Engaging and responding to local voices: the case of children's schooling in rural Ethiopia and the implication for development theory and practices

The economic and social benefits of educating all children in developing countries are widely recognised and brought about global and national level commitments to get schooling to all children in the world. Following many years of varied global and national development initiatives increasingly many of the world's children are enrolled in school. In particular, in the last decade the enrolment rate has increased significantly across the developing world, however, it is widely recognised that bringing to school specific categories of children such as those who are female, rural, in conflict situations, have physical or intellectual disabilities, are refugees or stateless, or from pastoralist communities has met with persistent problems. In addition, many of those children who enrol in developing countries leave school with little learning and before they complete the full course of primary schooling. Therefore while the considerable increase in enrolment following the global effort is acknowledged, researchers have directed our attention to those children that are still out of school and to questions of equality, quality and learning.
According to UNESCO (2015) currently there are 58 million primary school age children globally that are out of school. This stands in stark contrast to the promises made in the 2000 UN summit to create Education for All children by 2015. The majority of out of school children are currently found in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), which is an increase from 1999 when the African share of out of school children stood at 40% (UNESCO 2015). Despite earlier optimism (e.g. GMR 2008), recently UNESCO stated that 'there has been virtually no progress in reducing the global rate and number of out-of- school children since 2007' (UNESCO and UNICEF 2015-17). This is a worrying trend, especially regarding rural children, as they experience greatest need deprivation, exacerbated by lack of essential services and infrastructural development (Grantham-McGregor et al. 2007; also see Filmer and Pritchett 1999).
Taking Ethiopia as a case study, my PhD thesis considered the factors that affect primary school enrolment, non-enrolment and dropout for rural children. Also noting the exclusion of poor, uneducated and rural people's views from ongoing debates as to why the problem persists, I aimed my research on the voices of children, their parents and teachers. Researchers in International Development previously highlighted the value from hearing people's views on matters that affects them. Following this view my research towards understanding schooling problems have generated a rare insight into the problems their own perspectives. With this project, I aim to take back the findings to the communities to further generate interest and spark constructive debate in the way that can challenge policy makers, development practioners, donors and communities themselves. The PhD findings will be turned into film to give genuine participation of the communities that are not able to read or write. The discussion following the screening of the film will give an opportunity for children and parents to examine their own schooling path, decisions and help them gain inspirations from other stories they were exposed to by the film. I am aiming to depict various stories in the performance and the film related to rural children's schooling in the way many rural people can relate to. This will raise consciousness and provide space for reflection, an opportunity to question social norms and potentially influence attitudes and practices.Teachers too will have opportunity to reflect on their own role and apply what they learn into practice. Similarly it will benefit donor countries and policy makers to learn from lived experiences of children and their parents and make them reflect the implications of existing policies and gap to be addressed.