooling, dropout rate, compulsory school attendance age, out-of-school youth, data mining

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-17-12

Publication date:June 30^th 2019