Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries [1 ed.] 9781617287701, 9781607415091

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Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE AND GLOBALIZING WORLD SERIES

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CHALLENGES OF QUALITY EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

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Academic Administration: A Quest for Better Management and Leadership in Higher Education Sheying Chen (Editor) 2009. ISBN: 978-1-60741-732-3 New Research in Education: Adult, Medical and Vocational Edmondo Balistrieri and Giustino DeNino (Editors) 2009. ISBN: 978-1-60741-873-3

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EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE AND GLOBALIZING WORLD SERIES

CHALLENGES OF QUALITY EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

DANIEL NAMUSONGE SIFUNA AND

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

NOBUHIDE SAWAMURA

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

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Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Sifuna, D. N., 1944Challenges of quality education in Sub-Saharan African countries / Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-61728-770-1 (E-Book) 1. Education--Africa, Sub-Saharan--Philosophy. 2. Education--Standards--Africa, Sub-Saharan. 3. Educational evaluation--Africa, Sub-Saharan. 4. Education and state--Africa, Sub-Saharan. I. Sawamura, Nobuhide. II. Title. LA1501.S558 2009 370.967--dc22 2009032911

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CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xv

Chapter 1

Educational Policy Trends

1

Chapter 2

Concept and Function of Quality Education

15

Chapter 3

Early Childhood Care and Education

31

Chapter 4

Primary Education

51

Chapter 5

Secondary Education

77

Chapter 6

University Education

99

Chapter 7

Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession

123

Chapter 8

Adult Literacy

145

Chapter 9

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

169

Chapter 10

Conclusions and the Way Forward

193

References

205

About the Authors

225

Index

227

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1.

Gross enrollment ratio (GER) in pre-primary education (percentage)

40

Table 3.2.

Net enrollment ratio (NER) pre-primary education (percentage)2005

41

Table 4.1.

Curricula of primary education

54

Table 4.2.

Gross enrollment ratio (GER) %

65

Table 4. 3.

Net enrollment ratio (NER) percentage

66

Table 5.1.

Gross enrollment ratio in secondary education (percentage)

87

Table 5.2.

Net enrollment ratio in secondary education (percentage), 2005

88

Table 6.1.

Enrollment in tertiary education

111

Table 7. 1.

Pupil teacher ratio

135

Table 8.1.

Adult Literacy Enrollment by Gender in Kenya 1976-1996

156

Table 8.2.

Adult Literacy Rate in Africa, 15 Year and Over (Percentage)

160

Table 9.1.

Percentage of student enrollment by gender in technical institutions, 1999-2003 in Kenya

185

Figure 1.

Framework for understanding education quality

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PREFACE Quality is at the heart of all education systems, as good quality teaching and learning environments ensure effective learning outcomes. Quality influences what students learn, how well they learn and what benefits they draw from their education. The quest to ensure that students achieve decent learning outcomes and acquire values and skills that help them play a positive role in their societies is an issue on the policy agenda of nearly every country. As many world governments struggle to expand particularly basic education, they also face the challenge of ensuring that students stay in school long enough to acquire the knowledge that they need to cope in a rapidly changing world. The purpose of this book is, therefore, to profile some aspects of education quality in the African education systems and to highlight key policies for improving the teaching and learning outcomes. The book is also intended to provide basic information to scholars who are interested in studying education in the Sub-Saharan African region. To enable users to understand and appreciate developments, trends and changes that have taken place in the education systems, for most chapters, the book deliberately adopts a historical approach, which leads to some focus on developments that dzate back to the colonial period in Africa. In grappling with the issue of quality education, it is contented that in studies of quality and equality issues in education in third-world countries, as yet there is no consensus on the definition of the term “quality.” More importantly, notions of quality change over time and are tied to societal values. Quality education is, therefore, a relative concept. Educators who seek particular defined outcomes tend to rate it in those terms and will rank educational institutions according to the extent to which their graduates meet those outcomes. The standard of comparison would be in some sense fixed and different from the values, wishes and opinions of the learners themselves. There are also some educators who argue that the concept of quality is elusive because its content depends upon how we choose to define our preferred outcomes of schooling. It is, however, noted that common to all education systems is the objective of improving the cognitive achievement of pupils. Furthermore, all nations also wish to help create, through education, better citizens, namely, people who can support and help strengthen the values that the particular society holds dear. In this regard, quality should be seen in the light of how societies define their purpose of education. In most systems, two principal objectives are at stake, namely, to ensure the cognitive development of learners and the emphasis on the role of education in nurturing the creative and emotional growth of learners and in helping them to acquire values and attitudes for responsible citizenship. However, quality education must pass

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura

the test of equity; thus, an education characterized with discrimination against any particular group is not fulfilling its mission. For African education systems to meet such cardinal functions, government efforts in ensuring the achievement of these important outcomes are quite vital. Considering the diversity in the understanding and interpretation of quality education, developing approaches for monitoring and improving it is still a very difficult task. However, from the traditions underlying it and the different conceptualizations, it is clear that cognitive development and accumulation of particular values, attitudes and skills are important objectives of educational systems in most societies. Their contents may differ, but their broad structures are perceived to be similar throughout the world. This implies that the key to improving the quality of education is to help education systems achieve their objectives. A new consensus and impetus is building around the imperative to improve the quality of education with regard to how well students are taught and how much they learn. These factors are likely to have a crucial impact upon the length and value of their schooling experiences. Although the concept of quality education is still contentious, it is clear from many research studies that good quality education facilitates the acquisition of knowledge and of skills and attitudes that have intrinsic values and also helps in addressing important human goals. Evidence is now clear-cut on the links between good education and a wide range of economic and social development benefits. Better school outcomes, as reflected in student scores, are related to higher incomes in later life. Empirical work has also demonstrated that high quality schooling improves national economic potential. There are also strong and significant social benefits. For example, it is now believed that the acquisition of literacy and numeracy, especially by women, has an impact upon fertility. For the youth and children in school, access to use of reading materials in languages that they understand are critical in acquiring basic functional skills. Numerous national and international learning assessments have demonstrated that availability of books and other printed materials in school classrooms and libraries is associated with higher student performance. Hence, measures of the availability and use of textbooks and written materials are important indicators of school-based literate environments and therefore the quality of its outcomes. Apart from the teaching and learning materials, research also seems to point to ample instructional time based on actual learning time as an important factor in what constitutes a conducive learning environment. And, above all, secure, uncrowded and well maintained schools, as well as more, and well trained, teachers as another important indicator. Student learning assessments can be used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of an education system and compare student achievement and competencies across schools or systems. African governments, therefore, seriously need to invest in the provision of teaching and learning materials to uplift the quality of learning environments. With regard to the function of education in developing countries, it appears likely, on the basis of somewhat limited evidence, that the returns of school quality are, if anything, higher than in more industrialized contexts. Using simple measures of basic cognitive skills, studies show that such skills are separately important in determining earnings, apart from the effect of general schooling attained. Although there is still data paucity, which suggests the need for caution in interpreting the results due to other extraneous factors, there is some strong evidence associated with increases in test scores suggesting a substantial return to higher levels of cognitive skills and the probability of higher levels of school quality in good and conducive learning environments.

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Preface

xiii

Quality education is also perceived to have a strong impact on a country’s development goals. It is generally believed that formal schooling is one of the key contributors to individual skills as well as human capital. Although there are other factors that play a similar role, schools have a special place, not only because education and skill creation are among their prime explicit objectives, but also because they are the factors most directly affected by public policies. It is also well established that the distribution of personal incomes in society is strongly related to the amount of education people have had. In general terms, more schooling means higher lifetime incomes, other factors such as economic development being equal. Improving quality education in Africa, therefore, has to be done in tandem with better socio-economic management, which has, on the whole, been extremely weak. Quality education is further perceived to have an impact on a country’s economic growth. The relationship between measured labour force quality and economic growth is said to have even a much stronger influence than the impact of human capital and school quality on individual productivity and incomes. Economic growth determines how much improvement can occur in the overall standard of living of a society. More specifically, a more educated society may translate into higher rates of innovation, higher overall productivity through firms’ abilities to introduce new and better production methods, and a faster introduction of new technologies. In this regard, the recent industrialization in the tiger countries of South East Asia is living proof of the need for good quality education, which needs to be emulated by African countries. At both societal and individual levels, there is growing evidence to suggest that quality education as measured by test scores has an influence upon the speed with which societies can become richer and the extent to which individuals can improve their own productivity and incomes. It is also clear that years of education and acquisition of cognitive skills, particularly core skills of literacy and numeracy, have economic and social pay-offs with regard to income enhancement, improved productivity in both rural non-farm and urban environments and strengthened household behaviour and family life. This implies that the content of the curriculum is important, in the sense that school systems that do not impart literacy and numeracy would not be associated with these benefits, and those that do so more effectively, namely those that are of higher quality, are associated with larger incomes. Hence, differences in education quality can affect human behaviour in ways that facilitate the achievement of a wide range of human goals. Providing wide opportunities to improve quality of schooling will therefore facilitate change in behaviour. This would include increased access to education and retention in the school system. In order to discuss some measures to be taken to attain quality education, in all chapters, the book attempts a-state-of-the-art review of educational developments since the colonial period, with a stronger focus on the post-independence era in the Sub-Saharan Anglophone countries. Chapter 1 focuses on the purpose of colonialism and how it related to education, the pitfalls of decolonization and education, the influence of technical assistance on shaping educational policies in Africa, World Bank and IMF imposed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), and stagnation in educational quality and development. Chapter 2 discusses the concept and function of quality education and increasing international interest in issues of quality, while Chapter 3 focuses on early childhood care and education and how its quality needs to be improved. Chapter 4 discusses primary education with a focus on the curriculum, access and participation, international interest and issues of providing quality education. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the development of secondary education,

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structures and issues of quality. Chapter 6 discusses the establishment and growth of university education, role of university education and course programmes, access and participation, and challenges of university education. Chapter 7 focuses on the general low priority placed on teacher education by development agencies; evolution of poor quality teacher education; objectives of teacher education and teacher qualifications; and quality, relevance and efficiency of teacher education. Chapter 8 grapples with the concepts of adult education and adult literacy, literacy and development, goals and expectations of literacy programmes, some examples of national adult literacy programmes, access and participation, and quality and relevance. Chapter 9 attempts to define the concept of technical, vocational education and training (TVET) and its status in the colonial period, factors leading to its resurgence after independence, rationale and objectives of TVET, its forms, access and participation, quality and relevance.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A book of this magnitude on a topical subject of the “Challenge of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries” cannot be successfully written without the support and assistance of many individuals and institutions. What makes the support of some individuals and institutions highly appreciable and commendable is the fact that the study was undertaken within a context of very limited financial resources, with much of the contribution coming from the key researchers themselves. In this regard, we wish first and foremost to thank Kenyatta University and Hiroshima University, especially the Department of Educational Foundations and Center for the Study on International Cooperation in Education (CICE), respectively, which forged a link that has enabled researchers from the two institutions to carry out joint researches in a number of educational areas. This book is one of the products of their collaboration. The CICE resource unit/library played a great role in accessing useful educational materials for the authors to study and write the different chapters. We also wish to extend our profound appreciation to OWN and Associates: Centre for Research and Development for providing logistical and technical support, especially Dr. Okwach Abagi for his comments and suggestions. We also wish to thank Mr. David Ochien’g Abagi for his assistance in accessing some study materials. Without the prompt and timely assistance of Nova Science Publishers, the study would have remained one of the many unpublished works with limited circulation in the “ivory towers” of the university offices. In this regard, we wish to express our sincere and profound gratitude to Mr. Frank Columbus, the director of Nova Science Publishers, for taking a personal and professional interest in the study and to have it published for a much wider readership. However, individuals and institutions mentioned are not responsible for the views expressed in this book, as they solely remain that of the authors.

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Chapter 1

EDUCATIONAL POLICY TRENDS INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on the purpose of colonialism and how it related to education, the pitfalls of decolonization and education, the influence of technical assistance on shaping educational policies in Africa, World Bank and IMF imposed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and stagnation in educational quality and development.

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DECOLONISATION AND EDUCATION In the mid-nineteenth century, Africa changed phase from the Slave Trade to colonization by various European powers. The main reason for the shift was to establish what was commonly known as “legitimate commerce” for the benefit of those powers. This was vividly captured by the famous French historian, Victor Hugo, in the following statement: … Go forward, the nations! Grasp this land! Take it! From whom? From no one. Take this land from God! God gives the earth to men. God offers Africa to Europe. Take it! Where the kings brought war, bring concord! Take it for the cannon, but for the plough! Not for the saber, but for commerce! Not for the battle, but for industry. Not for conquest, but for fraternity! Pour out everything you have in this Africa, and at the same stroke solve your own social questions! Change your proletarians into property owners! Go on, do it! Make roads, make ports, make towns! Grow, cultivate, colonise… (Rist 1997).

To convince the French Chamber of Deputies to embrace colonialism as a policy in 1885, economic benefits were given considerable emphasis. It was argued: Colonial expansion follows an economic objective: “colonial policy is the daughter of industrial policy.” The continual growth of production and the accumulation of capital require new outlets, especially as international competition is intense and everyone has to increase their economic area… . Colonisation is necessary if France is to keep its place in the concert of nations and avoid the highroad to decay! If it withdraws into itself and refrains from colonization, other nations will do it instead, but in the name of less noble values and with less talent… (Rist 1997).

