1While access to basic education lies at the heart of development (Lewin, 2007), sustained and meaningful access to education is critical for long-term improvements in incomes and labour productivity (Cremin & Nakabugo, 2012), expansion of the tax base (Majgaard & Mingat, 2012), reductions in inequality and inter-generational cycles of poverty (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009), driving the demographic transition (Charbit & Kébé, 2010; National Population Council [NPC], 2018), preventive health care, the emancipation of women and democratisation (Henaff, 2006).
2The myriad advantages associated with sustained, high-quality mass education presuppose that it should be enjoyed by all, as espoused in Education for All Goal 2, Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3, and more recently in Sustainable Development Goal 4. These international goals are based on access and equity in primary and secondary schooling, with a greater recent emphasis on quality education and lifelong learning.
3The government of Uganda introduced its Universal Post-Primary Education and Training Programme in 2007 as part of its Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) 2005-2010. The policy was announced by the President during the 2006 presidential elections. The government would provide free tuition to secondary school students, starting with 300,000 primary school graduates in 2007. Parents had to provide exercise books, accommodation, medical care, meals and other school-related materials. The government would also ensure that every sub-county would have a secondary school, although by 2008 (no more recent data are available), 271 sub-counties had neither public nor private secondary schools, a situation that was blamed on the country’s budgetary inadequacies.
4Universalisation of primary education in 1997 enabled many children to enrol in schools, although the completion of primary schooling and the transition to secondary schools have largely remained problematic (MoES, 2016). The implication is that the low enrolment rates at secondary schools are mainly explained by drop-outs at the primary level.
5The universalisation of secondary education has been impeded by structural challenges in several ways. First, Universal Secondary Education was designed to give places to children who completed primary school, but this category represents less than one-third of eligible children. Second, by 2010, 70% of secondary schools were privately owned (MoES, 2010) and approximately 41% of them were fully or partially boarding schools, the costs of which are borne by the parents as a matter of policy. It should be noted here that these schools are highly valued by many people because of their better academic performance. Third, pupils must sit the Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) in order to be admitted to secondary school, and in particular, those with the best scores are accepted by the prestigious government boarding schools without due consideration being given to children from disadvantaged regions and/or poorer households. Finally, in approximately 43% of the schools under the Universal Secondary Education arrangement (MoESTS, 2015), according to which the government is supposed to support parents in the education of their children, the parents’ contribution is about three times higher than the government’s (Kakuba, 2014).
6This paper explores the boarding school phenomenon in Uganda, where a significant number of long-established prestigious schools are both boarding and government schools. One might assume that this would make them accessible to everyone, but in actual fact they are quite expensive and therefore inaccessible for children from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and remote rural areas. We explore the extent to which this phenomenon is present and the ranking of boarding facilities in terms of performance and student discipline compared with day schools. We also look at how far boarding schools contravene the Universal Education policy. Specifically, we investigate the effect of the socioeconomic status of parents on children’s access to boarding facilities and study regional inequalities when it comes to accessing boarding facilities in the aftermath of the 2007 secondary education universalisation initiative.
7This study uses a mixed methods approach. It mainly uses quantitative data from the Uganda National Household Surveys (UNHS) for 2005/2006 and 2009/2010, data from the Ugandan Education Management Information System (EMIS), primary data from selected schools and qualitative data from key stakeholders in the education sector. We considered the periods before and after the introduction of Universal Secondary Education in 2007.
- 1 Most day schools are community schools that receive inadequate support from government. They theref (...)
8The 2005/2006 and 2009/2010 surveys collected information on the “current school attendance status” of children and the type of school they were attending. We looked at pupils from 13 to 24 years of age at secondary school and above at the time of the surveys and the type of school attended. There are three types of school: i) day schools1, ii) boarding schools and iii) day and boarding schools. Using information from the “distance to school” variable collected from day pupils alone, we were able to identify the numbers of day students versus boarders in category iii). We then created a variable with a binary outcome of “boarders versus day students”. Our preliminary analysis revealed that in 2006, 54% of children at secondary school were day students, while in 2010 the figure was 60%.
