Project Overview: CARE, in partnership with WARDI and GREDO, is implementing the Waxbar Carurtaada (Educate Your Children) II project with support from Educate a Child (EAC). The project aimed to address barriers to education access for out-of-school children (OOSC) in Somalia, focusing on enrollment, retention, and quality of education. Targeting children in six states (Banaadir, Galmudug, Hirshabelle, Jubaland, South West, and Puntland), the project aligns with national education priorities to increase enrollment, enhance educational quality, and strengthen management systems. The project supported the reinforcement of local governance structures and community support systems to promote school safety and foster inclusive, gender-sensitive education practices. Also, the project supported awareness and school campaign initiatives to increase enrollment rates among marginalized groups, including girls and the most economically disadvantaged.
Evaluation Methodology: A mixed-methods, gender-sensitive endline assessment, inclusive of children with disabilities and other marginalized sub-groups within the targeted population, was conducted to establish endline values. The endline assessment took place at the end of the project, in April 2024, after the three cohorts of Out-of-School Children (OOSC) had been enrolled into the two education pathways; formal education and Accelerated Basic Education, which enabled the direct sampling of the OOSC beneficiaries. Data collection methods included surveys with OOSC and their caregivers to develop profiles and identify attitudes and practices towards education, as well as establishing factors that contributed towards OOSC enrolment. This approach facilitated the longitudinal tracking of all individual OOSCs enrolled in the project to identify patterns regarding attendance and retention, school absorption capacity, learning environment, and community engagement. A total of 1,155 OOSCs were tracked through household surveys, 58 school surveys, 19 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) conducted with Community Education Committees (CECs), OOSCs, and Caregivers, and 12 KIIs with Ministry of Education officials (MoE).
Key Findings:
Education pathway: The majority of students were enrolled in primary education pathways at both baseline and endline, with minor fluctuations in distribution observed across states. Across all states and at both baseline and endline, there was a slightly higher percentage of male students compared to female students in both ABE and primary education pathways, with 49% boys and 51% girls enrolled in both pathways.
The household profiles were comprised of 1,155 children from 1,110 households; 109 (9.4%) children participating in ABE programs, and 1046 (90.6%) children enrolled in formal primary education. Gender parity was fairly similar across both education pathways among the household survey respondents, with girls comprising 51.4% of ABE (48.6% boys) students and 51.7% of formal primary school students (49.3% boys).
Household characteristics and practices: At 42.2%, the proportion of students whose households belonged to agricultural clans attending ABE programs was nearly double the proportion of students whose households belonged to agricultural clans attending formal primary education programs (21.3%). The proportion of students from households belonging to pastoralist clans1 was roughly the same across the two groups, representing 41.7% of children in formal primary education and 39.4% of children in ABE. ABE students were more likely to be members of an agricultural clan than formal primary school students. Students attending formal primary school were more likely to come from a pastoralist clan, as schools selected for participation in EYC II were purposively selected from marginalized pastoralist communities.
Children attending ABE were somewhat more likely to come from an internally displaced household (35.8%) than children attending formal primary education (28.2%). Similarly, children from households that have recently migrated to the city are somewhat more prevalent in ABE (34.9%) than in formal primary education (25.2%). A higher proportion of children attending ABE came from female-headed households (69.7%) when compared to children attending formal primary education (44.5%). Findings from the baseline report found that 40% of children from pastoralist clans on either educational pathway had female-headed households, which increased to 51.6% at the endline. This is likely to be a result of displacement dynamics as well as patterns of livestock management that involve men leaving the home for long periods.