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Philanthropic reasons were also advanced to justify colonialism, but to a much lesser degree than the economic importance. The same reasons for colonialism can be read in the writings of the time by other European nations who were participants in the colonial adventure. On the basis of commercial motivations for colonization, it was abundantly clear from the outset that it was not to be carried out in the interest of the colonized people. Colonialism was, therefore, designed and operationalised to the exclusive benefit of the metropolitan states. The nature of the colonial economies and their supporting infrastructures attest to that fact. Colonial economies, in a large measure, consisted of cash crop production and extraction of forest products and minerals and other commodities that were processed in the metropole capitals, a process that has been continued to the present. No major industries were established in the colonies, and the infrastructure that existed mainly served the key economic centres. These types of economies did not expand to require a lot of labour, and the kind of labour needed was largely of unskilled nature, in which case, there was very little demand for education and training. With regard to the provision of education, available literature shows that most colonial powers were reluctant to offer education purely for the benefit of the colonized people. In fact, most colonial regimes were in a serious dilemma: whether or not education should be provided, and if it were to be provided, what form was it supposed to take? For example, at the time of colonization, in France, a large segment of the French population opposed education for Africans because they thought that the purpose of colonization was to satisfy the need for new markets for French industrial production and to be the source of cheap labour as well as cheap raw materials. Proponents of this view argued in favour of limiting schooling for Africans because they felt that “the more you educate individuals in this situation, the more they hate you” (Rist 1997). The general view, however, was that the educational programs for Africans should be limited and be given to a small elitist group. Along similar thinking, in Britain, for example, the Education Committee of the Privy Council, in its report in 1847, severely criticized what it called “a bookish type of education,” and instead advocated for “a strong vocational orientation,” which would lead to settled and thriving peasantry (Berman 1975). What should, however, be emphasized is that in talking about vocational education, the colonial school curriculum placed no premium on professions such as engineering, technology and allied subjects. Most often, the so-called vocational education carried a racial overtone, which stressed that Africans should be trained so that they would fulfil tasks appropriate to their presumed intellectual and social inferiority. Such ideas were well captured in Lord Frederick Lugard’s book the Dual Mandate, which was published in London in 1922. As the architect of the British empire in East and West Africa, Lugard’s view was that education in the African colonies should not only avoid a literary curriculum similar to that one offered in India, which had led to disenchantment with the empire, but was unsuitable to Africans due to inherent intellectual traits (Berman 1975). In short, therefore, colonial education was designed to serve the needs of the colonial state, and at no time were the aspirations of the Africans considered. Colonial schools functioned as part of an ideological state apparatus and were designed for capital reproduction and accumulation. In this regard, the educated labour in Africa consisted largely of low-level functionaries whose main task was to promote and maintain the status quo. The colonial powers did not only neglect education for their colonized population qualitatively, but quantitatively as well, because their main attitude was based on imperial self-interest.

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Educational Policy Trends

3

Consequently, the type of education provided was generally patchy, being of a selective nature, concentrating in particular areas and among certain interest groups to the utter neglect of others, since it was mainly guided by pragmatic reasons. It created very serious disparities between urban and rural areas as well as geographic and ethnic divisions in practically all the colonial states (Uchedu 1997). However, despite its fragmentary nature, Western education, as Coleman points out, was instrumental in the rise of nationalism and the subsequent achievement of independence in most African countries. It is noted:

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The introduction of modern educational system in colonial areas had significant political consequences. It was the single most important factor in the rise and spread of nationalist sentiment and activity. From the modern educational system emerged an indigenous elite which demanded the transfer of political power to itself on the basis of the political values of the Western liberal tradition or ethical imperatives of Christianity, both of which had been learned in the schools… . Designed essentially to serve only evangelizing or imperial purposes, Western education became a prime contributor to the emergence of new independent nations (Coleman 1965).

Since the early sixties, it has not been a subject of much contention that African independence, in a large measure, was perceived to have been a compromise between the colonial powers and the middle-class leadership of the nationalist movements (Fanon 1962). The former turned over the machinery of state to the latter, in turn for which the latter implicitly promised to hold in check the radical tendencies of the lower class protest and to leave basically intact the overall economic links with the former (Bassy 1999). This, in essence, meant the replacement of colonialism with neo-colonialism, which is a process whereby colonial powers still extend their influence and dominance over political and economic matters in Africa. Neo-colonialism eroded the prospect of genuine independence by strengthening the dependency of African states on their former colonial rulers to the mutual advantage and benefit of both the foreign powers and domestic partners. As a result of such ties, African political scientists argue that the African ruling elite has left unchecked the exploitative relationship that existed during colonialism. This means that African leaders are keen to subject their countries to European exploitation rather than work for the interests of their own people. It is further argued that what African leaders call nation building merely refers to political and administrative reforms aimed at experimenting with European political traditions and strengthening of the economic ties with the former colonial masters (Adekele 1997). The process by which most African countries in a large measure remain neo-colonial client states, therefore, requires no emphasis. The ruling elite still oversees economic structures that were set up in the colonial period, with very little or no change at all. What has often been referred to as economic expansion and growth has largely meant increasing cash crop production, mineral extraction and related economic activities. On the whole, there has been no meaningful industrialization and, hence, little diversification in the export trade, let alone processing their so-called raw materials before exporting them. A reliance on crude export of raw materials has meant that their external trade is subject to erratic international prices of demand for primary commodities (Rist 1997).

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The ruling elite having put itself in a position where it cannot effect change to alleviate the poverty of its people and thereby stem discontent, it devised different means of holding onto power indefinitely. These have included the shift from pluralism to centralization of power in the hands of a single party, which is grafted on the personalization of such power in the party leaders, who in turn become state presidents in the kind of divine right presidential doctrine (Tardoff 1991). Another strategy has been a scramble for power within the elite class through the illegal seizure of governments by military dictators, who advance dubious schemes aimed at promoting and advancing the interests of their groups. Among the commonest strategies, however, has been holding onto power through corrupt practices. Such corruption normally takes many forms, which include, among others; falsifying election results in which, quite often, losers are declared winners, and embezzlement of public funds by the ruling elite and their associates. It is now widely admitted that corruption is quite rife in the entire African body politic. As it has been recently observed, it is a matter of regret amounting to national calamities that, according to estimates, the amount of money held by African political leaders in foreign accounts is said to be equivalent to the size of the African external debt (Mafeje 1999). The education sector was not different from other sectors in the decolonization process. In the three decades of the post-colonial era, most African states either created or significantly expanded the network of public sector schools as an important means of addressing the socalled challenges of modernity and of meeting the requirements of participating in a global system of modern states. Conventional developmental wisdom in the West at the time when African countries achieved their independence admonished that “Education is the key that unlocks the door to modernization” (Harbison and Myers 1964). The logic upon which this wisdom rested was that education would offer Africans training so that they could find work in the newly created modern sector and thereby contribute to their countries’ prosperity. Consequently, each African state spent considerable human and financial resources to develop their public education systems (Boyle 1999). Apart from expanding their education systems, little or no effort was made to change the ethos and values of colonial education. As it has been pointed out: … Post colonial education in Black Africa is essentially a colonial legacy. After the overthrow of colonial regimes, colonial education systems in Africa were merely replaced by those which, although satisfying the aspirations of many educational reforms, conformed, to a large extent, to the system in the colonial country. It was the avowed policy of the colonial governments to make education in their dependencies similar to those at home as a means of depersonalizing the African and for paternalistic and assimilationist reasons. It was an attempt to limit the number of intermediate and top-level African cadres… (Moumouni 1968).

In this regard, apart from minor structural and organizational changes, very little has changed in the philosophy and curriculum content of African education. Therefore, both in principle and practice, African education has largely remained a colonial legacy. Some very meaningful changes were, however, tried with a degree of success by Guinea under Sekou Toure, by Tanzania during the time of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and by Mozambique in the time of Samora Machel. In the rest of most of the African countries, the colonial education values and ethos have remained intact, and in some cases attempts have even been made to parallel the French, Portuguese and English systems due to the nostalgia of

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having diplomas that are comparable in tone and content to those of France, Portugal and Britain. Education in Africa is, therefore, still designed after Western models and paradigms that have little connection to life in Africa. African institutions, particularly universities, still largely teach most subjects whose content is Euro-centric, with most of the textbooks imported from Europe and the United States, if they are affordable. Very little is generally taught about Africa based on African research (Bassy 1999). As in the colonial era, education is still perceived as the major determining factor for social mobility, because it is only through education that an individual can achieve higher occupational enhancement, high income, higher status and higher prestige. It is seen as the only avenue into the elite status, and educational policies are still designed to perpetuate this elitist perception. The African elite are, therefore, on the whole totally unwilling to effect educational changes that are likely to undermine their self interests. This attitude, like the colonial one, is derived from the notion that “peasant children should remain attached to the land” and should, therefore, only receive brief education that fits them for that purpose (Moumouni 1968).

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THE INFLUENCE OF DONOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE In the 1960s, when most African countries achieved their independence, the world was assumed to be divided between rich and poor countries or developed and undeveloped countries. The development of the poor countries was an “internationally” recognized objective of the developed countries for which they had a special responsibility. Such development in economic terms was to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor through economic growth by investment and financing, especially the transfer of expertise from developed to developing countries. Although social development was not explicitly stated, it was assumed that inequalities would eventually be reduced either as the benefits of growth trickled down to the poorest groups of society or through some kind of public appropriation of the means of production. In the African independent socio-economic setting, education became an object of intense effort and enthusiasm in the so-called decolonisation process due to the belief that it held the key to unlocking the door for Africa’s political and economic development. It was also perceived as the determinant of economic growth and, therefore, its relationship with political leadership and economic development was advocated. In the 1950s, for example, P. C. Lloyd initiated scholarly debates over the kind of modernity a highly educated African elite would bring to politics and society in the independent Africa, while J. Coleman provided regional experts with some theoretical foundations for their studies of the ways in which education and development were interrelated (Boyle 1999). It was on this basis that there was a rapid growth in certain aspects of education at the time most African countries achieved their independence. Consequently, a reasonable proportion of the populations enjoyed access to primary education and the benefits of functional literacy. The creation of state-wide systems of education in the region, despite the challenge it presented for educators and the burden it represented for state budgets, stood out as one of the principal developmental achievements of African governments in the post-

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independence era. However, apart from expanding the educational systems, little or no effort was made to change the ethos and values of colonial education. Education for human resource development and modernisation was an area that early on demonstrated the strong influence of the donor agencies and Western scholars during the dawn of independence and after in Africa. With the achievement of independence in most African countries by the early and mid-sixties, planners were guided by the human capital and modernization theories, which assumed that education was the most profitable form of investment not only to the society but also to the individual. Education was believed to contribute to economic growth by improving the quality of the labour force by giving qualified workers the skills and knowledge demanded by the modern sector of the economy; thus making these workers more productive including better standards of health and child care, reduced fertility rates and others. This perception, which was advocated largely by economists from Western industrialized countries and donor agencies, stemmed from the understanding that the lack of high- and middle-level human resource development was a major bottleneck to economic growth. Human resource planning was, therefore, a partial solution to this problem. To illustrate the efficacy of investment in formal education as being essential to high and sustained rates of economic growth, the experiences of the United States of America, Japan and, more recently, Korea were cited to support the causal link between education and growth (Simmons 1980). Apart from the human capital and modernisation theories, which lay behind the expansion of formal education during the early period of political independence in each African country, human resource planning was dictated by the need to provide local replacements of expatriate personnel. The provision of formal education, especially secondary education and higher education opportunities, had been a major political issue in the colonial period. In the eyes of the African nationalists, the colonial administration had deliberately suppressed the expansion of secondary and higher education, the two levels modelled on the Western education systems, in order to limit the number of Africans taking important jobs in the administrative or private sector. Donor agencies and Western expertise, as well as a combination of local personnel needs, were largely responsible for pushing for education for human resource development in Africa. The 1960s were designated as the First Development Decade by the United Nations. In the proposals for developing education during this particular decade, although the principle of universal primary education was recognized and targets set for its attainment in around 1980, priority was given to secondary and tertiary education. Educational planning, therefore, was to concentrate resources in the production of highly skilled human resource in response to the human resource and modernization theories. These ideals were also embraced by the international financing organizations, including the Special Fund component of the United Nations Development Programme and independent African governments. The Addis Ababa Conference of African Ministers of Education held from May 15 to 25, 1961, which sparked off the expansion of the formal education systems in Africa, and crystallised the donor and national perspectives on the development of education. The conference resulted from a decision taken by the General Conference of UNESCO at its fifth session to convene a conference of African states for the purpose of “establishing an inventory of educational needs and programme to meet those needs in the coming years.” The conference was held under the joint sponsorship of UNESCO and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The conference report stressed Africa's need for more and better educational opportunities and suggested that the substance of education be adapted to fit the era of independence. Although