9We collected qualitative data in February and March 2013, largely from Northern Uganda but with a smaller proportion from the central region. The northern and central regions are the most educationally deprived and best-endowed regions, respectively (Kakuba, 2015). Figure 2 shows that the central region had a larger number of day secondary schools and the north had the smallest. We also carried out key informant interviews in order to investigate a variety of education-related issues, including the views of parents, teachers and school administrators on issues of equity and access to boarding secondary schools. The interlocutors for the key informant interviews included 3 male Ministry of Education officials in the Greater Gulu district, 10 male head teachers, 13 male and 6 female teachers, 14 female and 12 male parents and 1 male official from an NGO that sponsors children at secondary and post-secondary levels in greater Northern Uganda. Table 1 contains a list of the schools from which we collected primary data.
Table 1: List of schools by type and region for selected students.
Source: Field data from northern and central Uganda.
10The main dependent variable is “being a boarder or a day student”. We selected independent variables based on the guide for analysis of survey education data (UIS et al., 2004) with the aim of exploring the extent to which access to boarding schools was predicted by parents’ socioeconomic status. The independent variables were household wealth status, rural or urban residence, region of residence, relationship of the child to the head of household, child’s gender, education level and marital status of the head of household. Other variables included gender of the head of household, household size, number of children under the age of five and the number of adults in a household. With regard to the quantitative data, we carried out multivariate analyses, the results of which we present. From this, we determined the aggregate net effect of independent variables on the probability that a child at secondary school level was being educated at a boarding school. We used the multiple logistic regression model because the dependent variable was binary (Bressoux, 2010): that is, a student was enrolled either at a boarding school or in a boarding section or at a day school or in a day section. We used coefficients to report our results and weighted the data to cater for better representativeness of the sample and non-response.
11Boarding schools were established in the first decade of the 20th century, and were mainly frequented by the children of chiefs, religious leaders and landowners. The philosophy of the colonial masters was that an excellent education of a minority would benefit the masses (Hanson, 2010). The practice was to fund the most successful boarding schools in the wealthiest areas, which contributed to growing social divisions in Uganda. For the most part, boarding schools were established by Christian missionaries, and were meant to Christianise the indigenous people, teach the colonial language and culture and “emancipate” the young generation from “backward” cultures (Smith, 2009). Between 1877 and 1925, education in Uganda was controlled by missionaries (Nkata, 1999). It was they who decided what would be taught and who and how to teach and determined issues of access and quality in education. Because of the hegemony of the churches, colonial and post-independence governments sought to weaken their influence, but the laxity of the government in the Amin era enabled them to regain control over the education system. Secondary schools in Uganda are therefore categorised not only as government or private schools but also based on their founding bodies, and a good number of “government” schools have founding bodies such as the Catholic or Anglican Church, which have largely determined who enters these schools, how they are managed and the fees to be paid to access them.
Figure 1: Secondary Schools by boarding type and founding body in 2012.
Source: Drawn using data from the Ministry of Education and Sports.
12Before 1989, government met the greater part of the operating costs of boarding schools. A government-commissioned body, the Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC), carried out a study and recommended that all government-aided secondary schools were to be day schools and that if they were boarding schools, the costs of boarding were to be paid by the parents (MoES, 1989). Cabinet endorsed these findings in an Education White Paper (MoES, 1992), and in fact, the current practice is that all boarding costs are the parents’ responsibility. These developments pose four challenges to equity and access to quality schooling: i) government did not build day secondary schools in a geographically fair manner in accordance with the policy; ii) although it was only boarding costs that were to be met by parents, in practice parents meet all the costs in boarding schools; iii) government did not, and does not, have control over what should be paid in a particular type of school; and iv) there is no effort on the part of government to place gifted but poor and rural-based children in prestigious boarding schools in the spirit of universalising secondary education.
