‘Early harm, lasting impact’
Early experiences of domestic violence have deep, adverse consequences for a child’s educational journey. In a discussion paper titled “Early harm, lasting impact: The effect of parental violence on educational outcomes among Filipino children,” researchers from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that there is a “critical link between domestic abuse and the country’s dropout rates.”
With support from the Second Congressional Commission on Education, PIDS researchers found that Filipino children exposed to parental violence starting at age 10 are “about half as likely to be enrolled in school by age 14, compared to their peers who did not experience [domestic] abuse.”
The paper draws on data from a longitudinal cohort study on Filipino children that looked at how early exposure to both physical and emotional violence affected children’s educational outcomes over time. The study showed that nearly four in 10 Filipino children (39.5 percent) are exposed to violence from their parents at age 10. These children had 52 to 57 percent lower chances of attending school by age 14 (early adolescent stage).
Several child psychology theories point out that children’s early experiences of violence at home create a lasting impact on their behavior and overall health and well-being, making them demotivated to attend school.
In addition to affirming child development theories, the study also noted that boys and girls exposed early to domestic violence face severe risks of discontinuing their studies. However, violence-exposed girls are less likely to be in school (at 66 percent) compared to exposed boys, who were found to be 48 percent less likely to be enrolled by age 14.
The PIDS study noted that educational outcomes are not only influenced by teaching and the overall school environment, but also by domestic violence, which starts long before children go to school.
In terms of academic performance, the PIDS study also showed a negative trend in exposed children’s performance in mathematics, reading, and science. However, it stressed that such a trend could not be established with a high level of statistical significance, as such might be manifested more gradually over time, or through other means not fully captured in the survey data on which the discussion paper was based.
Authors of the discussion paper recommend interventions that go beyond the classroom and into the home. For them, these programs will support the long-term development of children, and hopefully improve their school participation and academic performance. Among these programs is the Parenting for Lifelong Health, called “Masayang Pamilya.”
It would be interesting to look closely at the granular distribution of children who are less likely to attend school because of their early exposure to different forms of domestic violence. For example, which regions in the country have a child population that is less likely to attend school because of early experiences of violence at home?
Domestic violence is not the only disruptive factor that can push children out of school. In many conflict-affected and conflict-prone communities in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), communal violence has displaced families with young children and forced them to seek safer grounds. In the localities where they end up as evacuees, they have no access to schools there because they were not able to bring their school records with them.
Episodes of communal violence in the BARMM are largely caused by firefights between the armed elements of powerful political families in the region, contesting for dominance in local government politics.
Many Muslim families in the region enroll their children in “madaris” (plural of “madrasah”, Arabic term for schools), and because of the lack of transferability of madrasah education to the regular public school system, these children are unable to transfer to the equivalent grade, making them go back to earlier grade levels in the public school system. This can be a demotivating factor for evacuee children to go back to school.
Some BARMM communities are low-lying and are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events associated with climate change, like intermittent flooding. In two studies I conducted (from 2021 to 2023) with a team of researchers in some conflict-prone and climate-vulnerable areas in the region, both communal violence episodes and climate change events like flooding and drought intersected to prevent children from going to school at all levels.
Perhaps another follow-up study is needed to tackle other factors that work in confluence with each other to push children out of school?
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