Aboulela, Leila Fuad
(1991)
Stock and flow models for the Sudanese educational system.
MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The thesis examines the possibility of applying a Markov planning model to the Sudanese educational system. The limitations of the available data published by the Sudanese Ministry of Education is examined and the quality of the data discussed. Study of the system establishes the presence of a bottleneck between secondary and higher education due to shortages of places in the latter. Two adaptations of the simple Markov model are proposed in which the flow of students into higher education is determined by the number of vacancies. The first model considers the case when a capacity constraint exists in the first grade of a particular higher education institute. In the second model it is the total size of higher education which is assumed to be fixed and expansion or contraction of the capacity constraints is allowed. For both models, it is shown that a steady-state exists and can be evaluated. A serious limitation of the available data is the lack of flow rates which therefore must be estimated. The estimation methods available assume a system that is constant over time. As the Sudanese educational system is expanding an extension of the original regression method was developed to account for growth. The procedure was used to obtain estimates of the transition rates of students in different parts of the Sudan. The fit of the model was good in the majority of the cases and validating the prediction of the model with newly published data was successful. Lastly, a simulation program, was developed which generated artificial data sets from which transition rates were estimated. Sampling distributions of these estimates were then obtained by repetitive simulations. Studying these distributions showed the estimation technique to be effective in terms of ability to estimate the true transition rates and make reasonable predictions.
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