Socioeconomic and Demographic Aspects of School Enrollment and Attendance in Rural Botswana

Abstract

As has been true for other African and non-African mineral-rich economies, the most serious constraint on Botswana's development to date has been the lack of human capital. Schapera notes that in traditional Botswana schooling was conceived as a burden on the family, because of both the new expenditures associated with schooling and the loss of the child's contribution to household production and income.' Ashton notes that parents in Botswana apparently failed to perceive the benefits of education.2 The situation has changed fundamentally since Schapera and Ashton wrote in the forties. Largely through government policy programs of school construction and teacher training, schools have become relatively widespread. The benefits of schooling are apparent in the labor market and are even more immediately evident at home-schools often provide free meals and health care to their pupils. However, the schooling system may not be designed to serve sparsely populated areas completely. This reflects, in part, the movement and social spread of Botswana's rural population across villages, lands, and cattle posts. Moreover children, especially in households with assets, play a role in the household economy.3 As a consequence, the indirect costs of schooling-those noted by Shapera-may still be substantial in Botswana today. These costs, in addition to the direct costs of transportation and uniforms, may be prohibitive to the schooling of many children. The evidence I present later shows that even primary schooling was not universal in Botswana at the time of the 1974 Rural Income Distribution Survey on which this present study is based.4 This paper is to study the demographic and socioeconomic corre