Assessing the Relationship Between the Implementation of Compulsory Education Laws and Girls’ School Attendance in Twenty-Seven Countries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors:
Firstly, allow me to congratulate you on the work you have presented. However, I would like to offer some recommendations to help improve it.
Firstly, in the methodology section, you should add a section on objectives, as this is currently missing and does not help to understand the purpose of the research.
Furthermore, to better understand the study, it is important to add the characteristics of the sample in a separate section (not in the appendices), along with another section detailing the characteristics of the instrument.
The section following the results should be renamed “Discussion”.
Similarly, a conclusions section is missing.
Once again, congratulations.
Author Response
Comment 1:
Dear authors:
Firstly, allow me to congratulate you on the work you have presented. However, I would like to offer some recommendations to help improve it.
Firstly, in the methodology section, you should add a section on objectives, as this is currently missing and does not help to understand the purpose of the research.
Furthermore, to better understand the study, it is important to add the characteristics of the sample in a separate section (not in the appendices), along with another section detailing the characteristics of the instrument.
The section following the results should be renamed “Discussion”.
Similarly, a conclusions section is missing.
Once again, congratulations.
Response 1:
Thank you for the suggestions. We have moved the sample characteristics to the main body of the paper and added a brief conclusion. (Discussion follows results as in the submitted paper.)
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript: Assessing the relationship between the implementation of compulsory education laws and girls’ school attendance in 27 Countries, which is a most time critical subject.
In the abstract you write ‘as of 2023’. I feel that the study would be more valuable if it were updated to 2025, given the fact that we are almost in 2026- consider updating text and data to show changes I n the last 2-3 years?
Very ambitious study with a number of valuable data sets, yet it is unclear to this review why you have different sizes of data sets and that these don’t match with the number 27 in the heading. You write: Building longitudinal policy data from 51 African countries and using data on school attendance from 35 African countries, we assess school attendance. Suggest you consider this point in your revisions.
Interesting introduction. You write: “Yet as of 2023, there were still 78 million primary school age children, 64 million lower 30 secondary school age children, and 130 million upper secondary school age children out 31 of school”, can you clarify the empirical context ? Africa? Asia? Globally? Suggest data is updated to 2025
Interesting tables- suggest one checks how readable these are- if they should be larger, to be read more easily.
Most interesting and well written discussions. I feel you would do well to profile to a higher degree, what is unique about this study? There are so many studies globally on gender disparity and education, along with education and attendance. What is your unique contribution to the field. is it the impact of free education in poor regions? any other unique contributions?
You mention COVID briefly in the text – could this point be relevant to expand upon? Might we see that digitalization, internet and technology have encouraged more home schooling in any way? More life long learning in any way or form?
You end the paper suddenly after the discussion section. You should include Conclusions section. Also limitations and future research and implications
A well written manuscript generally, yet missing key sections such as conclusions, limitations and future research. There is no mention of implications either.
The study is somewhat dated, from 2023.
I hope these points will help you develop your manuscript further.
Author Response
Comment 1: Thank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript: Assessing the relationship between the implementation of compulsory education laws and girls’ school attendance in 27 Countries, which is a most time critical subject.
Response 1: We are glad that the reviewer finds this paper timely.
Comment 2: In the abstract you write ‘as of 2023’. I feel that the study would be more valuable if it were updated to 2025, given the fact that we are almost in 2026- consider updating text and data to show changes I n the last 2-3 years?
Response 2: We appreciate the reviewer’s concern that having up-to-date data on this critical area matters. The data on children out of school is provided by UNESCO’s monitoring of the SDGs. The estimate included in the abstract and paper is the most up-to-date data released as of June 2025. We have revised the text to focus on the finding rather than the year of the estimate.
Comment 3: Very ambitious study with a number of valuable data sets, yet it is unclear to this review why you have different sizes of data sets and that these don’t match with the number 27 in the heading. You write: Building longitudinal policy data from 51 African countries and using data on school attendance from 35 African countries, we assess school attendance. Suggest you consider this point in your revisions.
