Focus on education reforms

Malita Banda is only 14, but she has the air of a much older person disillusioned with life's unexpected twists. "I thought I would be a teacher some day. Now I will be nothing," she said in resignation over her imagined fate. Banda is not just being melodramatic. Junior secondary school examination results recently released told her that she had not been selected to Grade 10 – meaning that her formal education had come to an end after a bare nine years in the classroom. Her parents hoped to get her a place in school to redo her Grade 9, but the number of failed pupils jostling for positions in the classroom far outstrip the available places, and their chances of success are limited. If they fail, Banda will have no option but to join her elder siblings, a brother and sister, idling away her teenage years. Perhaps Banda would not be so distraught if there was any comfort in numbers. Of the 111,000 students who sat for the Grade 9 final examinations last year, only 28,000 made it to Grade 10 – meaning another 88,000 children in their mid-teens have been sieved out of the formal education system. The results represent a drop in the national progression rate of over two percent to 25.9 percent, and do not include the tens of thousands of pre-teen children who dropped out of school after failing their final primary school examinations last year, and the countless other children who drop out every year for economic reasons. Many of them will join the growing army of 75,000 street children in the country's urban centres. An Oxfam report released recently blames the high school drop out rates on inadequate government funding to the education sector, deplorable conditions that teachers work under, and the inability of poor households to consistently pay school fees. Not surprisingly, the high dropout figures have reinforced calls for an overhaul of the education sector – and for the reintroduction of free education in government schools. "For Zambia to move away from its current situation of education, it is important that serious commitment is made to ensure that resources are available for education, especially if economic reform is to be meaningful," coordinator of the economic and social development research project of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), Muweme Muweme told IRIN. Some international donor governments and agencies, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on which the country depends for around half of the national budget, have expressed reservations about the wisdom of abolishing school fees. "However, JCTR wishes to express serious concern over the statement by the IMF resident representative for Zambia that donors will not support the provision of free education in Zambia because of the unfavourable economic environment. This disturbing statement surely needs further explanation," Muweme said. "On one hand, it is abundantly true that without certain pragmatic steps in the direction of resource mobilisation and [halting the] misallocation of resources, Zambia will find it extremely difficult if not impossible to offer free education to its people. On the other hand, it must be realised that with a cost sharing policy in place ... a lot of children from poor households with the potential to contribute towards national development are having their potential curtailed," he added. Despite the resistance of some western donors, the government has made tentative moves towards reintroducing free education. Two years ago, the former government of president Frederick Chiluba abolished government imposed school fees – but not the higher Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) fees of up to 10,000 kwacha (about US $2.5) per term – a prohibitive sum in a society where an estimated 80 percent of the population live on less than one dollar per day. The new administration of President Levy Mwanawasa has, meanwhile, pledged to reintroduce free education "when resources are available" – suggesting that it may abolish the prohibitive PTA fees as well. The World Bank had indicated that it would support such a move - provided it was carefully thought out and executed. "The World Bank does not support user fees for primary education. In countries such as Zambia where, due to existing inadequacies in government funds, fees for basic education are significant, the Bank's view is that children should not be excluded from school due to inability to pay fees. In such cases, the Bank encourages governments to expand the role of public financing and to diminish dependence on fees," World Bank country representative Lawrence Clarke told IRIN. "Initiatives to abolish fees should be well planned in advance, providing not only for replacement of fee revenue by public funds, but also taking into account likely substantial increases in enrolment, and the consequent need for increases in school inputs," he added. Clarke cautioned the government against adopting education reforms similar to those undertaken in Uganda, Malawi, and Lesotho, where the scrapping of school fees saw an increase in school enrolments, but not in the quality of education. "In these countries, enrolment surges without adequate advance planning and without commensurate increases in school inputs has led to significant erosion of quality. This type of experience should not be imitated, since the objective of the educational process is learning and not merely attendance. It is taking these countries several years to restore quality to what it had been earlier," he said.