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mention was made of the need for agricultural training and community development, emphasis was on more academic reform, such as the inclusion of African history and culture in the curriculum and the importance of meeting high-level manpower requirements of emerging nations. Greater urgency was however, assigned to secondary and post-secondary education rather than universal primary education, if for financial reasons the two were incompatible. Primary and adult education were to be developed at the same time, with the goal of achieving universality by 1980. There was need for massive financial commitment. In order to meet their needs, African nations would have to allocate increasing percentages of their national income to education. Massive amounts of external aid would be required as supplements, and the conference called on UNESCO, developed countries and non-governmental organizations to support and share in the implementation of the proposed plans. The Addis Ababa conference set a stage for educational development strategies in most independent African countries (UN Economic Commission for Africa/UNESCO 1961). Some examples of educational developments in a number of countries best illustrate this particular strategy. Kenya, perhaps, illustrates the education development trend adopted by most countries in the region. Immediately after independence in 1963, the Minister for Education appointed an education commission, commonly known as the Ominde Commission (named after the chairman of the commission) to survey the existing educational resources of Kenya and to advise the government in the formulation and implementation of national policies for education. On education and human resource development, the commission was influenced by the existing international opinion as well as internal political and socio-economic forces. A number of existing publications also had considerable impact on the commission’s approach to this problem, including the reports of the High Level Manpower Requirements and Resources in Kenya, 1964-1979, the Development Plan, 1964-1968, and the African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya. These publications had evolved a principle that identified a direct relationship between education and economic growth. It was noted that if education could produce the high- and middle-level manpower so badly needed by a developing country, then the pace of economic development in Kenya could be accelerated. Hence, while the commission endorsed the provision of free primary education as a valid educational policy objective, primary education was not as important in this respect as secondary, commercial, technical and higher education (Republic of Kenya 1965). A greater emphasis on primary education was not to be allowed to hinder economic growth in these other sectors. Following the recommendations of the commission, the independent government of Kenya, therefore, chose to place more emphasis on the expansion of higher levels of education, gearing them to the manpower needs of the modern economy (Tuqan 1976). Tanzania pursued a similar trend, especially during the first several years of its independence. Tanganyika’s Three Year Development Plan, 1961-1964, placed highest priority on secondary and higher education because of the “obvious economic benefits” that would accrue. Because it was assumed that “no direct economic benefits” flowed from primary school development, the plan stated that there would “not be an increase in the number of places available for children entering standard I”. The commitment to the production of high level manpower was reinforced by a number of developments. First, the government decided to adopt the manpower planning techniques pioneered by American economists, notably Frederick Harbison and Charles A. Myers in their book entitled, Education, Manpower and Economic Growth: Strategies of Human Resource Development (New York McGraw-Hill 1964), which were found to be pertinent to the country’s planning; second, through the request by the

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government in 1962, the Ford Foundation seconded a specialist to conduct a detailed study of the country’s middle- and high-level manpower requirements and means of meeting them. The report urged that “all possible emphasis should be given to the development of secondary and technical education for more students as fast as teachers and facilities become available”. The report strongly influenced the educational sections of the Five Year Development Pan 1964-1969 (United Republic of Tanzania 1965). Targets for secondary, technical and higher education were set, with the argument that “whereas there was a satisfactory percentage of young people benefiting from primary education, the percentage of young people benefiting from secondary or technical education was woefully inadequate for running the administrative and economic machinery of the country efficiently in the near future” (Morrison 1976). This order of priorities remained virtually unchallenged until after the Arusha Declaration in 1967. The new focus for the development process was formulated as the strategy of Socialism and Self-Reliance. Central to this strategy was Education for Self-Reliance of the same year, which placed emphasis on the rural sector development of the economy. The new strategy placed greater emphasis on primary and adult education, whose recurrent and development budget increased as that of secondary education dropped between 1966/67 and 1980/81 (Buchert 1994).

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STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMS (SAPS) AND EDUCATION In terms of socio-economic development, on the basis of strategies set by leading Western economists, the 1960s and part of 1970s were described as “the era of optimism” and coincided with the United Nations, “First and Second Development Decades.” The main driving force in technical assistance was the human and capital and modernization theories. On the basis of these theories, it was assumed that African countries emerging out of colonialism were poor because they lacked the necessary qualified human resources, by then referred to as “highly qualified manpower,” for both development and modernization, as already discussed in the previous section. In this context, education systems were expected to fulfil some key objectives. First was the technical objective of furnishing future human resource with requisite skills and knowledge, and second was the social objective of inculcating values that would enrich peoples’ lives and maintain cohesive productivity (Piper 1969). This approach treated economic growth as the principal goal of development and therefore stressed the potential of education in fostering the knowledge, values and skills necessary for productive activity, as had been the case with Western industrialized countries. Consequently, as demonstrated in the first development plans of independent countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania, considerable investments—over 10 percent of the national expenditures—went to education, especially in the expansion of secondary and tertiary education and resulted in an increased number of universities and student enrollments in practically all the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the 1960s and early 1970s, recognized as the “era of optimism,” all the indications were that for all the newly independent countries in Africa, there was no limit to their expectations and plans for reaching the set targets. Indeed, the optimism and aspirations were summarized in the statement of the late Julius K. Nyerere, the then-president of Tanzania, when he said, “we must run while they walk.” To achieve this end, there were massive resources by both the national governments and donor agencies invested in the human resource development, with much of it gone to secondary and tertiary education.

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The era of optimism ended with the oil shocks of the mid-1970s, and the end of the golden era of low unemployment and low inflation in the Northern economies, which, in turn, led to continued crisis throughout the 1980s. The origin of this crisis to African countries was, therefore, largely external, but exacerbated by their weak economies and dependent internal economies. However, the crisis was compounded by increasing high national expenditures on oil products brought about by the direct control of prices by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel and threats posed to international shipping lanes by the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arab countries. Many African countries responded by trying to borrow themselves out of the crisis, thereby digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt. The consequence was an unhealthy dependence on creditors and external agencies. The late 1970s ushered in an economic crisis that accelerated after 1980, and has left most African economies in serious disarray. Agriculture, which accounts for the largest share of goods produced, was hurt by the prolonged drought that affected much of the region, by marked deterioration in terms of trade (declining agricultural prices combined with rising energy prices), and by the continuation of national policies that discriminate against the sector. The investment rate in the region fell from more than 18 percent of income in the 1970s, to less than 15 percent in 1983. In reaction to the economic situations prevailing in the Northern and Southern countries, the donor community in the mid-1980s established structural adjustment programs as a recipe for the economic crises and macro-economic conditions for technical support. Fundamental restructuring then became the dominant discourse for both education and general development and has remained so for more than three decades. With pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, African governments embarked on microeconomic policy reforms. They reconstituted their exchange rate policies and instituted wage and salary reforms. These measures were part of the so-called Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) policy, which was preached as the most viable alternative development approach with its promises of revitalised markets and increased exports (World Bank 1993). This discourse was not just confined to economic structures, but also focused on the state provision of basic social services, which included health and education. Governments had also to reduce public spending on these services. The SAPs have become a source of considerable debate, although the general conclusions are that there is currently a lack of convincing theory for them as a model for development. Despite the logical elegance and power enshrined in the structural adjustment programs, they have failed to deliver on their promises for most of the African countries. Across the continent, the SAPs reforms have frequently either failed to recognize the political realities or have had such serious short-term costs that they have adjusted economies downwards rather than upwards (Leys 1995; Castells 1996; McGrath 1999; Yokozeki and Sawamura 1999). In practically all the SAPs countries, support for the social sector, especially health, education and related areas, have sharply declined as poverty has continued to grow. In response to the economic crisis at the international level, African countries and other developing countries, under the umbrella of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, encouraged by the broad ideals of the United Nations Charter, demanded alternatives to the existing patterns of economic and political relations, including new mechanisms of international economic regulation to ensure stable commodity prices and access to First World Markets, the redistribution of global wealth from North to South, and the transfer of global economic decision-making to the more democratic United Nations institutions. Their challenge culminated in the United Nations General Assembly resolution for a “New International Economic Order”

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(NIEO) in 1974 (Cox 1979; Mundy 1999). The United Nations, therefore, became the locus for increasingly vocal demands of transitional social movements as well as non-governmental organizations that were helping to open up economic and political avenues. The new trend also affected most of the United Nations agencies, especially the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). UNESCO had been created in 1945, and became a UN-specialised Agency for promoting education, which had emerged as an important component of the post-Second World War development. UNESCO, during its founding, was to be financed through weighted subscriptions and autonomously governed by the General Conference, in which member nations had equal voting rights. Its mandate included the promotion of the common welfare of humanity to universal right to education. This was in line with the post-War widespread consensus that compulsory mass education was a basic right and responsibility of the modern state. Western governmental and non-governmental organizations had converged around the notion of an international organization with the responsibility for promoting international educational cooperation. The organization was, therefore, given the task of acting as an international clearinghouse for educational information, a venue for non-governmental linkages and exchange as well as debate, and a provider of services and programmes to Member States (Mundy 1999; Courtney 1999). Developing countries, in particular, perceived UNESCO as an agency that should play a key role in the international equalization of educational opportunities, a position supported by the then-Soviet Union. Although Western countries, in principle, supported the ideals of UNESCO, they remained skeptical about committing resources needed for a broader program of “educational equalization,” especially to an organization increasingly marked by East-West tensions. They particularly resented the apparent support given to Third World countries’ issues by the Soviet bloc countries. As a matter of fact, by the mid-1960s, they had already started channelling resources for educational development bilaterally rather than through the multilateral bodies created under the United Nations (Mundy 1999). The newly poverty-oriented approaches of the 1970s, pushed by the Third World, were taken up in a variety of ways in the educational work of the UN multilateral organizations. UNESCO, the most universal and democratic of the UN organizations, struggled in vain to translate majority support for a “New International Economic Order” into a common educational vision, and that became its undoing. Consequently, UNESCO experienced a serious decline in support and funding for the later part of the 1970s and during the 1980s, culminating in the USA’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO in 1984, followed by the UK and Singapore in 1985 (Marchand 1994). It was not lost to any serious-thinking African that the three countries decided to withdraw from UNESCO when its Director-General, M. M’bow, was an African from Senegal and his appointment had heavily been opposed by the USA and UK. Ironically, at the time of their withdrawal, most of the staff at UNESCO headquarters were Americans and Britons, and therefore supported by financial contributions from other member countries. This did not, however, seem to be a key issue for these countries. Third World countries’ use of the UN as a forum to call for a “New International Economic Order” from the early 1970s shifted the focus of international decision-making. Since then, the central decision-making about the world economy became more firmly entrenched in the institutions, in which neither developing countries nor popular non-state actors were represented. These included the G7, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Within these predominantly Northern institutions, a new vision of “World Order” was born and steadily spread among OECD countries. The vision

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argued for limited state intervention and saw unhampered global market as the most efficient arbiter of resources and guarantor of growth, an ideology pushed by the then-president of the United States, Ronald Reagan and prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher. This ideology was further strengthened by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which marked the end of viable alternatives to Western capitalist development, and the erosion of a central argument for development assistance (Griffin 1991; Gill 1994; Mundy 1999). The OECD, in particular, became a very prominent forum for the discussion and reform in the North during the 1980s. In education, it displaced UNESCO as the central forum for educational policy coordination for the advanced capitalist countries, and was now the main provider of cross-national statistics and research in the North. Its central focus has been on how to adjust education to changing economic requirements in the context of stagnating budgets; and in recent years, its work has been profoundly shaped by the emphasis of the USA on privatization, choice, standards and cross-national testing, issues that reflect the main broad educational agenda in that country and that, through the World Bank and related agencies, has become a world-wide agenda for educational development (Carnoy 1995). The World Bank took advantage of the OECD’s neo-liberal discourse on education support to create a strong and centralized mechanism for setting and implementing international education policies, especially in Third World countries. Unlike UNESCO, its interventions were offered through loans and not grants. It regarded itself as the champion of the neo-liberal discourse on behalf of the wider development community. By the late 1980s, it had articulated a convincing rationale for expanding educational lending, supported by what it claimed was a decade of research, showing strong linkages between basic education and agricultural productivity, wages, health and child welfare, and a coherent framework for financing improvements in educational quality and efficiency in line with the neo-liberal approach to the public sector reform (World Bank 1986). The World Bank strategies are remarkably close to the defensive and disciplinary approaches to the educational reform discourse among the advanced capitalist countries, which emphasise the more efficient use of educational inputs, such as teachers, textbooks and others. There is also the introduction of privatization as a choice to increase efficiency, the greater reliance on cost-sharing through parent and community participation, and a shift of resources from higher to primary education (Carnoy 1995). This emphasis, in great measure, ended the provision of grant-based forms of development cooperation delivered through a multilateral organization, democratically accountable to sovereign member states like the UNESCO. It also raised the World Bank from not only being the largest financier of educational development, but to also being its most powerful ideologue and regulator (Wendy 1999). As the chief ideologue and regulator of the neo-liberal reorganization of educational and other forms of aid, the World Bank has been elevated to unassailable position from which it does not only pose a threat to sovereign states, but to individuals as well. As it has been pointed out, “it is the World Bankdonor analysis and prescriptions that dominate the ideological realm. It also has so much human and financial resources at its command that challenging it is an uphill task” (Bock-Utne 2000). The World Bank’s threat to individuals is clearly demonstrated by the behaviour of most academic researchers. This is largely because most of them are unable to live on their regular wages as to be able to take decisions and write from the Third World perspective in general and Africa in particular. Their salaries are generally meagre, thus opening them to the temptation of being bought by donor organizations. To survive, they more often exercise a type of self censorship in their scholarship and end up writing what the donors would like to hear. They are

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socialized in particular jargons that donors have identified (Brock-Utne 2000). It is, therefore, not surprising that Third World consultants have unquestioningly imbibed such jargons as “accountability,” “transparency,” and the like to make their reports acceptable to the donor community. In this particular regard, the World Bank is notorious for ascertaining that its own sources that support a given viewpoint are availed and cited by its contracted consultants. Such viewpoints are not generally in the interest of Third World development.

