CityReads│Why Dropout Rate in Rural China Is So High?
The cumulative dropout rate across all windows of secondary education may be as high as 63%. There are two mechanisms to explain: the Rational Choice mechanism and the Impulsive Choice mechanism.
Shi, Y. et al, 2014. Dropout in Rural China's Secondary Schools: A Mixed-‐Methods Analysis, Working Paper 269, REAP(Rural Education Action Program) at Standford University.
Source: http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/24606/269_-_Dropout_Qualitative_Paper.pdf
Picture source:http://reap.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/styles/820xauto/public/5445603683_9faa5b42d0_o_3.jpg?itok=Jm6-wC87
Education has long been recognized as one of the most important inputs to a nation’s economic development. In the of East Asia, besides China, the countries that have shown the greatest economic growth in the second half of the twentieth century underscored that growth with high rates of education enrollment.
Unfortunately, research suggests that students from China’s poor, rural areas are currently receiving less secondary schooling than their urban peers. For example, well over 90 percent of students from large cities in China attend senior high school, yet only half of all junior high graduates in poor, rural areas attend senior high school. The problem extends to every major window of the secondary schooling process: rural students are dropping out of junior high school, not matriculating into senior high school, dropping out of academic high school and dropping out of vocational high school all at high rates.
Given that most children in China’s school system are from rural areas, if the rural dropout is still at high rate, it’s not only seriously lagging and the nation is in danger of undermining its future development. For those who dropout don’t hold necessary skills so that struggle to work in the informal economy or even be left unemployed, which could hinder economic growth and stability on a national scale.
This study attempts to understand the dropout rate in secondary school in China and the reasons why students drop out.
Quantitative survey data were collected during eight separate efforts. The research team (made up of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, Northwest University, and Shaanxi Normal University) collected data from 24,931 students in 262 rural junior high schools, 46 rural academic high schools, and 107 vocational high schools in four provinces—Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei and Zhejiang—between June 2007 and November 2013. The data collection efforts of the eight studies are summarized in Table 1. Beyond information on dropouts, in each study, enumerators collected data on students’ current schooling status as well as their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. And students were given a 30-minute standardized math test using items from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) so as to quantify their academic performance. A number of studies also limited their sample to “poor students.” These students were identified by each homeroom teacher and the survey for the students included a number of questions about their family assets. By matching these two pieces of information together, the studies were able to identify the four poorest students in each class.
We found high rates of dropout across the four major windows in secondary education (Table 2). Rates of dropout during junior high are high. 4.4% to 13.3% of students dropped out between the beginning of their first school year (seventh grade) and the beginning of their second school year (eighth grade). Among students who were present in the beginning of eighth grade, 9% dropped out before the beginning of ninth grade. Finally, 4.2% to 8.7% of students dropped out between the beginning of ninth grade and graduation. This suggests a cumulative average dropout rate across junior high ranging between 17.6% and 31%. These rates are 6 to 12 times higher than the government’s most recently reported (3-year cumulative) junior high dropout rate of 2.6%. The largest drop in secondary education enrollment occurs prior to senior high school. Our studies show that more than half (between 51.2% and 53.5%) of poor rural students did not enroll in any kind of senior high school (academic or vocational).
Even if students enter senior high school, there is no guarantee that they will finish. Among the students that continued with their secondary education—either to academic high school or vocational high school—dropout remained high. Between 4.2% and 7.4% of students who enrolled in academic high school dropped out before graduating. The dropout rate from vocational high schools was even higher: between 29% and 32% of students enrolled in vocational high schools will drop out before completing their studies.
We then estimate a cumulative dropout rate throughout the secondary education process ranging from 59% (most conservative) to 63% (most liberal). Specifically, if 100 students begin junior high, we can calculate the proportion of students who complete each window of secondary schooling. If we take the most liberal statistics, we can estimate that after some dropout during junior high (roughly 31 kids—31% dropout in junior high) a total of only 46 will enroll in senior high school (54% do not matriculate—including prior dropouts). If 54% of the remaining students go to academic high school and 46% go to vocational schools, we can also calculate the number that drop out during senior high. 18 Specifically, 25 students will attend academic high school but only 23 will graduate (dropout rate of 7%), and 21 students will attend vocational high school but only 14 will graduate (dropout rate of 32%). In total, only 37 out of 100 rural students who begin junior high school will graduate from secondary schooling
Students who drop out tend to have four similar characteristics. Dropouts tend to have lower academic achievement, be boys, be older, and come from more disadvantaged family backgrounds (as revealed by their poverty status, number of siblings, parents’ education, parents’ migration status, etc.). These results are consistent with international findings. Besides, a study measured the correlation between dropout and mental health, also found that the student and family characteristics that correlate with dropout also correlate with mental health issues. Even after controlling for student and family characteristics, mental health issues remain correlated with dropout rates.
