Assessing Education from Space: Using Satellite Earth Observation to Quantify Overcrowding in Primary Schools in Rural Areas of Nigeria

Ana Andries, Stephen Morse, Richard J. Murphy, Jim Lynch and Emma R. Woolliams
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Ana Andries: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Stephen Morse: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Richard J. Murphy: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Jim Lynch: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Emma R. Woolliams: Climate and Earth Observation Group, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington TW11 0LW, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: Nigeria is a country with a rapidly growing youthful population and the availability of good quality education for all is a key priority in the sustainable development of the country. An important element of this is the need to improve access to high-quality primary education in rural areas. A key indicator for progress on this is the provision of adequate classroom space for the more than 20 million learners in Nigerian public schools because overpopulated classrooms are known to have a strong negative impact on the performance of both pupils and their teachers. However, it can be challenging to rapidly monitor this indicator for the over 60 thousand primary schools, especially in rural areas. In this research, we used satellite Earth Observation (EO) and Nigerian government data to determine the size of available teaching spaces and evaluate the degree of overcrowding in a sample of 1900 randomly selected rural primary schools across 19 Nigerian states spanning all regions of the country. Our analysis shows that 81.4% of the schools examined were overcrowded according to the minimum standard threshold for school size of at least 1.2 m 2 of classroom space per pupil defined by the Federal Government of Nigeria. Such overcrowding can be expected to have a negative impact on educational performance, on achieving universal basic education and UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 (Quality Education), and it can lead to poverty. While measuring floor area can be performed manually on site, collecting, and reporting such data for the number of rural primary schools in a large and populous country such as Nigeria is a serious, time-consuming administrative task with considerable potential for errors and data gaps. Satellite EO data are readily available including for remote areas, are reproducible and are easy to update over time. This paper provides a proof-of-concept example of how such EO data can contribute to addressing this socio-economic dimension of the SDGs framework.

Keywords: earth observation; UN sustainable development goals; education; socio-economic; overcrowded schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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