UNICEF's country profile for Yemen, including under-five mortality rates, child health, education and sanitation data.

Abstract

Yemen's rapid population growth coupled with its scarce public resources demands more equitable and efficient financial and human resource management system in the basic education sector. Despite overall increase in gross enrollment rates, Yemen still has one of the lowest adult literacy rates in the world. Evaluating how efficiently funds allocated for primary education are spent is one of the steps to improve quality of education in the country.

In 2009, the Government of Yemen with the support of the World Bank launched a project to examine the management of public resources in country's education sector and potential inefficiencies in their use. The overall study consisted of three complimentary surveys. The first survey focused on “in and out” resource flows, expenditures, oversight arrangements and financial management practices. The second survey of 16 schools in 12 districts from three governorates examined how prevailing informal practices deviated from formal rules and regulations with respect to teacher deployment, management, salary payments, and resource allocations to frontline service delivery units. The third study, non-traditional Public Expenditure Tracking Survey, offered findings on leakages in wage and salary expenditures through recording of teacher absenteeism. The latter survey is documented here.

Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) of the education sector typically focus on the estimation of fiscal leakages from cash resources allocated at the school level. Unfortunately, such approach was not suitable for Yemen because schools receive few, if any, cash resources, particularly since the recent abolition of school fees. Almost all of the allocations are delivered in-kind (e.g., textbooks, chalks, and equipment) and procured at the central level. This particular nature of the resource allocation system called for non-conventional methods of analysis in identifying fiscal leakages in the system. This non-classical PETS study was designed as an absenteeism survey to detect wage/salary leakages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that teacher absenteeism and the issue of ghost workers particularly stand out as the two most common types of fiscal leakages in Yemen's education system.

The survey was conducted in four governorates, representing Yemen's geographic and political diversity. Hodeidah, Hadramout, Shabwah and Saada governorates were chosen. Researchers paid unannounced visits to 240 randomly selected schools to record how many teachers were absent on the day of the visit without prior approval of leave. Investigators then explored how absence correlated with a wide range of potential determinants of the quality of education at the individual, facility, and national levels. The survey also aimed to expose the methods of keeping ghost workers on payroll.

The number of teachers in the selected schools was 2928; investigators interviewed 1048 of them. The survey instrument included questions about characteristics of teachers, schools, community and students.

Geographic coverage

Hodeidah, Hadramout, Shabwah and Saada governorates

Analysis unit

• Primary schools teachers

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The survey covered 240 schools selected by stratified multi-stage sampling based on the Ministry of Education 2004-2005 Annual School Survey (School Census) data.

Researchers employed purposive selection method to choose governorates. Literacy rate was used as a proxy for the human development index. The selection of governorates for the study represented the geographic and political diversity of Yemen. The sample included governorates from the coastal, mountainous, desert and transitory (mountainous to desert) regions of Yemen as well as from the former North and South. Hadramout, Hodeidah, Shabwah and Saadah governorates were chosen.

In each governorate, five districts were randomly selected. Two criteria were applied for the selection of districts: - number of basic schools in the district must exceed 20 in order to select 12 schools in the district, - the sum of schools in five districts should have enough sample schools for each characteristic - urban, rural, boys, girls, and mixed schools.

Based on these criteria, five districts were selected randomly by using the MS-EXCEL random number generator.

The selection of schools was done in three steps: 1) categorizing schools in a matrix of urban-rural and boys, girls-mixed schools; 2) making proportional adjustments according to each category; 3) selecting schools from each category by applying systematic random sampling method, in which the assigned number of schools is selected from the list of schools in an interval calculated from total number of schools divided by the assigned number of schools. Secondary schools were excluded from the sample.

While there were some difficulties finding schools or reaching remote areas, the fieldwork was completed on time. The total number of teachers in sampled schools was 2928. The number of interviewed teachers was 1048.

Sampling deviation

Due to defects in the original data used for sampling and tribal disputes in certain areas in Saada, a few schools could not be visited. To replace those schools, alternative schools of similar characteristics were selected in the same district. - Hadramout: No replacement of schools - Hodeidah: 1 school was replaced as it has been closed for more than 2 years - Shabwah: 2 schools were replaced as they actually did not exist; 2 questionnaires were filled for one of the schools as that school was using double-shift and had assigned two different names with two distinct principals each shift. - Saada: 3 schools were replaced due to security reasons; 1 school was replaced as it was a secondary school.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire included questions about teacher characteristics, school characteristics, community characteristics, and some information on the students. There were three main parts in the questionnaire: a questionnaire for the principal, headcounts of teachers, and a questionnaire for teachers.

The first part comprised questions about basic school information and teacher records. The teacher records were obtained from the official teacher attendance sheets, unless they were kept separately in the school. If the principal was not available, either the deputy principal or the most senior teacher was designated as the respondent.

Headcounts of teachers and interviews with the teachers were undertaken by the second enumerator in the team, while the first enumerator was responsible for the questionnaire developed for the principal.

54,1 (%) in 2004. Adult (15+) literacy rate (%). Total is the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. Generally, ‘literacy’ also encompasses ‘numeracy’, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations. This indicator is calculated by dividing the number of literates aged 15 years and over by the corresponding age group population and multiplying the result by 100.

54,10 (%) in 2004. Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.