Determinants Of Secondary School Enrollment Rate And Policy Propositions To Increase The Enrollment Rate In Developing Countries

Secondary education is of great significance to improving the quality of labor,solving poverty,and even reducing population pressure in developing countries.However,the cliff-like decline in the enrollment rate from primary schools to secondary schools in developing countries is a major educational dilemma faced by national governments and international organizations.Therefore,how to increase secondary school enrollment rate through public policy should arise due attention.Governments and international organizations such as the World Bank and UNESCO have previously conducted many policy intervention projects.However,these interventions are mostly location specific and the methods used to intervene are various.Few studies have used cross-country comparable data to systematically study the factors affecting the enrollment rate of secondary schools in various countries.At the same time,there are few studies that have summarized the typical cases that are inspiring when the policy makers form educational policies.Given this context,the paper firstly determined the explanatory variables included in the model taking the previous studies,comprehensive data availability and the influence of national and international policies into consideration.Through data analysis and regression models,this paper aims to verify the macro factors correlated with the secondary school enrollment rate and the degree of the correlation.Policy recommendations to improve the secondary school enrollment rate in developing countries are accordingly raised.By analyzing the latest data from the World Bank,this paper hopes to find policy-controllable macro variables that are significantly correlated with secondary school enrollment rates and to identify variables that contribute most to increasing enrollment.By focusing on these key variables,governments can pool resources more effectively to increase enrollment,bringing more skilled workforces to meet the changing market needs of many countries,especially of developing countries.For explanatory variables that may have an impact on the enrollment rate of secondary schools,but of which the cross-country comparison data is not available,the paper determines whether these variables are instrumental to formulate educational policies for developing countries by analyzing and comparing previous studies,summarizing the verification process,and verifying the data in a single region.Policy makers can determine whether the variable will have a significant impact on secondary school enrollment by reading the different verification processes for different cases and comparing it to the actual situations in the region that they governed.Finally,with an understanding of the factors affecting the enrollment rate in secondary schools,the paper selected several typical and inspiring cases to study,which are all policy intervention programs aimed at increasing the enrollment rate of secondary schools.Most of these cases have comparative experiments and a relatively complete data analysis process.The program designers or program evaluators also have considered the government's enforceability and financial pressure.In this sense,this article can provide more specific guidelines after helping policy designers understand what aspects affect the secondary rate.The model in this paper includes six socioeconomic variables that the author believes are related to the secondary school enrollment rate and that the government is more likely to influence through macroeconomic policies.Three variables that are significantly related to the secondary school enrollment rate are verified,namely:per capita GDP,urbanization and fertility rate of women(number of babies born to women on average).For the three variables that are not proven,namely:the percentage of government secondary education as a percentage of government expenditure,the duration of compulsory education(years),and the ratio of students to teachers,the paper hopes to improve the model and further analyze the extent to which the three are correlated with secondary school enrollment rate after transnational data becomes more transparent and accessible.For lacking cross-country data on the minimum wage,it is impossible to add the macro variables to the model.The author tried to find if this variable influences the secondary school enrollment rate in the same way across different regions by summarizing three case studies in Canada and the United States in the 1980s.Finally,the paper studies two educational intervention projects:the conditional cash transfer program "Progresa" in Mexico and India's bicycle program.The author analyzed the programs' effectiveness,cost-effectiveness and uniqueness.Linking the programs with socio-economic environment of Mexico and India,the paper intends to find the design logic behind the project and further summarizes the implications and application of the proj ect or programs.The author hopes that this paper will enable policy makers in developing countries to identify the most common but also the most critical areas in education policy reforms,education project design,and investment in secondary education.Being more informed,policymakers are encouraged to take measures to actively compensate for deficiencies in their current education policies,and thereby bring about increase in the enrollment rate of secondary education in developing countries.The increase in secondary school enrollment rate could improve the quality of workforce,which is required by economic development.