13As can be seen in Figure 2, there are three types of secondary school: boarding schools; day and boarding schools (also called partly boarding); and day schools. Most boarding schools are old-established, prestigious government schools and are therefore expensive. They were founded by the main churches, boast of good infrastructure and performance and are highly selective with regard to admissions. Day and boarding schools are relatively good schools that are mainly owned by entrepreneurs and were set up to accommodate the children of parents who can pay for the boarding section or the more affordable day section. Conversely, day schools are mainly community-based schools founded by communities and/or government. Most are less well-funded, have fewer teachers being paid for by government and primarily take on students with modest grades at Primary 7 level. As Figure 2 shows, there are far more secondary schools in the central region and the lowest number in the north (Kakuba, 2014). This supply of education is corroborated by the demand: in 2012, the central region had the highest net enrolment ratio (NER), while the north had the lowest (Kakuba, 2015; UBOS and ICF International Inc., 2012). Given that demand for education can be conditioned by supply, the demand constraints are probably exacerbated by inadequacies in the supply. Additionally, the disproportionately higher number of boarding schools in the poorer north and north-east (UBOS, 2010) aggravates inequalities of access in areas where the supply is inadequate and boarding schools are more expensive. The unaffordability of boarding schools and the lack of secondary schools also explain why some children are fostered in other households closer to schools in order to access secondary education (Pilon, 2005). Indeed, it is common to find children staying with relatives so that they can access education in a closer day secondary school.
Figure 2: Spatial inequalities in the distribution of secondary schools.
14Boarding schools are rare in the Western World, and the reasons for sending children to them vary. They include the fact that they may be appropriate for struggling children, provide an opportunity for gifted children to share better and offer a way to accommodate children who live at long distances from schools (Cinoglu, 2012; Mason, 1997; Bass, 2013; Cookson & Persell, 1985). The latter scenario was common in China, for example, because of reduced school cohorts and the closure of a number of schools, massive rural-urban migration and/or the lack of a robust rural transport network (Lewin & Lu, 2011).
15In Uganda, students can enrol in a day school, a boarding school or a day and boarding school. They can be either boarders or day students. Parents usually take boarders to school at the beginning of the term and they then return home at the end of the term. The practice is for parents to visit once a term, offering a moment for them to discuss their children’s academic performance with their teachers.
16Given that these schools are long-established and prestigious, they usually prefer to admit the students with the best grades. In practice, however, only a proportion of the students are admitted on merit, while an equally large number are admitted because of their parents’ social, political and religious connections. In most cases, students who enrol in one type of school usually remain there, since among other things, their enrolment is contingent on their parents’ ability to pay. In some rare situations, boarders may transfer to day schools if their parents have died and or lost their jobs.
- 2 The EMIS data do not provide the number of boarders or day students at secondary level. We have es (...)
Figure 32: Students enrolled by school type and type of secondary school in 2006 and 2010.
Source: Drawn using data from the Ministry of Education and Sports.
17We will now look at how prevalent the phenomenon of boarding schools is. As Figure 3 shows, both in 2006 and 2010, the largest number students were enrolled in day secondary schools, then day and boarding schools and lastly full boarding schools. From a supply perspective, most were day schools, followed by day and boarding schools and finally full boarding schools. We argue that while day schooling gained momentum over the five-year period, schooling at boarding schools remained marginal. Using qualitative data, we then explored the phenomenon of boarding schools in further detail to respond to some of the questions that were raised earlier. Most of the exclusive boarding schools in Uganda are old-established schools that date from colonial times. They were also largely founded by missionaries, but have been taken over by the government. They are known as “government-aided” schools. In practice however, the founding bodies still play a role in managing them, and determine to a large extent who has access to them, the fees, who to employ as teachers, how much they can pay them, etc. Government provides the curriculum, manages the national examinations, pays the teachers’ salaries, sometimes provides textbooks, may seek funding and carries out support supervision.
18The UNHS data offer an opportunity to carry out a statistical analysis of the factors affecting access to a boarding school, as presented in Table 2. We explore the factors associated with being a boarder before and after the implementation of the Universal Secondary Education Programme. Our hypothesis was that inequalities would at least diminish as a result of the policy.
- 3 Here we are exploring factors associated with being a boarder as opposed to being a day student. We (...)
