DETERMINANTS OF ENROLLMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION A Case Study of District Lahore

This study is an attempt to analyze the primary school enrollment status in the city of Lahore; and provide estimates regarding the impact of household’s quantitative characteristics on enrollment decision. Primary data is collected from 3320 households where 2520 households belonged to the urban areas and 800 households belonged to the rural areas. Computations are carried out using both OLS and Logit models. The factors contributing positively and significantly to net enrollment of children at primary school level are found to be family size, dwelling ownership, expenses on education, literacy ratio and dependency ratio. It is also established that access to school is not a very significant factor towards inhibiting school attendance. Some of the results, with respect to the contribution of family size and dependency ratio to enrollment, are contradictory to the prior determined thoughts. Briefly, it can be concluded that despite the positive effect of some of the characteristics of individuals and households on gross as well as net enrollment, there are various more strong qualitative factors across the socio-economic spectrum that have differential impacts on school enrollment. Consequently, legislative measures need to be implemented to make primary education compulsory, in order to motivate all the children of respective age to complete primary school education.