Global Education

Description

The goal of this project is to analyze global education by evaluating various factors and how they affect literacy rates, completion rates, attendance rates, out-of-school rates, foundational learning, and digital connectivity. The project will consider several key factors that have been shown to impact educational outcomes in different parts of the world, including age, gender, country's wealth, area of residence, country's development, and country's region. To achieve our goal, we searched for data from various sources and countries around the world, cleaned that data, and analyzed it to identify patterns and trends and to examine how different factors may be affecting educational outcomes in different parts of the world. Our analysis will focus on understanding the complex interplay between these factors and how they contribute to educational outcomes, and to identify patterns and trends, such as which factors appear to be most strongly associated with positive educational outcomes. Ultimately, our project aims to contribute to a better understanding of global education and the factors that impact it, with the hope of making progress towards more equitable and effective education systems worldwide.

Motivation & Data

Motivation

Education plays a critical role in promoting social mobility, fostering economic growth, and reducing poverty. Despite its importance, there remain to be many challenges when it comes to providing quality education around the world, especially to shoe in low-income and under-resourced communities. Our motivation for choosing this topic stems from a desire to understand and address some of these challenges. By analyzing global education and the factors that contribute to educational outcomes, we hope to gain insights that can inform efforts to improve education systems, promote equity and inclusion, and create opportunities for people around the world to access high-quality education.

Data We Chose

For our project, we chose to use data from UNICEF's education page, which provided plethora of information on education indicators from countries around the world. Specifically, we used spreadsheets from UNICEF that focus on six key factors related to education:

1. Out-of-school rates: this is a measure of the percentage of children or young people who are not attending any level of education

2. Adjusted net attendance rates: this is a measure of the percentage of children of a given age that are attending an education level compatible with their age or attending a higher education level

3. Completion rates: this is the measure of the percentage of children or young people who have completed the level of education of their intended age

4. Foundational learning skills: this is a measure of the percentage of children achieving minimum proficiency in reading and numeracy

5. Youth and adult literacy rates: this is a measure of the percentage of the population that can both read and write a short, simple statement about their everyday life

6. School-age digital connectivity: this is a measure of the percentage of children in a school attendance age between 3-17 years old that have an internet connection at home

Why We Chose that Data

The data we chose from UNICEF's education page is particularly valuable for our project because it provides a comprehensive and globally-representative information related to education outcomes. This information cover a range of dimensions, including access to education, attendance, completion, literacy, and digital connectivity, which collectively provide a more holistic picture of the state of education around the world. Moreover, UNICEF is a reputable and trusted source of data on education outcomes, and their data is collected using rigorous and standardized methods that allow for cross-country comparisons. This reliability allows us to draw meaningful conclusions from the data.

Who We Are

Done By: Hope Wanken and Layann Wardeh

Contacts: hwanken@nd.edu and lwardeh@nd.edu

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Professor Shreya Kumar and our student assistant, Clayton O’Dell, for their invaluable support and guidance throughout our project. Professor Kumar's expertise and encouragement, along with the technical expertise and feedback provided by Clayton, have been instrumental in helping us to complete our project successfully. We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with such a dedicated and supportive team. Thank you!