AFRICAN RESPONSE TO STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMS

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In reaction to trends in the structural development programs, in 1980, the African countries evolved the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA), which drew up the Africa’s Priority Program for Recovery, and the UN Program of Action for Recovery and Development. These were aimed at restructuring and transforming African economies towards long-term self-reliance and selfsustaining development. The document was adopted by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and subsequently in 1989, by the UN General Assembly as the African Alternative Framework by a vote of 137 countries, with only the USA voting against it (Odora-Hoppers 1999). In another effort, the socio-economic distortions by the World Bank/UNDP report on Africa’s Adjustment and Growth in the 1980s, which in effect obliged African governments to implement the structural adjustment programs, mobilized a response through the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), which produced a critique of the report, entitled, African Alternatives to Structural Adjustment Programs: A Framework Transformation and Recovery in 1989 (Odora-Hoppers 1999). The two African initiatives were ignored by the World Bank and the IMF, which continued with “business as usual,” adopting orthodox SAPs with their overriding concerns about fiscal and financial balances and external equilibrium. As Adedeji pointed out, … there was a refusal of the donors, particularly the Bretton Woods institutions, to accept and support Africa’s perception of their own development objectives and strategies. Instead, the institutions proposed their own strategies for a development path, they thought would be good for Africa… . Long term developmental objectives were put on hold. In their place were devised SAPs, by the Bretton Woods institutions, which these countries were required to adopt if they were to qualify for external support and, in particular, have access to the desperately needed foreign exchange… (Adedeji 1995).

Consequent to the rejection of the African initiatives, the World Bank/IMF now virtually defined and controlled the development of most African countries, and education is one of the sectors that had fallen under such control. The World Bank has assumed the duty and responsibility to guide and direct policies, projects and programs in education. As it has rightly been pointed out, “all donors, including the Nordic countries, seem to agree to have their policies coordinated and directed by the thinking of the World Bank” (Brock-Utne 2000). This has meant an end to all possibilities of any external aid to education in Africa without the acceptance of the World Bank/IMF axis and conditionalities. Previously, some bilateral donor organizations, particularly the Nordic countries, had rescued a number of African countries from the tough conditionalities of the World Bank/IMF, like the

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introduction of school fees, privatizing secondary schools or cost-sharing in higher education. These conditions were seen to be not only unfavourable for African development, but also against the policies of independent bilateral donor organizations (Tenga 1999). With an all-encompassing mandate of the Western powers, especially the United States, the World Bank/IMF are now the key players in the African educational scene. They are the architects of the different policy documents related to education reform, as well as sponsorships of research, policy evaluation, organization of conferences, seminars and workshops. There are very few, if any, education sector policy documents that originate from the Education Ministries of respective African governments. Such World Bank education sector papers directly influence the education policies of the countries that are recipient of loans from the Bank or any other bilateral donors of the industrialized countries. For example, it is quite common to find the Bank or donor agency specifying what the loan or grant should be used for. Consequently, in an effort to benefit from the multilateral and bilateral donor support, most of the African governments have had to shift their education policies in order to accommodate the Bank’s demands. The Bank on its own, and also in conjunction with other donor agencies with interest in African education, commission studies as well as sponsoring various research and evaluation projects in the education sector that become key to policy formulations. As a result, sources of data outside the Bank’s domain have often been totally ignored. Because of its immense financial resources, the Bank is capable of distributing its policy documents widely in order to influence decision makers and various interest groups in education, such as universities and NGOs (Tenga 1999). As a result of the current socio-economic environment, despite the widely publicized claims of the benefits of the World Bank/IMF initiated SAPs, the repercussions on the allocation of both public and private resources to education have been more than obvious. The Bank’s restrictions on educational expenditures, coupled with the on-going economic crisis, have crippled most of the African governments’ ability to provide education for their people. As will be discussed in the subsequent chapters, this is reflected in falling gross enrollment ratios (GERs) and wastage rates in basic education in practically all the African countries. There is an acute shortage of teaching materials and textbooks at all the levels of the education systems, deteriorating physical structures and facilities, declining research capacity in higher education, difficulties in payment of teachers’ salaries, students’ allowances and others. On the overall, as Africa moved into the Twenty-First Century, a period of forty years or so of independence, most of the African countries had still not achieved the promised economic, social and political self-sufficiency that pioneers of decolonization had anticipated. Despite the developed countries with their “massive investment” through aid, there was very little to show. In many parts of the continent, the gains made following decolonization have disappeared, resulting in economic and social stagnation and in some cases even disintegration through civil strife. As reported by the World Bank, countries of Sub-Saharan Africa experienced an annual decline of 2.9 percent in the per capita income from 1980 to 1987 (World Bank 1988). Constant tragedies, which form frequent readings of the Western popular press, famine, outbreak of diseases, coup d’etats, dictatorships and others are all said to contribute to what has come to be known as the “donor fatigue.” The sensitivity of the rich has become numb to the television-portrayed tragedies in Africa (Elu and Banya 1999). What is often inadequately addressed are the economic benefits that accrue to industrialized countries through the current technical assistance arrangements, with trade imbalances,

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unstable commodity prices, and economic policy conditionalities that hardly favour less industrialized countries.

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS This chapter has attempted an overview of the development of education in Sub-Saharan Africa from the colonial period to the present. It was first and foremost established that colonialism was not a development process, but a very strong mechanism of exploitation. Consequently, colonial education was designed and implemented to serve the needs of the colonial state. African interests and aspirations were never put into serious consideration; hence, schools functioned as part of an ideological state apparatus for capital reproduction and accumulation. The so-called independence failed to alter the colonial state arrangements, with education continuing along the Western models and paradigms that have no relevance to African needs and aspirations. As in the colonial era, education is still perceived as the major determining factor for social mobility, because it is only through it that an individual can achieve higher occupational enhancement, high income, higher status and higher prestige. It is seen as the only avenue into the elite status, and educational policies are still designed to perpetuate this elitist perception. The African governments’ failure to reconstruct their educational systems to respond to their immediate problems has been compounded by their heavy reliance on technical assistance. Technical assistance has by and large shaped the African countries’ educational agenda, which began with education for human resource development at independence to the present pathetic situation in which the donor community, under the control of the World Bank and IMF, formulate and supervise the implementation of educational policies in Africa. As a result of the current socio-economic environment, despite the widely publicized claims of the benefits of the World Bank/IMF initiated SAPs, their repercussions on the allocation of both public and private resources to education have been more than obvious. The Bank’s restrictions on educational expenditures, coupled with the on-going economic crisis, have crippled most of the African governments’ ability to provide quality education for their people.

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Chapter 2

CONCEPT AND FUNCTION OF QUALITY EDUCATION

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INTRODUCTION During the 1970s and 1980s, most policymakers concerned with education in developing countries limited their attention to school access or enrollments. Over the years, however, it became clear that access to school was not sufficient to ensure a decent level of basic learning. While the gains in enrollment had been quite impressive in many parts of the world, including the Sub-Saharan African region, low quality and high dropout rates led to the perception that many of the children left school without having obtained a sustainable level of basic reading, writing and numeracy skills. The rising concern with education quality was strongly reflected in the protocols of the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, and the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. It was perceived that ensuring education quality is a necessary complement to educational access, and hence, quantity and quality had to go hand in hand. This chapter focuses on the educational traditions and notions of quality and its concept, the framework for monitoring it, its function and international interest in the issues of quality education.

EDUCATION TRADITIONS AND NOTIONS OF QUALITY Quality education is a relative concept. Educators who seek particular defined outcomes tend to rate it in those terms and will rank educational institutions according to the extent to which their graduates meet those outcomes. The standard of comparison would be in some sense fixed and different from the values, wishes and opinions of the learners themselves. By contrast, there are approaches that emphasise the perceptions, experiences and needs of those involved in the learning experience and should mainly determine its quality. These different emphases have deep roots and are reflected in the major traditions of the development Western educational thought. This section will highlight some of the traditions. Among the major traditions is the humanist approach, which is influenced by the educational thought of leading Western philosophers. In their perception, human nature is essentially good and individual behaviour is autonomous. These principles have had some relevance on the educational practice, where learners are expected to be at the centre of the

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learning process. A type of education that is strongly influenced by the learner’s action is judged to be central to developing the potential of the individual child. The acquisition of knowledge and skills requires an active participation of the individual learner. Quality in the humanist approach to education rejects standardized, prescribed and externally defined or controlled curricula, as they are seen as undermining the chances of learners to construct their own meaning and for educational programs to remain responsive to individual learners’ circumstances and needs. The teacher’s role in the humanist approach is one of being a facilitator rather than an instructor. Assessment is accepted, but its role is to give learners information and feedback about the quality of their individual learning. Self-assessment and peer assessment are welcomed as ways of developing a deeper awareness of learning (Curtis and Boultwood 1968; UNESCO 2004). Another important tradition is the behaviourist approach, which was based on behaviourist theories of Skinner and Pavlov and advanced by leading curricula specialists like Tyler (1949) and Bloom (1964), who set out educational objectives against which finely tuned instruments could be developed. The behaviourist approach is based on manipulation of behaviour through specific stimuli. This is a process by which a subject is conditioned to respond to an external stimulus. Its basic characteristics are that learners are not intrinsically motivated or able to construct meaning for themselves, and human behaviour can be predicted and controlled through reward and punishment. Cognition is based on the shaping of behaviour; and deductive and didactic pedagogies, such as graded tasks and rote learning and memorization are helpful. Quality in the behaviourist sense is judged through standardized, externally defined and controlled curricula, based on prescribed objectives and defined independently of the learner, and tests and examinations are considered central features of learning and the main means of planning and delivering rewards and punishments. Assessment is seen as an objective measurement of learned behaviour against preset assessment criteria. The teacher directs learning, as an expert who controls stimuli and incremental learning tasks that reinforce desired associations in the mind of the learner are favoured (Curtis and Boultwood 1968; UNESCO 2004). The third traditional thought is that of the critical approach, which encompasses a large array of philosophers and sociologists as well as the de-schoolers, who have critiqued both the humanist and behaviourist approaches. Early sociologists, for example, perceived society as a system of interrelated parts, with order and stability maintained by commonly held values; hence, the role of education is to transmit these values. Quality in this approach would be measured by effectiveness of the processes of value transmission. While sociologists of the 1970s and 1980s focused their criticisms on the role of the curriculum as a social and political means of transmitting power and knowledge, Neo-Marxists, for their part, characterized education in capitalist societies as the main mechanism for legitimizing and reproducing social inequality. De-schoolers, for their part called for the abandonment of schooling in favour of more community-organised forms of formal education. Although the critical approach has embraced a large philosophical thought, they share a common concern that education tends to reproduce the structures of social inequalities of the wider society. For example, they question the belief that universal schooling will result automatically in equal development of learners’ potential. They, therefore, advocate for emancipatory pedagogy, which should empower marginalized students by helping them analyse their experience and in that way redresses social inequality and injustice.

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Critical pedagogy is, therefore, emancipatory in the sense that it lets students find their own voices, frees them from externally defined needs and helps them explore alternative ways of thinking that may have been buried under the dominant norms (Freire 1985; Giroux, 1993; McLaren 1994). The critical approach, therefore, focuses on inequality in access to and outcomes of education and on the role of education in legitimizing and reproducing social structures through its transmission of certain type of knowledge that serves certain social groups. According to these critics, good quality is equated with education that promotes social change; a curriculum and teaching techniques that encourage critical analysis of social power relations and ways in which formal knowledge is produced and transmitted; and active participation by learners in the design of their own learning experience (UNESCO 2004). In less industrialized or developing countries, some important efforts have been made to articulate alternative development paradigms that are rooted in the realities of their socioeconomic and political settings, which arise as challenges to the legacies of colonialism and underdevelopment and which apply to the different spheres of development including education. Some leading examples were the development ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and Julius Nyerere. Ujamaa or Socialism as was advocated in the Arusha Declaration and Education for Self-Reliance in Tanzania, for example, set out an indigenous approach to education, which placed emphasis on a culturally relevant system of education that aimed at preserving and transmitting traditional values, promoting self reliance, fostering cooperation and equality (Nyerere 1973). The indigenous approaches challenge the Euro-centric knowledge, images, ideas, values and beliefs reflected in the mainstream curricula. Quality as perceived in the indigenous approach reasserts the importance of a type of education that is relevant to the socio-cultural settings of the learner and focuses on key principles that include mainstream approaches imported from the West that are not necessarily relevant in very different social and economic settings and assuring relevance, which implies local design of curricula content, methods and assessment. All learners are said to have rich sources of prior knowledge, accumulated through a variety of experiences, which educators should draw out and nourish. Learners should play a role in defining their own curriculum, and learning should move beyond the boundaries of the classroom and school through non-formal and lifelong learning activities of the community (UNESCO 2004).

