The effects of cost elimination on secondary school enrolment in Sub-Saharan Africa

Following the widespread adoption and implementation of Education for All (EFA) at the World Education Forum held at Dakar as part of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, school enrolment at the basic level of education has increased in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the region having the lowest rate of youth enrolled in upper secondary schools in the world, countries are paying considerable attention to upper secondary education, which is argued to be a significant component of human capital formation and for meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4. However, unlike for basic level education, academic research on the factors that determine upper secondary school enrolment in the region is limited. Against this backdrop, the study investigates the effects of cost elimination on upper secondary school enrolment in Sub-Saharan Africa using macro-level panel data analysis of countries from 2003 to 2018. The results show that cost elimination, as a demand-side intervention, has a significant positive effect on upper secondary school enrolment. However, amid a high level of poverty rate, the magnitude of the positive effects of cost elimination tends to reduce. This shows that along with demand-side interventions that reduce direct costs to schooling, policies must focus on reducing the level of poverty for cost elimination to become effective in increasing school enrolment.