School Dropouts: Persistent Phenomenon in Yemen

Dropping out from primary and secondary schools in Yemen is one of the persistent problems facing the educational sector's future in the country. The phenomenon is attributed to numerous social and economic reasons. The social reasons are represented by the domestic disputes and quarrels between students and other family members, and the fact that children shoulder the responsibility of their families along with their parents.

Lack of understanding between parents and their children make the latter live in a state of psychological trouble, thus negatively impacting their acquisition and enthusiasm to complete education.

Early marriage and engagement is another social reason behind dropping out of schools and the phenomenon of failed students, mainly in areas dominated by the tribal climate. 

The economic reason responsible for school dropouts is that many families don’t have enough money to pay for their kids' studies and improve their living standards. This forces kids to be laborers in search of subsistence at the expense of attending school classes.

"Poverty and poor living standards are responsible for the phenomena of child labor. School truancy has made the situation worse. Child labor in Yemen is manifested as children work as peddlers in streets and roundabouts, restaurant workers, waiters, workshop assistants, and car cleaners, etc" explained, Hayel Ahmad, an educational expert at the Sana'a Education Office. "Most of these children quit education and join the labor market.

Studies on education indicated that 15 percent of working children are not enrolled in primary education, 97 percent  of working children have illiterate parents and are from poor families and 23 percent of them smoke and chew qat.

These studies, which stressed the necessity of nursery and kindergarten to child acquisition, said that most of the children do not have access to nursery and kindergarten except for a small number. Moreover, primary schools in the country can not accommodate all the students eligible to register, which means that a big percentage of children are deprived of education.

According to Khaled Mohamed, a primary school teacher, the deteriorating  living standards of  family contributed to diminishing its role and responsibilities towards the child and led to several bad phenomena’s such as child labor, begging and school dropout. The fact results in weakness of parental responsibilities towards their children.

Manal Al-Shureifi, an educational researcher, said, "Despite efforts by the Ministry of Education to give boys and girls equal access to primary and secondary education, the quality of education is still low and dropouts are still frequent among girls in particular. This is due to many reasons, the most important of which is the poor experience and qualification of school teachers, whom 30 percent do not hold bachelor's degree in education.  Although the curricula are being improved, schoolbooks could not cover the increasing number of children in primary and secondary schools, particularly in rural and remote areas where it is difficult for students to get schoolbooks.

"There are not enough schools for girls to compensate for the  negative social attitudes toward  coeducation  and this  deprives a large number of girls of having access to education," expressed Afrah Al-Ammari, an English teacher in Sana'a. "This does not fulfill the principle of equal  opportunities as the educational facilities  and  schools are more available for boys. Only  5 percent of the available schools  are for girls while the rest are either for coeducation classes or for boys only.  This is one of the reasons for non-enrolment of girls and the high rate of dropout cases among them."

Suggesting possible solutions to the issue, Al-Shureifi recounted, "If we look at the high rates of school dropouts, failures, and repetition in education, one should consider Remedial Education as one of the possible remedies, even if it may not necessarily be the panacea, considering the fact that educational achievement is a highly complex phenomenon." 

She added that underachievement in schools could stem from a number of reasons, socio-economic and a curriculum that does not offer life skills or is not relevant to the children's environment.

She continued that various problems within the educational system and  inadequate educational equipment lead to underachievement and poor acquisition, specifically for the part of early grade kids.  According to Al-Shureifi, the most crucial factor is the lack of understanding of the cognitive aspects of information processing and the different learning styles of individual children. A child with special needs is a child who learns in a very unique way that needs to be addressed through remedial education, and at the end of the day every child does have his unique style in learning.

"However, there are lots of concepts that can be taken from remedial education to assist a wider range of children at school, within the framework of inclusive education," clarified the educational researcher. "Prior to this, Inclusive Education was understood to apply only to disabled children, but at present it actually implies that the educational system should cater to all the different segments of the child population, including the category of disadvantaged children.

"Inclusive Education by no means suggests that the curriculum should be formulated for every individual child but that it should be diverse enough to cater to various individual differences, explained Abdulmohsen Naji, a senior teacher at Tareq Bin Zeyad Primary School in the capital. "As far as Remedial Education is concerned, the learning difficulties or disabilities could be categorized so as children are streamed and taught in these remedial classes in order to help them overcome their difficulties and reduce the number of dropout cases."