Modeling Primary School Absenteeism and Academic Performance in Ethiopia: A Multivariate and Count Regression Models Approaches

摘要

School absenteeism and low academic performance at primary schools remain a big issue for developing countries like Ethiopia. Thus, this study aims to determine predicting factors influencing academic performances and school absenteeism jointly at primary schools in Ethiopia. A cross-sectional data were obtained from the Young Lives project from wave 1 (the starting month of academic year) and wave 2 (the last month of academic year). Multivariate regression model was used to investigate the predictors on the linear combination of academic performances and count regression model was also used to investigate the predictor of school absenteeism. In fact, both Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression Models were considered but the latter better fit to the data that have been used for this study than the former model. The result at national level showed mean of school absenteeism and academic performance at wave 1, respectively are 6 days and 67.64 scores and the average performance at wave 2 is also 61.44 score. It has been found out that the number of meals, number of siblings, mother's literacy, survivor-ship of mother, type of school siblings attending, pre-school attendance, time to get to school, grade repeating, school drop outing, extra class attendances and the availability of helping person with school works at home have a combined effect on the school absenteeism and academic performance. Thus, potential stakeholders should pay attention for the aforementioned factors so as to reduce school absenteeism and then maximize academic performance.