THE CONCEPT OF EDUCATION QUALITY In studies of quality and equality issues in education in third world countries, it is pointed out that there is as yet no consensus on the definition of the term “quality.” More importantly, notions of quality change over time and are tied to societal values. Another important point that has been raised relates to the relative paucity of meaningful data that could provide indicators of quality. Equally alarming is the failure of conventional, economic measures of educational quality, which adequately capture the experiences of millions of children and adults who are unable to experience formal schooling. These individuals very often belong to the most disadvantaged groups in society, such as women, rural dwellers and the poor (Welch 2000). For many people, casual and expert observers, political authorities, parents and communities, teachers and education administrators, “education quality” is defined by

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national examinations. In their role of measuring quality, they actually specify what it is that they want. The logic of such an orientation is quite straightforward. To them education systems set objectives, and those objectives are then operationalised in the curriculum and teachers’ guides. The mastery of the curriculum is measured by national examinations. Hence, the best indicator of high quality education is a high score on the national examinations. When students perform well on national examinations, then it is reasonable to conclude that they have had a high quality education (Samoff 2007). In this regard, when families see that the poor quality of schooling will not provide their children with the skills or diplomas they are sent to acquire, they stop sending their children to school. However, the focus on examination results, especially in developing countries, can be detrimental to the quality of teaching and learning, as teachers tend to rely on rote teaching and learning to prepare children for the tests (O’Sullivan 2006). Many studies continue to show that efforts to engage with quality are fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is a consideration of what quality is. Equally problematic are efforts to effectively achieve, improve and measure quality. Consequently, as much as it is written about quality, a reading of the literature can be quite confusing, as numerous and conflicting definitions of quality are presented, depending on how the term is conceptualized. The normative nature of the concept provides some explanation for this particular situation. As Motola (2001) points out, “debates in the international literature faces the difficulty in finding a definition of quality that would apply to all situations.” There are for example, educators whose conceptualisation of quality is grounded in a competency approach, where quality is the effectiveness of the degree to which objectives are met or described levels of competence are achieved (Adams 1993). This definition is useful, but what is crucial to its effectiveness are the actual competencies that are used and how their achievement is measured. There are also some educators who argue that the concept of quality is elusive because its content depends upon how we choose to define our preferred outcomes of schooling. It is, however, noted that common to all education systems is the objective of improving the cognitive achievement of pupils. Furthermore, all nations also wish to help create, through education, better citizens, namely, people who can support and help strengthen the values that the particular society holds dear. The former objective is universal in form and content. The latter objective is not, which means that cross-national comparison of the quality of education is only partly possible. Such an endeavour has historically focused upon comparing the performance of school leavers in national or international tests of cognitive achievement. By implication, those school systems with leavers who consistently score highly on such tests are taken to be of a higher quality than those having leavers who typically do less well. Nevertheless, there are many assumptions made here which are quite problematic. The basic problem is that such tests are often not able to measure, or take into account, the non-school factors that influence academic achievement. There are, for example, factors that are ignored in the selection, such as whether the socioeconomic background of students in different schools is similar or the income levels of the localities chosen are comparable. These and related factors have considerable influence if cognitive outcome differences that are attributed to school-level variables have to be considered (Colclough 2005). In addition, there are educators who define quality within a contextual setting. A contextual definition or conceptualization of quality education can address the problems associated with the normative nature of the concept. In this regard, quality is grounded in the

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cultural traditions, social relations and economic and political life of the people. Quality education, in this context, is unique to each nation and culture. A notable Minister of Higher Education, Training and Employment Creation in Namibia is quoted to have aptly described that the notion of “quality and standards should be measured in relation to the context and environment in which education is located” (O’Sullivan 2006). What is most critical to a contextual definition is the type of teaching and learning that is feasible within the microcontexts of education, namely, the realities at school level within which teachers work, such as variable resources, professional capacity of the teachers and so on (O’Sullivan 2006). In a contextual definition, one cannot effectively judge the quality of education in a school without reference to its setting. Contextual factors, macro and micro, should guide the articulation of quality. There are also educators who postulate that a major definitional problem is that quality is not a system element like teachers, school books, pupils or classrooms. Quality is an attribute of any element that can vary according to at least one aspect or dimension. Since any element has a number of potential quality dimensions, perceived quality is subject to socio-cultural valuation. Furthermore, since education is a subsystem of human action, the definition of its quality will have to take its systemic nature into account. It might be useful, therefore, to break it down into components. There could be competing or complementing definitions of the quality of education, depending upon which components one chooses to emphasise. Education quality is the quality of the system components, and overall quality hence depends on the quality of these components (Bergmann 1996). The literature on the definition of education quality is quite massive and holds different and contradictory positions, which is not possible to summarise here. What seems clear, however, is that while it has become increasingly popular in the discourse of education, especially in the less industrialized countries, there is little consensus on what it means nor is there a universal valid way of measuring it (Lowe and Instance 1989; Smith 1997). As already discussed, there are scholars who have described the quality of education in terms of the extent to which, and the manner in which, aims and functions of education are achieved. Aims are the anticipated effects of learning, and functions refer to what schools are expected to accomplish (Vedder 1994). The notion of quality is, therefore, relative. It changes over time and differs geographically due to variations of aims, functions and the means to realize them. In this regard, the quality of education is linked to people and how they perceive education (Rissom 1992). As a multi-faceted concept, most definitions highlight the different elements of the basic input-process-output model that commonly underpins education research and policy analysis (UNESCO 2002). Here, quality is associated with the view that efficiency in the school system refers to a ratio between inputs and outputs. In this regard, a more efficient system obtains more output for a given set of resource inputs, or achieves comparable levels of output for fewer inputs, other things being equal. The output of education refers to that portion of student growth or development that can be reasonably attributed to specific educational experiences (Lockheed and Hanushek 1988; Stephens 1997). Each of these aspects is turn made up of a number of variable elements. There is an additional aspect, of a more general nature, which brings the socio-cultural values of a society into play, namely, the quality of the overall goals and objectives of the education system. This is normally value quality of education, which is the degree to which the overall goals of the education system

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relate to a society’s dominant value system (Bergmann 1996). These are usually difficult to quantify. In the analysis of indicators of educational quality, there are a number of internationally recognised indicators of quality that are highlighted in the substantial body of literature, which attempts to determine the appropriate school quality inputs required to boost student achievement. For example, Torres (2003) highlighted the World Bank’s reliance on nine indicators of quality in primary education. In her review, priority indicators according to the World Bank were in the following order: (1) libraries; (2) instructional time; (3) homework; (4) textbooks; (5) teacher subject knowledge; (6) teacher experience; (7) laboratories; (8) teacher salaries; and (9) class size. It is generally perceived that school improvement focused on input and process quality measures, especially on the learning end, is likely in principle to have the effect of improving output quality, namely, student achievement since students are able to better master the curricular content that is mandated for each grade (N’tchouganSonou 2001). The World Bank tends to equate quality with efficiency in attaining school outputs. It utilises school achievement (cognitive achievement of pupils or efficiency of output compared to inputs) to measure quality (Psacharopoulos 1981; Heynemann and Loxley 1983). Its position on the strong relationship between students’ cognitive achievement and the provision of inputs features highly in its sponsored study by Lockheed and Verspoor, Improving Primary Education in Developing Countries, in which it is stressed that “the achieving of the correct mix of inputs will bring about the desired outputs” (Lockheed and Verspoor 1991). It identified five major in-school areas for improving the quality of education. These included improving curriculum; increasing learning materials; increasing instructional time; improving teaching; and increasing the capacity of students. In general terms, research on inputs has focused on materials such as textbooks, desks, and blackboards, as well as teachers and students. The quality of these inputs is often measured quantitatively or through characteristics such as the qualification of teachers, textbook relevance and students’ intellectual and nutritional status. The outputs include proxies of achievement (promotion and completion rates) as well as measures of actual achievement, which include the kinds and quantity of facts and skills learned. The output characteristics of quality education is therefore the quality of student achievement, and it is the amount and degree or perfection of learning according to the various levels of intellectual achievement, from recall to application and creative innovation. A minimum level of quality is a full functional literacy and a good mastery of basic mathematical operations, including the capacity to apply them to simple everyday problems (Bergmann 1996). In the World Bank’s study on Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank 1988), it is noted that when an attempt is made to measure output as a direct indicator of quality, the most common approach is to concentrate on the scores of cognitive achievement. It is emphasized that such an approach makes sense to the extent that enhancing cognitive achievement is prominent among educational goals and contributes centrally to a student’s ultimate productivity. Citing results of tests carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), it was concluded that the quality of education in Sub-Saharan Africa is well below world standards. One explanation for this low quality was that expenditure per student, a highly aggregated proxy for educational inputs, was very low by world standards. Per student expenditure in African education was not only low but was declining. The combination of essentially constant budgets since 1980, and

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rapidly expanding enrollments had made the financing of education’s recurrent costs ever more difficult (World Bank 1988). In the process factors, emphasis is placed upon the experience and the complex processes that interact in the daily delivery of education. The extent to which inputs can improve quality is directly related to the extent to which teachers effectively use them to improve the teaching and learning process. The process quality is, therefore, the quality of the teacher-pupil interaction in the teaching-learning process. It means the use of teaching approaches suited to the given situation such that pupils’ opportunities to learn are optimized. Normally, if classroom conditions permit, it means pupil-centred methods of instruction, a full mastery of the lesson content by the teacher, a calm and “orderly” learning environment, and availability of the basic materials needed for pupil activities and exercises. It also means error-free and relevant teaching content as much as the absence of fear among pupils. The quality of the teaching and learning process depends on the quality of the curriculum, of its contents, methods and manner of implementation. The quality of curriculum implementation depends, in turn, on the teaching and learning materials, the working conditions, and the pedagogical skills of the teachers, the total instructional time, and on the importance assigned to quality by the key stakeholders. These factors depend, to a large extent, on the control exercised by the school and the parents themselves (Bergmann 1996). In terms of input-process-output measures of quality, it is generally believed that intervening at the school and classroom levels is crucial in raising the quality of primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa as, ultimately, educational quality is obtained through pedagogical processes in the classroom where knowledge, skills, dispositions are acquired (Anderson 2002; Verspoor 2003). Therefore, managing the quality of classroom interaction is seen as the single most important factor in improving the quality of teaching and learning, particularly in contexts where learning resources and teacher training are limited. There is, however, generally a paucity of data in Sub-Saharan Africa into how teachers actually teach in the classroom and the impact they have on children’s learning. The comparatively few studies that have been carried out show a teacher-dominated discourse. Many show that teacher-pupil interaction often takes the form of lengthy recitations made up of teacher explanation and questions, and brief answers by individual pupils or the whole class. Attempts to change the teacher-centred, lecture-driven pedagogy, which places pupils in a passive role and limits their learning to memorizing facts and reciting them back to the teacher, appear to have had very little impact on classroom practice (Anderson 2002; O’Sullivan 2004). Although the input-process-output model has been used in most studies of quality education, there have been some key and important challenges to its operation. It is noted that while current theory suggests that the effects of schooling are mainly attributable to improved cognitive competencies as typically measured by standardized test scores, common sense and experience suggest that schools produce many other individual attributes, in addition to cognitive competencies, that can influence subsequent schooling outcomes, later success in the labour market and other nonmarket outcomes (Lloyd et al. 2003). It is acknowledged that school effectiveness/quality studies have gone a long way toward identifying the key dimensions of the educational production processes that have potential implications for the development of cognitive competencies and in measuring their statistical impact on the performance in various types of standardized tests. Such studies, which necessarily must confine themselves to students who are enrolled in school, have mainly measured the direct

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effects of school quality on student achievement and largely neglected the indirect effects that operate through school quality on entry, retention and, ultimately, grade attainment. These approaches are, therefore, better suited to measuring school effectiveness in settings where the age of school entry is uniform, where enrollment is near universal, and where attrition between grades is relatively minor. In many poor countries of the world, particularly in SubSaharan Africa, these conditions do not apply (Lloyd et al. 2000). The potential importance of this point is ably underscored by the research of Glewwe and Jacoby (1994) in Ghana, which demonstrated that improvements in material resources, such as repairing a leaking roof or providing more textbooks, affect test scores directly through their effects on the learning improvement and indirectly through their effects on retention. Studies that largely focus on aspects of schooling that directly relate to the development of cognitive competencies, ignoring those which are conducive to encourage initial enrollment and retention in the analysis of educational quality, seriously underestimate the importance accorded to the issue of years of schooling in development and population literatures. For example, the completion of primary school has been associated not only with large economic returns, but also with many social returns including, in the case of women, lower fertility, lower infant and child mortality, better child health and education, reductions in gender inequality within the family and later ages of marriage (Lloyd et al. 2000). It is asserted that in an early phase of a country’s economic and educational development, school effectiveness is likely to depend more heavily on those factors that encourage attendance and retention than on those factors more directly linked to the development of cognitive competencies. This is because children would not have sufficient exposure to schooling to achieve even the minimal cognitive goals set out in most national education plans for basic schooling without initial enrollment and steady attendance at a basic level. At later phases of educational development, when almost all the children complete basic schooling, factors enhancing standardised test scores per grade attended become central elements of school effectiveness. In this regard, in developing countries where enrollment is not yet universal or where repetition and dropout rates are substantial during the primary years, an approach to measuring school quality that is limited to factors affecting the test scores of students who remain in school misses a very important point (Lloyd et al. 2000). In addition, sex differences in school enrollment often emerge during teenage years, suggesting that school quality, particularly those aspects affecting retention, may also have a gender dimension. In which case, it is not only critical to identify what school factors affect enrollment and retention more generally, it is also important to determine which ones matter more for girls and which ones matter more for boys. This is because boys and girls may have different experiences in the same school as a result of differences in curricular opportunities within the school; differences in treatment by individual teachers; and differences in rules, regulations and administrative practices. Furthermore, even if the school environment is the same for both boys and girls, gender differences in school outcomes could occur if particular aspects of that environment have a differential impact on the retention of boys and girls (Lloyd et al. 2000).

