Investigating and Spatial analysis of children dropped out of school in the country using GIS

Document Type : research article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Population and Human Capital Department, National Institute for Population Research, Tehran, Iran.

2 migration and urbanizatin department, national .....

Abstract

Aim: The first aspect of educational poverty is school dropout. Literacy is the main condition for human empowerment in the face of the new world, life without a level of education and literacy, faces many difficulties. Illiteracy is the cause and persistence factor of many social ills. The first and most important step in solving any problem is to know it, and to be aware of its distribution in the country.
Methodology: In this regard, the present article to spatially analyze children dropped out of school in the counties and provinces of the country, uses the secondary analysis of census data (2016). ArcGIS and SPSS software were used to analyze the data.
Results: The results showed that the two important variables of employment and marital status of children based on gender are significantly different. Also, based on the results of the Moran test and the Gi index, the children dropped out of school rate strongly tends to concentrate and cluster in space. Border counties, especially in the southeast and northwest, are strongly affected by the high rate of school dropouts, while the central regions of the country have the lowest dropout rates. This pattern of distribution is completely in line with the pattern of development of the regions of the country.
Conclusions and suggestions: It can be said that any planning and investment in this issue should be done according to regional differences. Balanced sociology-economic development in the country is the most important way out of this social problem.
Innovation and originality: Investigating the spatial distribution of children dropped out of school  at the county level 

Keywords

Full Text

Introduction

Enjoying education is considered a human right, and the annual reports of educational statistics on a national and international scale show progress in enjoying this social right. However, there are still children who don't benefit from this right and are considered " dropped out of school " in the term. A problem that has become one of the great plagues of education and society. This definition includes All people are of school age (6-17 years old) who for whatever reason are not attending any level of education. Considering that literacy in all its aspects in today's world is the main condition of empowerment in facing the new world, life without gaining a level of Education and literacy are faced with many difficulties; the first and most important step in solving any problem is to know it accurately and to be aware of how it spreads in the society. The best way to deal with this problem before any action is to adopt preventive policies and solutions. But any decision about dealing with this phenomenon has several important preconditions, the first of which is the correct and scientific understanding of the current situation in the country. Dropping out of education and actually children dropping out of school is a phenomenon that occurs in all regions and even in all countries, both developed and developing, but the issue that is raised is the lack of justice and equality among different regions in enjoying the right to learn. and as a result, being deprived of it, while one of the manifestations of educational justice in the country is having the right to education regardless of where people live. The existence of regional differences in the proportion of children dropped out of school is representing and indicates the existence of a larger set of problems and issues. Therefore, the problem and the main goal of this study was to investigate the characteristics of children dropped out of school and analyze their distribution in the country using the spatial analysis approach.

Methods

 This applied study is descriptive-analytical and secondary data analysis. The study population is all the children dropped out of school of the counties and provinces of the country in 2016. The data used are two percent of the 2016 census. The most important indicator used is the proportion of children dropped out of school in each region:

 

The data analysis method is based on correlation and spatial statistics. There are various methods and tests for measuring spatial data, in this article Moran's index and hot spots index (Gi) are used.

Results

 In 2016, there were 692,299,1 children dropped out of school with an average age of 12.63 years in all educational levels. About 29 percent are considered "totally illiterate" and 71 percent have dropped out of school at various education level. Also, there was not much gender difference among the target community. More than 50% of these children are girls and about 46% are boys. Children's place of residence (city/village) also does not make a difference in the school dropout. But the school dropout at different ages shows a significant difference. Most of the children dropped out of school at a higher age, i.e. 14 to 17 years old, and the least number of these children are in the age group of 12 to 14 years. The national average rate of school dropout is 9.36%. The provinces of the country do not have the same status in this index. While in some provinces, the rate of children dropped out of school is lower than the national average, on the other side, there are provinces that are significantly different from this average. The province of Sistan and Baluchistan is at the top of this list with more than 20% of children dropped out of school.

After Sistan and Baluchistan province, the provinces of West Azerbaijan with 12.3%, Kerman with 11.5%, Razavi Khorasan with 11.3% and Kurdistan with 11.1% are located. On the other hand, the provinces of Isfahan, Mazandaran, Qazvin and Markazi each have the lowest school dropout rate in the country with less than 7%. Based on this, there is a big difference between the provinces in terms of the rate of school dropout. The spatial distribution pattern of the

 rate of children dropped out of school at the provincial level shows that most of the southeastern, northwestern, and northeastern provinces of the country are struggling with this problem, while the central and northern provinces of the country have the least impact. The results of Moran's spatial auto-correlation test show that at the county level, this index in the country is equal to 0.243 and at the provincial level it is equal to 0.186 with a significance level of 0.000, which means the tendency to cluster this index is in certain regions of the country. The hot spots index showed that the spatial accumulation of hot spots at the provincial level is related to the two provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan and Kerman, and on the other hand, the spatial accumulation of cold spots is for the provinces of Isfahan, Mazandaran, and Alborz.

 

   

Map 1. The distribution of the proportion of children dropped out of school in the province and counties of the country in 2016

 

Conclusion

 The research results show that 29% of children dropped out of school are completely illiterate and have never entered school; Considering the impact that literacy and education has on all areas of life, this amount of absolute illiteracy among children who are the future of the country, has many social and cultural consequences and considering the regional differences, which is present in this index, this issue can affect certain regions of the country, which are mainly less developed regions. Applying the results to the spatial distribution of the development of the province and counties in the country shows that the developed regions of the country, which are mainly the central and northern regions, have the lowest school dropout rates, while in the less developed and even undeveloped regions, Generally, they are located in the border and southeast regions of the country, there is the highest rate of children dropped out of school. So, it can be said that the development is one of the important factors in the school dropout rate of regions that can have significant effects on it.

 

Keywords: Spatial analysis, dropout of school, cluster distribution

Funding: There is no funding support

Conflict of interest: Authors declared no conflict of interest

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Journal of Educational Planning Studies
Volume 11, Issue 21
October 2022
Pages 128-148

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History

  • Receive Date: 20 July 2022
  • Revise Date: 09 January 2023
  • Accept Date: 17 January 2023

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