Honjo International Scholarship Foundation
Doctoral Dissertation Presentation 2021
Presentation 13 by Sanfo Mohamadou Bassirou Jean-Baptiste

Examining Effect of Family, School and Community Factors on Primary School Students’Attendance and Learning Achievements in Burkina Faso: Focused on Gold Mining Areas
Families, schools, and local communities have can help improve school attendance andstudents’ learning achievements. Education demand depends primarily on families andcommunities. When education supply is high in an environment where demand is low, issues
are very likely to arise from the mismatch. Therefore, governments make efforts from a supply
side, while encouraging demand side contributions as well. Interactions from both will likely
reduce issues that currently plague educational systems. Research suggests that theeducational contribution of families, schools, and communities seems to be more relevant incontexts with more educational issues, like small-scale gold mining areas (SGMA) in Burkina
Faso (BF) where parents, children, communities, and even sometimes teachers seem to be
more interested in “gold money” than education.
Despite evidence that these factors help improve education is sensitive areas like SGMA
ones in BF, there is a body of research that suggests that the contribution of families andcommunities may not be effective to promote school attendance or learning achievements, but
only schools may. In other words, interventions targeting families are ineffective to improvethese outcomes, then interventions should target only schools. Moreover, while some studies
support that low education participation and poor education quality are characteristics
general to educational systems including Burkina Faso one, some others argue that theseissues are worse in gold mining areas, due to poor families and communities that are moreseeking to make a living than to get involved in children’s education.
The main purpose of the study is then to analyze the influence of family, school andcommunity factors on school attendance and learning achievements of students in Burkina
Faso, with a focus on gold mining areas. The questions asked are: (1) To what extent do homeenvironment factors affect the likelihood of primary school attendance across socioeconomic
groups (SES) in gold mining areas in Burkina Faso’s primary education? (2) What are thefactors that determine students’ learning achievements between high performing students
and low performing ones in gold mining areas in Burkina Faso’s primary education? (3) How
does community involvement in school life influence students’ learning achievements in gold
mining areas in Burkina Faso’s primary education?
Under a mixed-method sequential explanatory design, that is a sequential linkage between
a quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study employed a probit model and a three-level
Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) with Burkina Faso 2014 household survey and PASEC
2014 data to analyze the factors that affect school attendance and learning achievements; theresults of the quantitative analysis guided the qualitative one, where qualitative data wascollected and analyzed to explain findings of the quantitative analysis.
The study finds that in Burkina Faso’s SGMA, family factors determine school attendance
and the voice of fathers appears to be very important, with parental effect higher for boys,
non-working children, and children of higher SES. This finding is unique to SGMA, as norelationship between parental involvement and school attendance is found in non-mining
areas. Moreover, parental involvement is not statistically related to students’ learningachievements, regardless of students’ performance, but the number of books at home
positively influences learning achievements of high performing students. However, the study
found that child labor is negatively associated with students’ learning achievements,
regardless of performance. What was found to be unique to SGMA is the positive influence ofteacher professional training, school principal training and experience on students’ learningachievements. On community factors, findings reveal that PTAs support of students in needhas a positive effect on students’ learning achievements, without any gender differences.
However, Mothers Asssociation (MA) involvement in school life also has a positive effect on
students’ learning achievements, with an effect higher for girls. This finding does not apply to
non-gold mining areas, as the study found that the involvement of MAs profits boys more in
non-gold mining areas. In conclusion, families can contribute to improve educational outcomes,
but some other factors may moderate their effect. Moreover, schools and communities
contribute to improve educational outcomes, provided they are able to know the learning needsof students.