19We present the results of the logit3 model in Table 2 and explain the hows and whys using qualitative data. Relationship of the child to the head of household, wealth status of the household, marital status of the head of household and region of residence remained strong covariates of being a boarder. We offer a detailed explanation of the significant factors in order of importance, as set out in the following section.
Table 2: Predictors of access to a boarding secondary school in Uganda.
RC, Reference category, Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
20In 2006, a child from a household with a mid-level income was more likely (0.657***) to access a boarding facility than one from a poor household. In the same vein, a child from a wealthy household was even more likely (1.795***) to access boarding than one from a poor household. In 2010, a child from a household with a mid-level income remained more likely (0.905***) to access boarding than one from a poor household, while a child from a wealthy household was again even more likely (1.528***) to be a boarder. The effect of income on attendance at a boarding school seems not to vary significantly over the five-year period. Indeed, as with the effect of household income on other schooling outcomes, this factor seems to be one of the strongest determinants for accessing a boarding facility. To understand these findings better, we obtained raw statistics on the costs of accessing various types of secondary school. The fact that boarding schools were expensive is corroborated by the field findings presented in Table 3. Boarding schools were the most expensive type of school in both Northern and Central Uganda. Although these findings are not representative of the country as a whole, they do portray the extent to which boarding schools are “inaccessible”. In fact, in the central region, it was more difficult to access a government boarding school than a private for-profit secondary school, which suggests that the boarding school phenomenon may be more responsible for recycling disadvantage than private schools. In the central region, the cost of accessing a prestigious “government” secondary boarding school was about 8 times higher than the cost of accessing a government day school. In the case of the northern region, the inability to access boarding schools in particular should be understood in the context of a generalised state of poverty, with 75.3% of the population falling within the bottom two wealth quintiles (UBOS and ICF International Inc., 2012). This implies, therefore, that universalising secondary education in the context of all these better-quality boarding schools will not enable the poor to access “universalised” secondary education.
- 4 In Uganda, schools can be categorised by ownership – government versus private (for-profit) schools (...)
Table 3: Cost of accessing term I by type of Secondary School in Uganda in 20134.
Source: Collected from schools in both regions during fieldwork.
21We recorded data on the occupations of parents by school type for some secondary schools. Again, the fact that boarding schools were almost exclusively a prerogative of the rich is re-echoed (Figure 4). Our findings on the high costs in the so-called government boarding schools are corroborated by prior findings where secondary students attending public schools were found to spend more than those attending non-public schools (Uganda Bureau of Statistics and ORC Macro, 2002).
Figure 4: Distribution (%) of students by occupation of parents and type of secondary school.
Source: Constructed from raw data obtained from schools in and around Gulu Town, Northern Uganda.
22Since boarding schools are expensive and more selective at the time of entry, they are mostly “demanded” by parents who are able to enrol their children in good primary schools – that is, private or government boarding schools – so that they can obtain good grades. In addition, in the absence of almost any regulation from the government, most schools fix their fees at their discretion, sometimes to top up teachers’ salaries, to the detriment of poor children. The parents of children in boarding schools are also provided with a long list of required items, and students are checked to ensure that these items have been brought.
- 5 The Lord’s Resistance Army is a Northern Uganda-based rebel group that was waging war on the Uganda (...)
23In Uganda, access to boarding schools would be every parent’s wish, given their good performance levels. Access is rationed by the grades children obtain, however, which in turn depend on the quality and/or cost of the school attended at primary level. Because there are no subsidies to enable poor children to access boarding schools, parents in all parts of the country can place their children in boarding schools anywhere as long as their children have the right grades and/or the parents can afford them. However, the tendency is for most children to go to school in the region where they were born. We should note here that the northern and central regions are diametrically opposed in many regards. While the central region, which hosts the capital city, is the centre of economic activity, has households with highest incomes and boasts of the most prestigious schools, the north is mainly semi-arid, dependent on peasant farming, has the highest proportion of people in poverty and the worst indicators regarding access to primary school, drop-out rates and the academic performance of its schools. This is partly explained by the Lord’s Resistance Army5 (LRA) war that affected the area for close to 20 years.