This study conducted interviews with a randomly selected subset of students from two of our studies cited above. These interviews were conducted in two waves. All interviews took place in the fall of what would be the students’ first semester of senior high school. In each wave, we randomly selected 26 students from our sample schools in Shaanxi Province to interview for a total of 52 interviews. Table 4 shows the sampling. All students were selected for participation in the study based on their being among the four poorest students in their class at the time of our initial survey in 2010.
We propose the following framework for understanding the dropout decision. Students choose to drop out of the secondary education process according to two basic mechanisms. First is the Raionally Choice mechanism based on benefit and cost and second is the Impulsive Choice based on psychological stressors.
According to this framework, if rural students rationally consider the costs and benefits of staying in school, there are four general reasons why they would choose to drop out of the secondary education system: The cost of going to school, binding liquidity constraint as a result of tuition, capabilities of students would not be able to mmet the admission requirements, the quality of school is low.
Presented in Table 3, result showed that various metrics for “poverty” were significantly correlated with dropout in all reported studies. Studies conducted throughout the world and in China have long found that poverty correlates closely with low levels of educational attainment and high dropout rates. Poorer students are more likely to drop out likely in part because they are more profoundly affected by the costs of continuing their education.
Whether seeking to attend academic or vocational school programs, students face an additional cost: high and increasing opportunity costs to attending any kind of secondary school. A study found that during the late 2000s virtually all young, able-bodied rural individuals were able to find a job off the farm in China’s coastal provinces. The same study also found that the monthly earnings of the typical unskilled worker were comparable to the annual per capita income in poor rural areas. While the long-term returns to these low-skill jobs are likely to be low, the short-term economic incentives rural students face may encourage dropout. We found that dropout was significantly correlated with both gender and age (Table 3—boys and older students are more likely to drop out), which we interpret as evidence of the importance of opportunity costs in influencing the dropout decision because those characters are more likely to find a job that has a higher rate of pay.
However while the costs of schooling do play a crucial role in student decisions, It is likely, then, that the perceptions of students of the high costs of school, though significant, were weighed heavily against the perceived benefit. The perceived benefit of staying in junior high or academic high school seemed to hinge primarily on students’ understanding of their academic capabilities. Though many of the students interviewed had been offered a scholarship if they successfully matriculated into senior high school. However, students explained that the scholarship did not have a significant impact on their schooling choice simply because their grades were a far more critical factor.
For those in vocational school, the crucial point it the pervasive school quality. Vocational high school is less costly and less competitive, but there are still almost one-third of vocational high school students are choosing to drop out. That is because the quality of vocational programs is so low that students feel little incentive to enroll in or remain in vocational high schools. Not only common perception from outside the school system believe that vocational high schools are of poor quality, but also many current students of those schools think so. This perceived poor school quality likely underlies the high rates of vocational high school dropout (from 29 to 32% across three years) reported in Table 2.
Given mental development patterns in adolescence, secondary school-aged children may be even more likely to make impulsive decisions about such issues as dropping out.
The first evidence that students are making impulsive choices stems from their attitudes towards dropout after they have made that decision. If students were accurately weighing the costs and benefits of dropping out of secondary education, it is unlikely that they would come to regret their decision soon after. However, the majority of dropped out students that we interviewed said that they regretted their choice. And a study found that students in poor, rural areas of China are misinformed about the returns of continuing on to senior high school and drop out Psychological stress in school may contribute to the short-run decision-making process of students. A study in rural Shaanxi Province found that 74% of surveyed seventh and eighth grade students were deemed clinically at risk for mental health issues. Interviews reveal that one major source of psychological stress in school stems from poor relationships between students and their teachers and between classmate.
Facing psychological stress in school and hearing about the freedom of life outside of school, a large proportion of rural students are also left with little positive guidance at home to help them determine the best course of action. In poor rural areas there are many single-parent families or children who are “left-behind” by parents who have migrated to far-away cities. In addition, migrating parents may serve as “role models,” attracting children to migrate themselves and perhaps increasing the probability of finding a job.
The research found the cumulative dropout rate across all windows of secondary education may be as high as 63%. We suggest that two different mechanisms are driving dropout in rural areas. First, some students appear to be making a rational choice to drop out based on (a) high costs, (b) high academic requirements, and (c) poor school quality. Second, students may be making an impulsive choice to drop out of school based on the psychological stressors they face in the classroom, the tales they hear from friends about the short-term benefits of leaving school, and limited parental and teacher guidance to encourage them to stay in school.
Three recommendations can be derived from these findings. Firstly, high tuition rates and rigorous academic requirements for admission to academic high school are the two major barriers. We recommend that China follow most other developed nations in making education compulsory and free all the way through the end of senior high school.
Secondly, the quality of vocational school should be improved and general academic skills (for example, in subjects such as math, reading, and science) should be provided and improved.
Thirdly, providing rural students with “life counselors” that teach a weekly class on handling mental health stress and make themselves available as mentors to their students significantly reduces dropout at the junior high level. More programs to provide poor rural students with this sort of men