4. Internal Efficiency (Cont'd)
To achieve improvement – assuming lower repetition is improvement – it would be useful to examine reasons for the trends identified above. For instance: (1) Why are males repeating in greater quantities than females? (2) Why do more students repeat at the secondary level than at primary? (3) What is happening in St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Lucia to create lower rates of repetition? (4) Why do more primary students repeat than secondary students in St. Lucia? (5) Why is secondary repetition rates so much higher than at the primary in St. Vincent and the Grenadines? (6) What has changed year-over-year in Dominica to create lower repetition rates?
All OECS countries except Montserrat and St. Kitts and Nevis reported a higher number of dropouts at the secondary level than at the primary level. St. Lucia reported an equal number of dropouts for both boys and girls at the primary and secondary levels.
The number of primary school dropouts seemed higher from Kindergarten through Form 3 for Dominica, Montserrat, St. Vincent and the Grenadines while dropouts were more evenly spread across grade levels for the other OECS territories.
The specific class level from which students drop out varies within the region. For instance, more students dropped out in Forms Two, Three and Four than in Forms 1 and 5 in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines while more Grenadian students dropped out in Forms 3 and 4. The Virgin Islands reported more dropouts in Forms 1, 2 and 3 than in Forms 4 and 5.
More St. Lucian secondary school students dropped out in Form 5 than all other forms combined. This may account for St. Lucia’s lower volumes of Form 5 repeaters.
4.7 Dropout Rates: Primary and Secondary
This section discusses drop-outs expressed as percentages. Anguilla is excluded because data was not provided and Montserrat is excluded because of its small population.
Male drop-out rates were higher than females at the primary school level for all countries except Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and Virgin Islands.