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FRAMEWORK FOR MONITORING AND IMPROVING QUALITY EDUCATION

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Considering the diversity in the understanding and interpretation of quality education as already discussed, developing approaches for monitoring and improving it is still a very difficult task. However, from the traditions underlying it and the different conceptualizations, it is clear that cognitive development and accumulation of particular values, attitudes and skills are important objectives of education systems in most societies. Their content may differ, but their broad structure is perceived to be similar throughout the world. This implies that key to improving the quality of education to help education systems achieve these objectives could be similar (UNESCO 2004). Although the number of factors that do affect educational outcomes is quite vast, making it difficult to easily determine the relationships between the conditions of education and its products, it helps to begin thinking about the main elements and how they interact. In this regard, UNESCO has attempted to characterize the central dimensions that influence the core teaching and learning process as follows: Learner characteristics: It is noted that how people learn is strongly influenced by their capacities and experience and any assessment of quality of education that ignores initial differences among learners is likely to be misleading. Such characteristics include socio-economic background, health, cultural and religious background, nature of prior learning, gender, disability, ethnicity, race and others. Context: Although education and society tend to influence each other, education normally reflects the society in which it is offered in terms of values and attitudes, as well as material provision. The national policies for education also provide an important context, especially goals and standards, curricula and teacher policies that provide the enabling environment within which education takes place. There are international aid strategies that are also influential in most developing countries. Enabling inputs: The success of teaching and learning is likely to be strongly influenced by availability of resources to support it and the way resources are managed. Inputs are critical in enhancing the teaching and learning process and, in turn, affect the range and type of outputs. The main input variables are material and human and the governance of these resources. Material resources include textbooks and other learning materials, classrooms, libraries, school facilities and other infrastructure. Human resources include teachers, especially teacher/pupil ratio, teacher salaries, managers, administrators, support staff, supervisors and inspectors. School governance relates to ways in which the school is organized and managed. Some important factors that impact on teaching and learning include strong leadership, a safe and welcoming school environment, and good community involvement for achieving good results. Teaching and learning process: The teaching and learning process closely relates with the support system of inputs and other contextual factors. Teaching and learning are key for human development and change. It is in this process that the impact of curricula and teaching methods as well as learners’ motivation are felt. It also includes students’ time spent on learning, assessment methods and monitoring students’ progress.

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura Outcomes: The outcomes of education need to be assessed in the context of its agreed objectives. They are generally expressed in terms of academic achievement, especially examination performance, though ways of assessing creative and emotional development as well as values, attitudes and behaviour have to be devised. Other proxies for learner achievement and for broader social or economic gains can be used, which affect labour market success (UNESCO 2004).

Enabling inputs

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Learner characteristics • Aptitude • Perseverance • School readiness • Prior knowledge • Barriers to learning

Economic and labour market conditions in the community Socio-cultural and religious factors in the market (Aid strategies)

• • • •

Teaching and learning Learning time Teaching methods Assessment, feedback, incentives Class size

Outcomes • Literacy, numeracy and life skills • Creative and emotional skills • Values • Social benefits

• Teaching and learning materials • Physical infrastructure and facilities • Human resources: teachers, principals, inspectors, supervisors, administrators • School governance

Educational knowledge and support infrastructure Public resources available for education Competitiveness of the teaching profession on the labour market National governance and management strategies

Philosophical standpoint of teacher and learner Peer effects Parental support Time available for schooling and homework

National standards Public expectations Labour market demands Globalization

Source: UNESCO, Education for All: The Quality Imperative, Paris, UNESCO Publishing, 2004, p. 36. Figure 1. Framework for understanding education quality.

THE FUNCTION OF GOOD QUALITY EDUCATION Although the concept of quality education is still contentious, it is clear from a lot of research that good quality education facilitates the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes that have an intrinsic value and also help in addressing important human goals. Evidence is now clear-cut on the links between good education and a wide range of economic and social development benefits. Better school outcomes, as reflected in student scores, are related to higher income in later life. Empirical work has also demonstrated that high quality

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schooling improves national economic potential. There are also strong and significant social benefits. It is now believed that the acquisition of literacy and numeracy, especially by women, has an impact upon fertility. More recently, it has become clear that cognitive skills required to make choices about HIV and AIDS risk and behaviour are strongly related to levels of education. Among the identified key functions include the following, among others. First, at the individual level, there is now growing evidence, albeit in the West, that the quality of human resources, as measured by test scores, is directly related to individual earnings, productivity and economic growth. A range of research results, especially from the United States, show that the advantages due to higher achievement on standardized tests are quite substantial. These studies that measured achievement show that it has a clear impact on earnings, after allowing for differences in the quantity of schooling, age or work experience and other factors that might influence earnings. In other words, for those leaving school at a given grade, higher quality school outcomes as represented by test scores are closely related to subsequent earning differences (Murnane et al 1995; Neal and Johnson 1996; Mulligan 1999; Lazear 2003). As regards other direct benefits, research has established strong returns to both numeracy and literacy in the United Kingdom (McIntosh and Vignoles 2001) and literacy in Canada (Finnie and Meng 2002). Accordingly, educational programmes that deliver these skills will bring higher individual benefits than those that do not. Second, part of the returns to school quality come through continuation in school. Consequently, students who do better in school, as evidenced by either examination grades or scores on standardized achievement tests, tend to go further in school or university. In this regard, higher student achievement keeps students in school longer, which leads, among other things, to higher completion rates at all levels of schooling. Accordingly, in some countries where schools are dysfunctional and grade repetition is high, some improvements in quality may be largely self-financing, by reducing the average time completers spend in school. With regard to these relations in developing countries, it appears likely that, on the basis of somewhat limited evidence, the returns of school quality are, if anything, higher than in more industrialized contexts. Using simple measures of basic cognitive skills, studies show that such skills are separately important in determining earnings, apart from the effect of schooling attained. Although there is still data paucity, which suggests the need for caution in interpreting the results due to other extraneous factors, there is some strong evidence associated with increase in test scores, suggesting a substantial return to higher levels of cognitive skills and the probability of higher levels of school quality (Glewwe 2002). Third, at the individual level, there are also non-cognitive skills that are important for success in economic life that are imparted by quality education. It is argued that those with motivation and perseverance are likely to do better in life, other things being equal, than people of similar intelligence, but lacking such qualities. It has become clear that society rewards these and other non-cognitive skills such as honesty, reliability, determination and personal efficacy. Research shows that personality and behavioural traits such as perseverance and leadership qualities have a significant influence upon labour market success, including earnings (Jencks et al. 1979). Personal stability, dependability and willingness to adopt the norms of institutions and hierarchies are shown to be important conditions for getting on with life and winning employer approval (Bowles and Gintis 1976). A more recent study in the United States and United Kingdom established that individual differences in personality account for substantial differences in earnings (Bowles et al. 2001). These types of studies are increasingly demonstrating the importance of non-cognitive skills

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in economic life. Such skills are imparted and nurtured in schools, and they include values like honesty, determination and reliability, which are encouraged by schools. Fourth, quality education is perceived to have a strong impact on a country’s development goals. It is generally believed that formal schooling is one of the key contributors to individual skills as well as human capital. Although there are other factors that play a similar role, schools have a special place, not only because education and skill creation are among their prime explicit objectives, but also because they are the factors most directly affected by public policies. It is also well established that the distribution of personal incomes in society is strongly related to the amount of education people have had. In general terms, more schooling means higher lifetime incomes. These outcomes emerge over a long term. It is not people’s income while at school that is affected, nor their income in their first jobs, but their income over the course of their working life (UNESCO 2004). Fifth, quality education is also perceived to have an impact on a country’s economic growth. The relationship between measured labour force quality and economic growth is said to be even a much stronger influence than the impact of human capital and school quality on individual productivity and incomes. Economic growth determines how much improvement can occur in the overall standard of living of a society. More specifically, a more educated society may translate into higher rates of innovation, higher overall productivity through firms’ abilities to introduce new and better production methods, and a faster introduction of new technologies. Economists have developed a variety of models and ideas to explain differences in growth rates among countries, invariably featuring the human capital (Barro and Sala-Martin 2003). In testing these models, empirical work has emphasized school attainment differences as a proxy for differences in human capital. Many studies have found that the quantity of schooling, measured in this way is closely related to economic growth rates. Sixth, at both societal and individual level, there is growing evidence to suggest that quality education as measured by test scores has an influence upon the speed with which societies can become richer and the extent to which individuals can improve their own productivity and incomes. It is also clear that years of education and acquisition of cognitive skills, particularly core skills of literacy and numeracy, have economic and social pay-offs with regard to income enhancement, improved productivity in both rural non-farm and urban environments and strengthened household behaviour and family life. In South Africa and Ghana, for example, the number of years spent at school is said to be negatively correlated with fertility rates, a relationship partly derived from links between cognitive achievement and fertility. It is not only cognitive skills, but also the process of socialization through schooling that help to give women the autonomy to change fertility outcomes (Thomas 1999; Oliver 1999; Basu 2002). Hence, education systems that are more effective in establishing cognitive skills to an advanced level, distributing them broadly through the population will bring stronger social and economic benefits than less effective systems. This implies that the content of the curriculum is important, in the sense that school systems that do not impart literacy and numeracy would not be associated with these benefits, and those that do so more effectively, namely, those that are of higher quality, are associated with larger incomes. Hence, differences in education quality can affect human behaviour in ways that facilitate the achievement of a wide range of human goals. Providing wide opportunities to improve quality of schooling will, therefore, facilitate changes in behaviour. This would include increased access to education and retention in the school system.

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An important current example is in the health behaviour, especially of the challenge of responding to the HIV and AIDS pandemic. There is mounting evidence of the HIV and AIDS impact in many countries, indicating the potential importance of links between HIV and AIDS education and behavioural change. The provision of clear information about the sources of HIV and AIDS infection and improved general levels of literacy allows those at risk to understand and judge their options better. It is apparent that knowledge and riskreducing skills are acquired through a complex network of formal and informal resources, of which the education system is only one of the influences. However, the cognitive skills required for informed choices with respect to HIV and AIDS risk, and for behavioural change, appear to be substantively based on levels of education and literacy. In this regard, the primary inherent value of formal education in this context is to enhance the learning skills required to understand the HIV and AIDS education on offer and to make sense of the many related messages from other sources (Badcock-Walters et al. 2004).

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INTERNATIONAL INTEREST IN QUALITY EDUCATION The goal for achieving universal primary education (UPE has been on the international agenda since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed it in 1948) that elementary education was to be made free and compulsorily available for all children in all nations. This objective was subsequently restated in many international treaties and in the United Nations’ conference declarations. The treaties, by specifying the need to provide education on a human rights basis, reproductive health, sports and gender awareness, were generally silent about the quality of education to be provided. They did not, however, mention how well education systems could and should be expected to perform in meeting these objectives. This remained so as recently as 2000, when the United Nations Millennium Declaration’s commitment to achieve UPE by 2015 was directly and simply set out without any explicit reference to quality. In this regard, in placing the emphasis upon ensuring access for all, these instruments mainly focused on the quantitative aspects of the education policy (UNESCO 2004). However, it is highly likely that the achievement of universal participation in education will be dependent upon the quality of education available. For instance, how well pupils are taught and how much they learn have a crucial impact on how long they stay in school and how regularly they attend. In addition, whether or not parents send their children to school at all is likely to depend on the judgements they make about the quality of teaching and learning provided. It is on this basis that they will decide whether attending school is worth the time and cost for their children and themselves. It is also important to state that the instrumental roles of schooling, such as helping individuals achieve their own economic, social and cultural objectives and helping society to be better protected, better served by its leaders and more equitable in important ways, will only be strengthened if education is of higher quality. It is appreciated that schooling helps children develop creatively and emotionally and to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary for responsible, active and productive citizenship. However, how well education achieves these outcomes is quite important to those who use it. Consequently, analysts and policymakers alike should also find the issue of quality education to be extremely critical.

