completing the primary certificate is quite high. Service providers may want to target resources at supporting young people through the primary school years to ensure they acquire the primary certificate. Figure 29: Percent of respondents of the 2011 Belize Coverage Exercise currently in school who reached the appropriate class with a secondary school certificate, by sex and ethnicity 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Creole
Garifuna
Hispanic Females
Maya
Mestizo
Other
Males
Young persons who are attending school and those who no longer attend school live very different daily experiences. In-school youth have direct access, just by being in school, to a wide range of opportunities to build their knowledge base and develop critical skills. By interacting with their peers on a regular basis they are establishing social capital (i.e., friendship networks) that often serve as critical support mechanisms, not to mention healthy outlets for socializing and recreation. Conversely, out-of-school youth, unless they participate directly in non-formal educational programs, rarely have regular access to the intellectual and social capital necessary to actualize their potential. Most out-of-school youth are not attending due to competing interests – such as the responsibilities associated with raising a child or taking care of a household – or due to limited resources that force them to transition early into work. Educational institutions provide an excellent medium for programs designed to provide young people with important information on health, sexual and reproductive health, livelihoods and other topics. These types of programs, by virtue of taking place in the school setting, are inaccessible to out-of-school youth and therefore do not reach an important population that often experiences high levels of vulnerability and marginalization due to the socio-economic circumstances that forced them to no longer attend school. To reach both the in-school and outof-school populations of young people, decision-makers need accurate data on the trends in school attendance and educational attainment, particularly on the variations of these indicators 47 | P a g e