24In 2006, children surveyed in all the other regions were more likely to have access to a boarding facility than those from the central region. In addition, in 2010, parents in the north seemed to be increasingly embracing boarding schools for their daughters more than for their sons (not presented here), which vindicates field findings that most parents were opposed to day schooling, especially for adolescent girls. The fact that boarding schools are largely a non-central region phenomenon might be related to the inadequacy of supply and spatial distribution of day schools in the context of a poorly-developed transport network system, as has been found elsewhere (Cinoglu, 2012; Mason, 1997; Lewin & Lu, 2011).
25Figures 2 and 5 indicate that the northern region (especially the north-east) boasts of a comparatively larger proportion of boarding schools than the other regions. These schools were largely founded by churches to encourage the schooling of the children of pastoralists. In addition, the supply of schools in Uganda is generally demand-driven, and while the government has opened numerous day schools in the recent past, this depends on how vigilant the local communities are. This means that less active communities will remain underserved by government, and children in these areas remain constrained by an inadequate supply of schools. This should be understood against the background of the fact that the north had and has the smallest population (22% of the total compared with 27% for the central region) according to the 2002 Population and Housing Census (UBOS, 2002) and that according to the univariate analysis results of this study, as corroborated by prior studies (Kakuba, 2015), the net enrolment rate at secondary school level was lowest in the north – 15% compared with 40% in the central region.
26In addition, because the distance to educational facilities is furthest in the north (UBOS, 2010), access is restricted, and parents have no option but to place their children in boarding facilities. While more affluent and educated parents often send their children to good boarding schools in the central region (around the capital city), most children tend to study in their regions of origin.
- 6 These are the percentages of schools that are day, partly boarding and full boarding in the various (...)
Figure 56: Distribution (%) of secondary schools by region and type in 2006 and 2010.
Source: Constructed using raw data from the Ministry of Education and Sports.
27Whether or not a child who is a member of a household is biologically related to the head of household has been found to affect schooling outcomes differently (Kakuba, 2015). In 2006 and 2010, both relatives and non-relatives of a head of household were less likely to enrol in a boarding facility than children of the head of household, although only the former category (Other Relative) was statistically significant. Indeed, the children of a head of household present with more chances of being boarders, while relatives of a head of household were less likely to be boarders and more likely to be day students. At this level, and following a bivariate analysis between the relationship to a head of household and the “current” secondary school enrolment status (which is not presented in this paper), it is clear that relatives of a head of household were not necessarily excluded from secondary education, but rather accessed some form of secondary schooling (as day students). The increased costs of sending children to a boarding facility and keeping them there mean that households may decide to enrol their biological children in boarding schools and their relatives in cheaper day schools. Indeed, according to our field findings, other children (largely relatives of the head of household) who were enrolled in secondary schools in particular were mostly attending the “more affordable” day schools. Some of these children were able to do work for their host households before and or after school. In situations where fees were hard to find, the relatives would enrol at least some of the fostered children in candidate classes to help them concentrate and perform better in their final examinations, as this excerpt makes clear:
“I am currently supporting many relatives and I can only take them to boarding schools when they are in candidate classes (senior 4 or 6). I am doing this because I am overwhelmed since I have many students that I am supporting and I am also a student”. Head teacher, graduate, private day and boarding school in Gulu Town, married with one child in primary school 1).
28It is common to find children staying with their relatives for various reasons. A preliminary statistical exploration of the data revealed that a good number of children were staying with unmarried older relatives who mostly had had secondary education and were from rural areas. Children living with single heads of households had the least chance of enrolling in a boarding facility both in 2006 and 2011. These findings resonate with the idea presented previously, and point to a situation in which some children stay in other households and access schooling nearby. This may mean that many children live with unmarried heads of household and go to day secondary schools. It is not possible to be sure from looking at the quantitative data whether these non-relatives of heads of households were sent to their older relatives to access secondary education or were invited by their relatives to attend secondary school at the cost of the older brother or sister. Our field findings show that it was common for older children to educate and/or live with their younger siblings or relatives, and going to a cheaper day school is often the preferred solution, especially if the relative in question has to pay for several children. This excerpt may help to clarify this point:
“[…]because I had little money and I could not afford any other school apart from Gulu SS [day school], and my unmarried younger sister is living in town, and my son can live there when he goes to Gulu SS”. Married female parent living about 10 kilometres from Gulu Town.
