A systematic review of the literature on the causes of early school leaving in Africa and Asia

Abstract

This paper systematically reviews the literature on the causes of leaving school early in Africa and Asia. Despite the improvement in primary school enrolment in the developing countries by 2015, the persistence of school dropout, however, renders this improvement almost insignificant. This leads to the necessity of observing the prolonged determinants of dropping out from school amid the current global development efforts to improve educational attainment in these countries. For this purpose, we review 43 articles in this study. These articles are peer‐reviewed publications on the causes of early school leaving or school dropout in Africa and Asia, from the year 2001 to present (2018). A great number of causes are found to be linked to the reason for leaving school early. However, the most common causes for early school leaving include lack of income, parents’ education and employment status, living in a single‐parent household, being a illegitimate child, age, region of residence and school performance. Specifically, for Asia, immigration and ethnicity are important factors. This paper recommends that policies to prevent early school leaving require multi‐perspective targeting, involving individual, school, community and family. For instance, attention needs to be drawn to the effective trickling down of necessary school provisions and other contemporary societal provisions to all communities. There is also need for improved individual and family awareness on the positive impact of education as well as the dangers of certain cultural beliefs.