Response 3: We appreciate the reviewer’s attention to detail. To measure the number of children out of school in countries that had tuition-free and compulsory education policies, it was necessary to combine two datasets: (1) a novel longitudinal dataset on the laws and policies governing education across African countries and (2) household survey data that provided information on whether children were attending school as well as demographic characteristics. As reported in the results “27 of the 35 countries (77%) in our sample had made primary education tuition-free and compulsory at least one year prior to the survey year.” Hence, we analyze the implementation of laws in those 27 countries. We have clarified this point in the abstract to avoid confusion: “Building longitudinal policy data from 51 African countries and using data on school attendance from 35 African countries, we assess school attendance in the 27 countries that had made at least primary education compulsory and tuition-free.”
Comment 4: Interesting introduction. You write: “Yet as of 2023, there were still 78 million primary school age children, 64 million lower 30 secondary school age children, and 130 million upper secondary school age children out 31 of school”, can you clarify the empirical context ? Africa? Asia? Globally? Suggest data is updated to 2025.
Response 4: We have clarified that this is global data and updated the citation to show these are the most recent estimates released in 2025.
Comment 5: Interesting tables- suggest one checks how readable these are- if they should be larger, to be read more easily.
Response 5: We appreciate the concern about readability. If possible, we would greatly appreciate if the journal did not split tables across pages but moved their location so the full table is on a single page.
Comment 6: Most interesting and well written discussions. I feel you would do well to profile to a higher degree, what is unique about this study? There are so many studies globally on gender disparity and education, along with education and attendance. What is your unique contribution to the field. is it the impact of free education in poor regions? any other unique contributions?
Response 6: As noted in the introduction and discussion, to our knowledge, this is the first quantitative study to address the implementation of compulsory education laws across a large number of countries and provide an in-depth analysis of disparities across and within gender based on class and urban/rural location.
Comment 7: You mention COVID briefly in the text – could this point be relevant to expand upon? Might we see that digitalization, internet and technology have encouraged more home schooling in any way? More life long learning in any way or form?
Response 7: That’s an interesting question, but would require different data to answer and is beyond the scope of this paper.
Comment 8: You end the paper suddenly after the discussion section. You should include Conclusions section. Also limitations and future research and implications
Response 8: We have more clearly outlined the limitations and suggestions for future research:
“This study has two main limitations. First, to conduct this large-scale study, we relied on a simple measure of whether children attended school at any time during the school year. Future research should examine disparities in more detailed measures of implementation, such as whether children are regularly attending school. Second, data were not available on why children were not attending school to better understand why implementation gaps occurred. Alongside, futures research to deepen our understanding of what the implementation barriers are in countries that have poor implementation, in-depth qualitative studies should look at the countries that are having greater success at ensuring children attend school. These studies should examine the extent to which budgetary allocations, human resources dedicated to implementation, campaigns for norm change, and other policy approaches are working to achieve education for all.”
Comment 9: A well written manuscript generally, yet missing key sections such as conclusions, limitations and future research. There is no mention of implications either.
Response 9: We have added a Conclusions section and expanded upon the limitations, future research, and implications.
Comment 10: The study is somewhat dated, from 2023.
Response 10: We used the most up-to-date data available on school attendance that allowed us to look in-depth at disparities across gender, class, and urban/rural location that was not affected by the impact of large-scale school closures on school attendance during the pandemic. Due to the nature of these surveys, there is a delay between when surveys are fielded, when they become publicly available, and when they are harmonized for cross-country analysis. These surveys are commonly used by researchers and UN agencies to provide the best data for monitoring education, health, and other outcomes.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article is well written but it is descriptive, that means it describes by providing the existing situation without deeper discussion of the results: for example it does not discuss any policy/ social interventions that could improve the situation, it is just presenting what happens.
Author Response
Comment 1: The article is well written but it is descriptive, that means it describes by providing the existing situation without deeper discussion of the results: for example it does not discuss any policy/ social interventions that could improve the situation, it is just presenting what happens.
Response 1: We share the reviewer’s concern about the lack of information on the implementation of compulsory education. We have expanded the discussion to address future research that builds from this study:
“Alongside, futures research to deepen our understanding of what the implementation barriers are in countries that have poor implementation, in-depth qualitative studies should look at the countries that are having greater success at ensuring children attend school. These studies should examine the extent to which budgetary allocations, human resources dedicated to implementation, campaigns for norm change, and other policy approaches are working to achieve education for all.”