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More importantly, education is a set of processes and outcomes that are defined qualitatively. The quantity of children who participate is generally a secondary consideration because merely filling spaces in what are called “schools” with children would not address even quantitatively objectives if no real learning occurs. In that regard, the number of years of schooling is practically useful but conceptually dubious in terms of proxy for the process that takes place there and the outcomes that result. In this sense, it could be judged irrelevant that the quantitative aspects of education tend to become the main focus of attention by policymakers. It is in this context, therefore, that the two major United Nations international conference declarations focusing on education gave some prominence to its qualitative dimension. The Jomtien Declaration of 1990 on Education for All noted that the generally poor quality of education needed to be improved and recommended that education be made both universally available and more relevant. The Declaration also identified quality as a prerequisite for achieving the fundamental goal of equity. While the notion of quality was not fully developed, it was recognized that expanding access alone would be insufficient for education to contribute fully to the development of the individual and society. Emphasis was accordingly placed on assuring an increase in children’s cognitive development by improving the quality of their education (Inter-Agency Commission 1990). The Dakar Framework for Action in 2000 recognised the quality of education as a prime determinant of whether Education for All is achieved. It declared that access to quality education was the right of every child. It affirmed that quality was “at the heart of education,” a fundamental determinant of enrollment, retention and achievement. Its expanded definition of quality set out the desirable characteristics of learners who were healthy and motivated, competent teachers using active pedagogies, relevant curricula and systems of good governance and equitable resource allocation. Most importantly, the second of the six goals set out in the Dakar Framework committed nations to the provision of primary education “of good quality,” and the sixth goal included commitments to improve all aspects of education quality so that everyone could achieve better learning outcomes, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills (UNESCO 2000). Although there is some consensus on the need to provide access to education of “good quality” by major UN organizations, there is much less agreement about what the terms actually mean in practice. While details vary from one organization to another, two key elements characterize their approaches, and they include the following: First, it is recognized that cognitive development is a major explicit objective of all education systems. The degree to which systems actually achieve cognitive development is one indicator of their quality. However, while this indicator can be measured relatively easily, at least within individual societies, if not through international comparison, it is much more difficult to determine how to improve the results. The second element is education’s role in encouraging learners’ creative and emotional development, in supporting objectives of peace, citizenship and security, in promoting equality and in passing global and local cultural values down to future generations. Many of these objectives are defined and approached in diverse ways around the world. Compared with cognitive development, the extent to which they are achieved is harder to determine (UNESCO 2004).

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS This chapter has shown that during the 1970s and 1980s, most policymakers concerned with education in developing countries limited their attention to school access or enrollments. Over the years, however, it became clear that access to school was not sufficient to ensure a decent level of basic learning. While the gains in enrollment had been quite impressive in many parts of the world, including the Sub-Saharan African region, low quality and high dropout rates led to the perception that many of the children left school without having obtained a sustainable level of basic reading, writing and numeracy skills. Quality education is a relative concept. Educators who seek particular defined outcomes tend to rate it in those terms and will rank educational institutions according to the extent to which their graduates meet those outcomes. These different emphases have deep roots and are reflected in the major traditions of the development of Western educational thought. In studies of quality and equality issues in education in third world countries, it is pointed out that there is as yet no consensus on the definition of the term “quality.” More importantly, notions of quality change over time and are tied to societal values. Another important point that has been raised relates to the relative paucity of meaningful data that could provide indicators of quality. Although the concept of quality education is still contentious, it is clear from a lot of research that good quality education facilitates the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes that have an intrinsic value and also helps in addressing important human goals. Evidence is now clear-cut on the links between good education and a wide range of economic and social development benefits. Better school outcomes as reflected in student scores are related to higher income in later life. Empirical work has also demonstrated that high quality schooling improves national economic potential. There are also strong and significant social benefits. It is now believed that the acquisition of literacy and numeracy, especially by women, has an impact upon fertility. More recently, it has become clear that cognitive skills required to make choices about HIV and AIDS risk and behaviour are strongly related to levels of education.

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Chapter 3

EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION INTRODUCTION This chapter discusses the concept and function of early childhood care and education (ECCE); its development in the Sub-Saharan African region; goals and objectives; access and enrollment; the quality of ECCE programs with specific focus on policies and strategies; cost and financing; the teaching force and staffing; facilities and equipment; curricula and materials and transition to primary education and measures to improve quality.

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CONCEPT AND FUNCTION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION (ECCE) Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is open to a diversity of terminology adopted by international agencies and academics. Furthermore, definitions associated with ECCE are contentious. According to Penn (2000), ECCE is an umbrella term for a variety of interventions with young children and their cares/families, including health and nutrition, childcare, education and parent support. A distinction is usually needed, but not always made, between ECCE and preschool education. Kholowa and Rose (2007), who cite the Bernard van Leer Foundation, noted that: …it needs to be understood that early childhood development (ECD) is not synonymous with preschool education…Early Childhood Development combines elements from the fields of child development, early childhood education, infant stimulation, health and nutrition, community development, parents and families support, women’s development and economics. It combines all essential supports a young child needs to survive and thrive in life, as well as the supports a family and community needs to promote children’s healthy development.

With respect to preschooling specifically, according to the international standard definition, this is “defined as centre of school-based, educationally oriented services for children of at least three years.” This highlights a more focused approach limited to the educational aspects of ECCE, which is based within a formal institution (rather than occurring

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within the home environment or other less formal institutions, for example). ECCE, therefore, refers to holistic approaches to child development in the pre-primary school years. It is concerned with those aspects of ECCE that occur within such formal institutions (Kholowa and Rose 2007). Most definitions of ECCE are child focused and stress the holistic nature of the concept, namely, recognizing cognitive, emotional and physical needs of children. UNESCO uses the term Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in its Global Monitoring Report 2007, with the following definition: “ECCE supports children’s survival growth, development and learning-including health, nutrition and hygiene, and cognitive, social, physical and emotional development-from birth to entry into primary school in formal, non-formal and informal settings” (UNESCO 2006). There is also the World Bank’s use and definition of the term ECCE, which is understood as “the provision of services that promote young children’s development. The services target children’s basic needs, namely, nutrition, protection, health care and interaction, stimulation, affection and learning” (Young 1997). Early childhood age is often defined within the zero- to eight-year range and thus includes the time from the child’s birth until the first years in primary schooling. Whereas this time is crucial for the child’s development, research has demonstrated that growth failure occurs almost exclusively during the intrauterine period and in the first 24 months of life (Martorell 1997). The physical, cognitive and mental development of the child, especially during its intrauterine period and first years, are dependent on the parents’ understanding of and response to the child’s basic needs in terms of nutrition, healthcare, affection and learning. Physical growth is often used as a proxy for child development, but it should be underlined that the concept of ECCE encompasses cognitive and mental development and that these latter factors are interrelated with physical growth and the general health of the child (Nordtveit 2008). Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa on childrearing practices have shown that within the traditional and community settings there are mechanisms for preparing and supporting children’s physical, emotional, social and intellectual development through traditional games, stories, toys, songs and ways of playing that are passed on from the older children to the younger children (Evans 1994). The extent to which preschools utilise or adapt themselves to some of the already existing practices to enrich children’s experiences in the preschool appears to be one of the most challenging agendas. However, associated with modernization, ECCE is the logical replacement of traditional family and community-based processes of socializing the young. With the onslaught of Western culture, associated with increased social mobility and an expanding money economy, traditional socialising institutions have had to give way to new non-family childcare institutions. Because many young parents are no longer able to live close to or count on the support of the extended family and the traditional neighbourhood, alternative forms of early childhood care have developed. Some parents have resorted to hiring child-minders (ayahs), while others have turned to institutionalized collective care in the form of kindergartens, nurseries and daycare centres or preschools. Research evidence suggests that new entrants into primary schools are better prepared for the school environment and that they do make better use of school resources if they have been exposed to preschool education prior to their entry into the regular school system (Myers 1992). This is probably not unexpected as such exposure would have prepared the new intakes for the “world of school” because of the similarities between preschool and regular school environments. Preschool education is known to foster the development of some basic

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social skills, and young learners lacking such skills, risk “peer rejection” and academic failure (Knight and Hughes 1995). It has been observed, for example, that pupils with preschool experience tend to feel much more at home than their counterparts without such an experience during their first few days in school. Furthermore, most of them seldom cry and demand to go back home with their parents on their first days in school. Evidence abounds in the literature to support the view that preschool education engenders a supportive climate for fast adjustment to classroom environment in the primary school. This is known to result in smooth transition from the “social world” of the home to the somewhat “formal world” of the school (Taiwo and Tyolo 2002; Adams and Sandfort 1992; Myers 1992; Smith and James 1975). The inauguration of the “head start” programme nationally in the United States of America in the early 1960s, with a specific goal of compensating for poor home conditions of children from disadvantaged homes, was, for example, based on such evidence (Hechinger 1986; Brown 1985; Tizard 1975; Payne et al. 1973; Butler 1970). The “head start” programme was adjudged to have a salutary effect on its beneficiaries as the products of the programme were found to have enhanced IQ scores and to adjust well to the school environment soon after their exposure to the programme (Tizard 1975). Similar programmes in Ireland (Kellagan 1977) and in the United Kingdom (Nall 1982) yielded same results. The same trend has been observed in the early childhood programmes established in ten countries in four continents of the world by the Bernard van Leer Foundation (1999). A number of studies in some African countries seem to reach similar conclusions. One of the most notable ones was by Otaala et al. (1989) to gauge the impact of the daycare programmes in Botswana. The evaluation study concluded that the products of the programmes were better prepared for the primary school environment and enjoyed a smoother transition to the primary school classroom environment. Similar conclusions were reached about the impact of the Child-to-Child programme. This was a programme in which older children from the first three grade levels of the primary school helped prepare younger children, mainly their siblings, for school entry the following year, while they, in turn, improved their cognitive development. An international survey of the Child-to-Child programme in 70 countries established that the Botswana programme, among others, was quite effective in preparing children for the primary school education (Government of Botswana 1994). A more recent similar study established that preschool education equips pupils so exposed with prerequisite skills for learning in the primary school. It was these skills that accounted for the superior performance of the pupils with preschool education experience in the selected tasks in the English language, mathematics and science over their counterparts without such an experience. It is observed that preschool education appears to have a positive effect on its recipients in the early years of primary school, as pupils with such an exposure demonstrate superior academic attainment at this level. Consequently, children without such background performed significantly lower in that study than their counterparts with such an experience. This is the case because they lack some of the basic skills and knowledge that their counterparts bring with them from their preschool classes to the primary school classes. As a result, pupils without preschool education background tend to adjust much more slowly than their counterparts with such an exposure to the school environment, at least during their early days in the primary school (Taiwo and Tyolo 2002).

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DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION Despite efforts to promote ECCE in Sub-Saharan countries, access continues to be a significant challenge (UNESCO 2004; Penn 2000; Woodhead 2000). Enrollment rates in preschools in the region are often below 10 percent, mainly due to limited facilities available and the effect of poverty. While there seems to be a common agreement on the need to increase access to preschools, this is not without tensions and dilemmas, including who should provide preschooling and how can it be financed. Some historical perspective provides an explanation of the present state of ECCE programmes in many countries. The issues of access and quality of the programmes have roots in the past. Unlike formal primary education that has existed in many parts of Africa since the turn of the twentieth century, ECCE programmes can be traced from the early 1950s, when some preschools were opened. In countries with large white settler populations, the first preschools were mainly private, catered for European children and were mainly located in the urban centres. In addition, there were also preschools catering to Asian children in a country like Kenya, which had a large Indian population. Preschools catering for Africans emerged in some urban centres in the early 1960s on a self-help basis, mainly by church and welfare organizations. The neglect of preschool education, like that of other levels of education, was embedded in the racist practice that discriminated against Africans. In the big towns, for example Nairobi, racism was camouflaged behind the excuse that Africans were not regarded as permanent residents of the town and were therefore not entitled to any services including education until the early 1950s (Wawire 2006). In most countries, the early 1960s also constituted a time when governments joined private entrepreneurs, self-help groups and welfare organizations in the sponsoring of ECCE programmes. This was following the achievement of independence, and the participation was mainly through local authorities. The preschool movement was generally slower in the rural areas than in the urban centres, but emerged to provide custodial care to children for mothers who worked on large plantations of tea, coffee and sugar cane. Eventually, the establishment of daycare centres spread to other parts of the countries as their need became more evident in the light of the changes in the socioeconomic and family structures. The custodial role played by the extended family coupled by the fact that older siblings had since joined formal primary schools was transferred into daycare centres. The extended family unit was not only weakened by the movement of people to new locations like towns or emerging settlement schemes, but also by the societal shift towards the formation of nuclear families. In addition, the fact that more and more women were by then taking up formal employment was a major contributory factor to the growth of many daycare centres (Wawire V. K. 2006). As the dual role of preschool centres as custodial care providers as well as education spread from urban to rural areas, amidst the early 1960s of independence euphoria about the role of education in development, preschools came to be perceived by communities as avenues through which their children would get a ‘head start” in the competitive and examination-oriented education systems. Consequently, most preschool centres laid more emphasis on the academic aspects of ECCE, by concentrating more on the teaching of the alphabet and number work, a practice that has continued to the present. This particular situation was reinforced by the fact that the expansion of the preschool sector in many countries occurred, with minimal government control, posing a serious implication on the

