Balancing Trade-Offs in the Detection of Schools at Risk

The quality assurance and evaluation of schools requires early risk-detection; a daunting task since school failures are typically rare and their origins complex. In the Netherlands, the Inspectorate of Education monitors the regulatory compliance of roughly 6000 primary schools, with limited resources and capacity, and a desire for proportionality. In order to aid their risk-based inspection method, we evaluate various case-based prediction models, and propose a principled exploit-explore procedure for organizing school inspections. This approach has the potential to balance the benefits of prioritizing inspections of presumed high-risk schools on the one hand, with the benefits of verifying predicted risks and causal impact evaluations of school inspections on the other.

Family Factors Associated with Consumption of Spirits: A Comparative Gender-Based Study of Ugandan Students in Public Secondary Schools

This study aims at investigating family factors associated with consumption of spirits across gender of students in public secondary schools in Uganda. A cross-sectional survey using self-administered questionnaires was used to collect data on consumption of sprits in the past 12 months prior to the study. Of the 1,591 students recruited, the overall prevalence of consumption of spirits was found to be 17.3% (n = 275) with higher consumption of spirits among males (20.3%). Results indicate that unemployed heads of families (aOR = 2.5, 95% CI: 1.30–4.76, p<0.01), fairly religious (aOR = 2.7, 95% CI: 1.08–6.49, p<0.05), and not religious families (aOR = 2.9, 95% CI: 1.17–7.11, p<0.05) were factors associated with consumption of spirits. Early prevention of consumption of spirits could be focused on male students, fathers’ occupation, and family religiosity. In addition, school administrators and authorities could consider these factors during routine school inspections to guard discipline among students in Uganda.

Epilepsy: Knowledge and Attitudes of Primary School Teachers in the City of Bouake/Ivory Coast

We report the results of a two-month descriptive observational survey to assess the knowledge about epilepsy among primary school teachers in Bouake in Ivory Coast. This study included 310 teachers who were randomly chosen from three Primary School Inspections (PSI). Almost all the teachers who were included had shown inaccurate information about epilepsy. 46.45% of the respondents thought that epilepsy was contagious and 47.74% recommanded to avoid contacting with salivary secretions of the patient during seizure. For 16.45% of them, persons living with epilepsy (PWE) could be not married and 19.7% believed that PWE could not have children due to the risk of transmission. This study highlights the urgent need of awareness campaigns among primary school teachers.