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Out-of-school children is one of the key challenges in The Gambia, with about a third of primary school age children (ages 7-12) not attending. The out-of-school incidence varies largely across regions and districts. Out of 330,749 primary school age children, 100,000 were out-of-school in 2015 and 95 percent of those out-of-school have never attended. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of the out-of-school incidence by district in lower basic schools, illustrating variations within regions, and districts with out-of-school rates reaching 80 percent (figure 1). Districts in region 1 and 2 have a lower out-of-school rate, although it varies across districts. The disparities between select districts is staggering. For example, the out-of-school rate is lower in Banjul City council district in Region 1, at 5.8 percent, while it reaches 80 percent in the Upper Saloum district in region 5. Overall, there is at least one district in each region with an out-of-school rate below the national average (30.3 percent). Except in region 1, all regions also have a district with an out-of-school rate above the national average.
While many factors contribute to the out-of-school incidence, religion is cited as the main reason for being out-of-school across wealth quintiles, regions, and ethnic groups and varies depending on the level of education of the household head. This is the reason most often cited by (i) wealthiest households with children not attending (although this number is low); (ii) those located in region 5, (iii) the Wolof ethnic group and (iv) children coming from households in which the head has no formal education (figure 5.2).
On average, less than half of The Gambia’s working age population has completed primary education and more than half of the population has no formal education – a concern for future economic growth and global competitiveness. The Gambian working-age population tend to have weaker educational attainment. In 2015, the average years of schooling equaled 3.7 at the national level, 5.3 among the youth population and 1.4 among the older cohort. Similarly, the distribution of the working population in terms of age group shows that although educational attainment of the labor force in The Gambia is growing, about 58 percent of the working age population have no formal education. For instance, 34 percent of the youth cohort has not received any formal education - a significantly lower proportion than the adult cohort with no formal education which stands at 87 percent. When the distribution of the working age population is disaggregated by gender and geographic location, the following are evident: (i) there are more women (63 percent) than men (53 percent) who have not received a formal education. This gender gap is likely going to be a constraint to productivity, trapping a segment of the population in low productivity sectors that do not require a high level of skills, which are usually developed through schooling. To increase economic growth, barriers that prevent adolescent girls and women from going to school need to be removed, and The Gambia’s efforts to reach gender parity are a positive step. (ii) Rural areas, especially Region 5, have the highest percentage of working age people with no education. For example, 81 percent of the population in Region 5 has not received any formal education and 72 percent of the rural population has no education. This suggests that the labor market is likely composed of workers with low skills who have not completed primary education and this increases the likelihood of working in the informal sector which hinders the productivity of the country.
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