Free schooling under scrutiny

President Levy Mwanawasa's decision to scrap cost sharing in Zambian schools and re-introduce free education has run into controversy over whether the government can afford adequate levels of funding to the country's neglected schools. Mwanawasa argued that the reason for poor enrolment rates and a general decline in education standards was a result of high school fees. The government has since banned financial "contributions" from parents through the Parents-Teachers Associations (PTAs) - viewed by some campaigners as a hidden tax on already poor households - and announced a return to universal free primary education. "The reintroduction of free education is not a bad idea in itself, but it must be viable before it is employed. As things stand, it has only meant that schools no longer have enough money to run smoothly," a school teacher, who asked not to be named, told IRIN. Perhaps the most striking thing about Lusaka Basic School is its ordinariness. Its well-trimmed gardens, paved walkways and sterile corridors evoke the tedious air of academic serenity that is the expected mark of learning institutions all over the world. However, it stands in marked contrast with the average public school in this impoverished southern African country. For less well off pupils, school campuses usually comprise little more than rundown buildings set in ill-tended grounds. Understandably, members of Lusaka Basic's PTA are proud of the way they have maintained the school's high standards despite a slowdown in government funding to the education sector. This, they say, has been made possible by the prudent use of the PTA fund – a scheme under which pupils in virtually all schools in the country hitherto supplemented public funding through individual contributions. "This school has always been able to supplement government funding to the tune of 70 million kwacha [about US $16,000] per year on average. That has always gone a long, long way," a Lusaka Basic schoolteacher explained. But the government's concern about cost sharing in schools seems justified. A recent study by the Lusaka-based Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection's (JCTR) and Oxfam established that, on average, Zambian households spend twice as much on primary education as the government does. It also established that public funding of primary education is "highly erratic", with actual expenditure being only a small percentage of authorised expenditure. The report, entitled, 'Will the Poor go to School: Cost Sharing in Education in Zambia', said cost sharing had seen a marked drop in the number of children attending school, and a deterioration of teachers' salaries and living conditions, "with a resultant negative effect on education". Ministry of Education statistics corroborate the report. For example, only 28,000 of the 111,000 students who sat for final Grade 9 examinations last year made it to Grade 10. The 88,000 children who were sieved out of the education system joined tens of thousands of others who failed their final Grade 7 examinations last year, and countless more who were forced out of the system by prohibitive school fees. Mwanawasa has made the campaign for universal free primary education one of his government's priorities. It is a key element of the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) - making clear the link between education and development - which will govern the country's economic policies over the next several years. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have endorsed the PRSP and said it forms "a sound basis" for International Development Association (IDA - the World Bank's soft loan window) and IMF support. However, the IMF, which earlier expressed doubts about the country's capacity to provide free education, has said that some aspects of the PRSP may be unrealistic. "Some of the core goals and targets of the PRSP appear too ambitious. Targets and indicators need to be refined further to ensure that they are realistic and can be monitored within the allotted time frame," said IMF resident representative Mark Ellyne. He did not elaborate. While development campaigners in general welcomed the reintroduction of free education early this year, schools in the capital are already feeling its ill effects. The lack of finance has forced many schools in and outside the capital to venture into unorthodox fundraising initiatives, such as chicken rearing and tailoring, to meet their running costs. "Most government schools have engaged in private projects to raise money to acquire basic teaching equipment. Previously, the government, through the ministry of education, used to provide teaching equipment," the state-run Times of Zambia reported after a survey of Lusaka schools last week. Schools have also had to cut spending on general maintenance and supplies. For example, Lusaka Basic has laid off three workers in the sanitation and maintenance departments to cut its wage bill. "The results can already be seen. The grounds are not as clean as they used to be and the toilets are getting filthy," the Lusaka Basic teacher said. However, some influential development campaigners insist that, the apparent teething problems aside, free education can be made sustainable if the government adopts more creative ways of using its limited resources. "It may seem impossible if one takes a cursory look at the problem of mobilising resources in our current situation to meet the challenge of providing free education. However, a deeper look shows that there are ways through which Zambia can and should mobilise resources towards providing free education," argued Muweme Muweme, coordinator of the Economic and Social Development Research Project of the JCTR. "There are indeed steps, such as reducing wasteful utilisation of public resources, curbing corruption, increasing government funding to the education sector, that can be taken ... to change for the better the current disastrous education situation if there is the political will to do so," he added.