Socioeconomic determinants of primary school dropout: the logistic model analysis

This paper describes the socioeconomic determinants of primary school dropout in Uganda with the aid of a logistic model analysis using the 2004 National Service Delivery Survey data. The Objectives were to establish the; household socioeconomic factors that influence dropout of pupils given free education and any possible policy alternatives to curb dropout of pupils. Various logistic regressions of primary school dropout were estimated and these took the following dimensions; rural-urban, gender, and age-cohort. After model estimation, marginal effects for each of the models were obtained. The analysis of the various coefficients was done across all models. The results showed the insignificance of distance to school, gender of pupil, gender of household head and total average amount of school dues paid by students in influencing dropout of pupils thus showing the profound impact Universal Primary Education has had on both access to primary education and pupil dropout. Also the results vindicated the importance of parental education, household size and proportion of economically active household members in influencing the chances of pupil dropout. The study finally calls for government to; keep a keen eye on non-school fees payments by parents to schools as these have the potential to increase to unsustainable levels by most households especially in rural areas; roll-out adult education across the entire country; and expand free universal education to secondary and vocational levels as it would allow some of those who can not afford secondary education to continue with schooling. This has the effect of reducing the number of unproductive members in the household.