A systematic review of the status of children’s school access in low- and middle-income countries between 1998 and 2013: using the INDEPTH Network platform to fill the research gaps

Mamusu Kamanda, INDEPTH Network
Osman Sankoh, INDEPTH Network

In measuring progress to universal education a narrow conceptualisation of ‘access’ which dichotomises children’s participation as being in- or out- of school has often been assumed. Yet the actual promise of universal education includes: retention, progression, completion and learning. We use CREATE’s zones of exclusion as a framework to conduct a systematic review of literature to demonstrate how the gaps in educational research can be met by using data from Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites. Our findings suggest that ‘enrolment’ and ‘attendance’ are the most published areas of access; ‘progression’ has the least number of publications. Further, of 132 publications on school access, 33 made use of longitudinal data and 17 performed cross-country analyses. The contribution of the INDEPTH Network in helping to address gaps in the literature lies in the longitudinal design of HDSS surveys and the diversity of countries within the Network.