29Indeed, a good number of single heads of households who were looking after children said that they were educating their relatives in cheaper day schools nearby so as to be able to take on more than one relative.
30The education level of the head of household does not appear to be a straightforward predictor of accessing boarding. In 2006, females whose parents had had some education were less at an advantage with regard to enrolling in a boarding facility (results not presented here), whereas in 2010, children whose parents had had some education (0.703**) were more likely to be boarders. The contradictions in the direction of the coefficients may be related to the number of observations generally and missing data in this variable, given that it was derived from other variables.
31From the field interviews we carried out in Northern Uganda, we were able to gain a more detailed understanding of the boarding school phenomenon from the perspective of the various stakeholders (parents, teachers, head teachers, district school administrators, NGO staff, etc.) by exploring the advantages and challenges they presented in juxtaposition with those presented by day schools, as discussed below.
32As has been documented elsewhere (Gaskins & Mastropieri, 2010; Stickney, 1977; Bass, 2013), the preference for boarding schools was related to their better academic performance at both Ordinary and Advanced level in Uganda. In 2011, there were 2,564 secondary schools in Uganda (MoES, 2011), but the list of the top fifty schools at Ordinary level was dominated by boarding schools (Talemwa, 2012). Boarding schools may be better because their entry requirements are competitive and partly determined by the students’ performance in the Primary Leaving Examination [PLE], as is the case with national schools in Tanzania (Bonini, 2017). Good performance at primary school is partly determined by the type of school attended at that level. In fact, most children who enrol in boarding schools at secondary level have attended private and/or boarding government schools that are, of course, mostly inaccessible to children from poorer households. This may mean that better performance at secondary level is strongly correlated with the “quality” of the children who are admitted, which is also a function of the highly selective admission requirements of most boarding schools. It should also be noted that while some are government schools, for which the government runs the exams, creates performance lists, decides where to build the schools and carries out some level of support supervision, the government has no control over who can access them, as this is largely determined by pupils’ performance, the ability of the parents to pay and sometimes the parents’ social or religious connections. While these schools offer the surest path to social mobility out of poverty for talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds, they are expensive and end up excluding children who live in rural areas or come from poorer households.
33Additionally, most boarding schools have better facilities in terms of dormitories, classroom infrastructure, laboratories, libraries, good sanitary systems, teachers’ accommodation in the schools, higher pay for teachers and support supervision from the founding body and government. They also have a strong body of influential alumni who may not only support them financially but also lobby for funding and give advice on management issues.
34Other advantages of boarding schools include more time for reading and discussion among children, better control of discipline by teachers, an increased spirit of competition and fewer distractions, all of which tend to improve performance, as has been reported elsewhere (Bass, 2013). To prove this point, even where children were under the same management and in the same learning environment and were admitted to “day and boarding schools” with very similar grades, the children in the boarding section usually outperformed their counterparts in the day section. This excerpt in response to a question seeking clarification on the difference in performance between day students and boarders in a day and boarding secondary school reinforces this observation:
“I have not tried to analyse this and make comparisons, but I always see only about one or two children in the boarding section who are not doing all that well. The majority (in the boarding) perform well.” Head teacher, private day and boarding secondary school partnering with the government to implement USE.
35One of the main reasons why the majority of parents do not enrol their children in boarding schools is the costs associated with them. It must be remembered that boarding schools are far more expensive than day schools, and that most of the children who are admitted to them have attended private and/or boarding facilities at primary level that are almost as expensive as boarding schools at the secondary level. This may mean that boarding schools are not only likely to create social classes but also perpetuate the reproduction of social elites.
