The report offers an in-depth, quantitative study of four themes that are important to UNICEF’s programs on peace building in the education sector. These are enrollment, drop-out, youth and violence as well as inequality. Each theme is discussed below. The quantitative approach is paralled with qualitative analysis from field visits, interviews and focus group discussions with pupils, teachers and school directors.

In order to analyse the education sector from a quantitative point of view we use several datasets that have been collected in Burundi between 2005 and 2012. These are the Multiple Cluster Indicator Surveys (MICS, waves 2 in 2000 and 3 in 2005), the Core Welfare Indicator Survey (QUIBB, 2006), the Enquete Prioritaire Household Survey (PS, 2007), and the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS, 2010). For having also a longer term perspective with data preceding the civil war, we also use the DHS (1987). These datasets are at the individual and household level and together they cover a large number of topics of interest for this report.

In addition to the above surveys we also make use of administrative data sources. The Ministry of Primary Education collects a large amount of data on education that, to the best of our knowledge, are not used for policy guidance or policy preparation. This report will show how such official data can be used to study inequalities in the education sector and point to alternative policies to address the observed inequalities. In particular we will perform an analysis of the results of the Concours National, a nationwide exam , for which we have used the results of the 2010 exam. This will allow us to discuss regional and school-level variation in the quality of education.

Our qualitative field work was performed in 8 schools in the provinces of Cibitoke, Gitega and Makamba. These provinces were chosen in order to attain variation in terms of several variables that came out salient in our quantitative research as well as from discussions with UNICEF-Burundi staff. These were poverty, legacy of the civil war, presence of returnees and gender. Inside the province schools were selected randomly and interviews touched upon all issues, not only those who were believed to be particularly relevant for that province. Respondents were selected among the 5th and 6th graders in accordance with representativeness key (performing and not- performing students, girls and boys, different age groups (from 12 to 18, difference due to high repetition rates), members of ethnic minorities /if found/). Total: 54 students, 6 headmasters, 3 vice-directors, and 1 teacher were interviewed. The report is prepared by a team from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in extensive cooperation with the staff of the UNICEF-Burundi office. It is one of the outputs of the ongoing Partnership between ULB and UNICEF-Burundi.

Final Report