36Boarding schools were also presented (albeit by only a few better educated respondents) as not being good for students who might suffer from homesickness because they missed parental love and comfort. Some respondents also associated boarding with deviant behaviour such as smoking, heavy drinking, drug abuse and homosexuality. This was seen as negatively affecting children’s emotional, behavioural and psychosocial development, as has been corroborated by earlier studies in the United States and Turkey (Gaskins & Mastropieri, 2010; Cinoglu, 2012; Rollins & Cross, 2014).
37Against the backdrop of limited support supervision from the Ministry of Education, and because secondary education is predominantly in the hands of a less regulated non-government sector, children in some schools are given too much classwork and/or reading, and often wake up as early as 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning and go to bed as late as 10 in the evening, with virtually no time for sports, recreation, manual work and interpersonal socialisation. For this entire period, students are engaged in classwork in order to “enhance their performance”. This situation is compounded by the fact that some schools have little space for extracurricular activities. Other challenges mentioned were congestion in dormitories, increased insecurity due to a wave of fires in some boarding schools and poor nutrition practices, as has been seen elsewhere (Luo et al., 2009).
38To conclude, while boarding schools are associated with challenges affecting children’s emotional and psychosocial development, they are highly regarded both in the field interviews and across the entire country because of their outstanding academic performance. The other probable explanation for their reputation is a wide range of distance – and home environment-related factors that have a negative influence on learning in day schools.
39Although boarding schools are relatively fewer in number, being educated in a boarding facility is highly regarded because of good performance, and if access is to be considered from the perspective of meaningful learning as defined by Lewin & Little (2011), most day students are denied access to meaningful secondary education.
40This is compounded by the fact that despite Universal Secondary Education, the boarding schools that would in theory emancipate children of the poor are both selective at entry and expensive. The paradox is that most of these good “government” schools, which receive part of their funding from the government, cannot be accessed by the poor, which leads to questions about the social justice considerations inherent in universalising secondary education.
41Household income is one major factor that explains differentials in access to boarding facilities. Not only it is costly for parents to pay fees and other requirements, but the competitive cut-off points imposed by these schools mean that most of the children who attend them have been to good private and/or boarding primary schools that are as expensive as most boarding schools. As expected, the USE policy has not alleviated the inequalities involved in accessing boarding facilities, as children from poorer households were as likely to miss out on being boarders after the USE policy as they were before.
42While the central region was found to be more educationally privileged when it comes to accessing secondary education, boarding schools were more closely associated with children who studied in other regions. This may be related to an inadequate supply of day secondary schools. Parents who can afford it have the option of placing their children in boarding schools, and for the majority who cannot, the outcomes may range from placing them in easily accessible day schools or removing them from school altogether, even at lower levels. The spatial inequities, especially with regard to the supply of more affordable day secondary schools before the 2007 policy, have largely persisted, making access to boarding secondary schooling in particular almost exclusively a prerogative of the wealthy few, especially in the traditionally deprived regions like the north.
43As far as the relationship to a head of household is concerned, it is unequivocally certain that children who are not related to a head of household are less likely to benefit from the quality schooling offered by boarding schools. This may be explained by the fact that biological parents make “rational decisions” in times of scarce resources and/or greater financial demands, and also that a good number of families place their children in other households closer to educational facilities, in particular to enable them to access day secondary schooling.
44While it is true that single heads of households play a major role in educating their younger siblings, it is evident that most of them enrol their siblings in cheaper day schools not only to be able to pay for as many dependants as possible, but also to benefit from their labour and/or company.
45Finally, the Universal Secondary Education policy of 2007 has failed to eliminate the inequalities in access to boarding, as the children who are excluded from boarding were consistently less likely to be boarders both before and after the policy. In addition, the fact that most parents, especially in the predominantly poor north, continue to place their children in boarding facilities reflects the government’s failure to supply day secondary schools equitably. The government and other development partners need to take two major steps. First, they must endeavour to build day secondary schools in an even manner and provide scholarships to the top boarding schools for children from poor regions and/or households. Second, they must offer support to older children who are paying for their younger siblings’ education and provide guidelines to schools on how much they should charge parents as a way of clamping down on children’s exclusion from “public” schools.
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