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quality and relevance of the education provided. Some ministries charged with the responsibility of inspecting preschools to ensure the children’s safety and health did not address the supervision of educational services being offered. In view of the fact that many of the preschool centres, especially those in the urban areas were serving a cognitive function by giving instruction in academic subjects in addition to the custodial care, that laid a strong tradition of using formal methods of instruction and content in the preschool sector that has become increasingly difficult to break (Wawire 2006). In addition, in some countries, preschool having been viewed as any other social service outside the mainstream education, this particular docket was shuffled between ministries not directly concerned with education. It was often shifted from such ministries as health, home affairs, social services and local government. Governments’ neglect of the preschool sector not only explains the failure to include it in key legislations, but also its exclusion from the main expansion efforts like the primary and secondary school sectors following the achievement of independence in many countries. Nonetheless, the preschool education continued to grow through self-help community efforts. In rural areas, preschools were developed more or less autonomously, with each community relying on its own ideas and resources. Community members collaborated and made contributions to put up buildings, hired teachers and appointed committees to plan and make policies governing the centres (Anderson 1973). Most preschools in the rural areas were self-help projects, except for a few private ones that served areas of white or other emigrant groups. In contrast, the greatest sponsors in the large urban centres were the local authorities, supported by a few private enterprises, churches and voluntary organizations. In most countries as the preschool sector expanded, the national policy was not only minimal, but also unclear. Like in other similar cases, it was not uncharacteristic for a social service to precede planners’ and legislators’ rationalization of a social service. As a result, it was only after massive expansion of the preschool sector was observed nationally that governments realized the need for instituting some policy to guide its operation. This belated intervention on the part of governments had some serious implications on the quality and relevance of preschool education offered. The intervention was exacerbated by decisions by some governments to assign various ministries to manage different aspects of the preschool education. For example, the health ministry was assigned to inspect health matters, as other ministries handled registration and educational matters. In view of the differences in interest and approaches by different government agencies, there was need for a clear division of responsibility as well as some agreed modes of coordination. In addition, due to the multiplicity of roles taking place without a guarantee of quality and relevance, there was a need for a single ministry to take up the overall responsibility of supervising the preschool sector (Wawire 2006). Some increasing concern for ECCE was generally ignited since the 1970s, with key meetings taking place and focusing mainly on the sector in the Sub-Saharan region (Pence 2004). These developments culminated in the growing awareness, recognition and embracing of ECCE as a field in its own right by many governments. However, before 1990, young children, especially from birth to 5 years, were nearly invisible in most African policy documents except in sectoral health and nutrition policies and strategies. The international impetus given to children and ECCE in 1990, especially by the World Declaration on Education for All (UNESCO 1990), stimulated official action in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first EFA target set in both the 1990 Jomtien Conference and the Dakar Framework for

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Action related to expanding early childhood care, especially for the vulnerable and disadvantaged children. However, in the two conferences, there were differences in the targets and a major focus on access. The concern was on expansion through development activities, including family and community interventions. There was the need not only to consider access, but also to improve the quality of provision, especially shifting from a more informal, community-based approach to ECCE, towards a focus that recognises the sector as important and integral of its own. The two EFA conferences (Jomtien and the Dakar Framework), however, seem not to have enhanced the cause of ECCE much, because unlike specific targets set for primary schooling, gender parity/equality and adult literacy, the targets on ECCE are neither timebound nor do they specify intentions towards the extent of expansion. This was a serious omission because given the extremely low starting points for ECCE programmes in many Sub-Saharan African countries, it is most unlikely that anything approaching universality can be achieved by 2015. In this regard, it is bound to take several years for these countries to reach preschool enrollment rates of 50 percent, based on current trends. Furthermore, the Millennium Development Goals are not explicitly concerned with ECCE (Kholowa and Rose 2007). From their signature of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of 1989, and active participation in the World Summit for Children, African countries, however, began to integrate children’s issues more clearly in sectoral policies. Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia and Uganda established ministries or national commissions responsible for children. Other countries focused on children under ministries of family and social affairs (Garcia et al. 2008). In 1998, the Seventh Conference of Ministers of Education of African Member States (UNESCO 1998) expressed a specific political commitment to promote ECCE policies. The conference accepted recommendations of the Regional Consultation of nongovernmental organization (NGOs), among which was the key recommendation that all African countries formulate clear policies to promote early childhood and development. The challenges for the countries included the capacity to formulate culturally appropriate and effective integrated ECCE policies and funding (Garcia, et al, 2008). The involvement of key development partners such as United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank in ECCE promotion and funding were important to secure government support in a number of the countries. UNICEF, for example, supported programs for children’s rights, as ECCE intensified in most countries. From the mid-1990s, the World Bank provided credit funding in countries such as Eritrea, Kenya and Uganda. With overwhelming research evidence on the positive returns to investments in ECCE, the Bank substantially increased its funding for childcare, health, nutrition and education (Young 1997; Kholowa and Rose 2007). The Working Group on Early Childhood Development (WGECD) of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), established in 1997, made a significant contribution to ECCE policy development. In 1999, WGECD identified support to policy development as a major way in which partners could contribute and make a difference collectively to sustainable programs for holistic child development in Africa (Torkington 2001). The WGECD Policy Projects combined assessments and capacity building. The first project activity involved case studies of ECCE policies in Ghana, Mauritius and Namibia, as well as a survey of ECCE policy issues. The second project activity provided extensive technical support to national ECCE planning in Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal.

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Further support for ECCE resulted from Africa-wide meetings held in Uganda 1999, Eritrea 2002 and Ghana 2005, of African and international specialists, policy and decision makers and funding agencies that have helped to galvanise interest in ECCE in the continent, which led to more comprehensive policies and programs. Most countries have developed and adopted national ECCE policies (Kholowa and Rose 2007; Garcia, et al. 2008).

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION At the outset, it is important to mention that in many countries in the Sub-Saharan region, preschool education is not part of the formal education system. However, governments do appreciate the value of preschool education, and the sector is contained in official policy documents. In some of the countries there are specific national policy documents on preschools or Daycare Centres. Such documents normally contain goals and objectives that are expected to serve as guidelines to the nature of activities to be undertaken by ECCE centres. In this regard, some general analysis of goals and objectives provides a deeper understanding of the operations and activities. An examination of official policy documents from many countries reveals that goals and objectives are clearly stated and are generally similar. They define goals and objectives of ECCE centres as offering non-formal education that aims at not only providing an all-around development of children, but also preparing them for formal education. Among the goals and objectives, the following are included:

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To provide education geared towards the development of the child’s mental capabilities and physical growth; To enable the child to enjoy living and learning through play; To develop the child’s self-awareness, self-esteem and self-confidence; To develop understanding and appreciation of his/her culture and environment; To foster the child’s explorations, skills, creativity, self-expression and discovery; To enable the child to build good habits and acquire acceptable values and behaviours for effective living as an individual and member of a group; To foster spiritual and moral growth of the child; To improve the status of the child’s healthcare and nutritional needs and link him/her with health services such as immunizations, health check ups and growth monitoring; and To develop the child’s aesthetic and artistic skills.

The development of the goals and objectives of ECCE has been cross-fertilised by the thinking at the international level. Of particular importance in this respect have been the Conference on the Rights of the Child (1989), the World Summit for Children (1990), the World Conference on Education for All (1990), and the Dakar Framework for Action (2000). At these and similar forums, the views had been expressed that ECCE programmes should (a) cover children aged 0 to 3 years in addition to the preschool age of 3 to 5, as practised in

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many countries, and (b) include maternal education, child survival and development, socialization as well as community participation in the provision of health, nutrition and care. As much as the official goals and objectives emphasise the total development of the child and are in line with the official national and district educational structures involved in the supervision of the delivery of ECCE programs, parents’ expectations of preschools greatly deviate from government policy, thus impacting negatively on the actual practice as it relates to quality and relevance. Parent’s general expectation of preschool education is quite narrow, mainly centring upon the ECCE’s role in preparing children for formal schooling. Parents expect preschools to focus more on numeracy and literacy skills to give them a head start in the competitive examination-oriented systems in most countries. This perception is further reinforced by the competitive class/standard one entry examinations where advanced work is required to determine who enters primary schools from preschools (Wawire 2006). In some parts of the countries, especially those in the dry areas that heavily rely on feeding programmes (arid and semi arid lands—ASAL) districts or other special areas where the ECCE programme is associated with feeding and healthcare projects, many parents perceive the main attraction of ECCE as the immediate material benefits rather than the longterm, overall nurturing of their children. Thus, preschool enrollments often fluctuate with the presence or absence of feeding and/or healthcare programmes. Such existence of different and often conflicting expectations make governments’ efforts to encourage an ECCE program with broad goals and objectives a difficult task. Rather than promote the ideals of the governments, teachers in ECCE centres, many of them inadequately qualified, feel obliged to respect the wishes of the parents and bodies that meet their remuneration. From the stated objectives, the concern for ECCE goes beyond preparation for future learning, and indeed most protagonists view it as important not to link ECCE activities directly with training for primary schooling. Regardless of whether the purpose of ECCE is considered to be the preparation for the next stage of schooling or schooling in its own right, there is general agreement by international agencies that, to have the desired effect, ECCE programs should not be in the form of an academically oriented preschool program. A program overly focused on formal skills is considered detrimental, as it can lead young children into dependency on adults with a lack of confidence over their own skills, which, at times, can lead to “a fall in literacy ability in primary school” (UNESC 2004).

ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION From the above analysis, there is a compelling case for and more and better ECCE programs. As a result of the critical nature of early childhood education with regard to physical and mental development, ECCE programs help to reduce existing and future disadvantages faced by many children, through addressing their nutritional, health and educational needs. ECCE participation reduces the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting, improves cognitive development and contributes to increased school participation, completion and achievement. ECCE become the guarantor of children’s rights and can open the way to all the EFA goals (UNESCO 2007).

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Early childhood care and education in Sub-Saharan Africa is a very diverse area of learning, ranging, on the one hand, from formal pre-primary education—which is integrated with national education systems through kindergartens, where care, play and education are included—to more formal and often home-based activities (UNESCO 2003). Access and participation are assessed in terms of enrollment rate in school, which is measured using the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) and the Net Enrollment Ratio (NER). The GER is derived by expressing the total enrollment, irrespective of the age of the pupils, as a percentage of the total population of the eligible age group (for the ECCE, three- to five-year olds). The NER, on the other hand, is the percentage of the eligible age group actually enrolled in school. It is the most reliable indicator, as it excludes underage and overage pupils. Data on the participation of children in ECCE programs is generally difficult to verify and, as such, to establish the full extent of enrollment figures excludes some care and education groups. Data collection systems that focus largely on state or state-regulated providers may not cover non-formal care and educational activities administered by other state authorities or private entities for children aged 3 and above. An important part of assessing ECCE provision is to determine how well programs reach the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. This has become feasible with greater availability of household survey results that allow the disaggregation of participation data by gender, household wealth and rural or urban residence. In the Sub-Saharan Africa, national ECCE systems vary considerably in terms of age groups served, number of years provided and content. However, in most countries, participation is not obligatory and children may start programs at any age. In some cases, programs can take only one year, while in other cases, they can take up to four years. The most common duration is three years, typically serving ages 3 to 5 or, less frequently, 4 to 6 (Hyde and Kabiru 2003). In comparative terms, as shown Table 3.1, the islands of Mauritius and Seychelles have the highest GER of 100 and 95 and 109, between 1999 and 2005, respectively; followed by Kenya with 44 and 52; Ghana with 40 and 55; and Zimbabwe with 41 and 43 during the same period. Other countries with a reasonably high GER are Lesotho with 23 and 33; Sao Tome and Principe, 27 and 31; South Africa with 20 and 37; and the Gambia with 20. Although these countries’ gross ECCE enrollments range between 20 and 55 percent, they are, however, still below the world’s desired average of 70 percent. In terms of NER, as shown in Table 3. 2, Seychelles and Mauritius had the highest with 96 and 85 in 2005, respectively; Cameroon with 51; Ghana, 36; Sao Tome and Principe, 32; United Republic of Tanzania, 30; Kenya, 29; Lesotho, 27; and South Africa, 17. Private institutions account for a large proportion of the total pre-primary enrollment in the region (UNESCO 2007). On the whole, most Sub-Saharan African countries, as well as other developing countries, show low participation levels, often below 10 percent, and, in some cases, with sharp declines. Most of them belong to the heavily indebted poor countries’ group and are generally affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic and high levels of poverty. They face the greatest challenge when it comes to achieving the good care, health, education and development of young children. In some countries, the impact of the implementation of free primary education on preschool enrollment has yet to be conclusively evaluated, as most of the ECCE institutions attached to public primary schools were normally supported through community contributions. However, there are indications that figures may have dropped as parents opted to take their children to standard one, where education is free, rather than preschool, where they have to pay some levies (UNESCO 2007).

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura Table 3.1. Gross enrollment ratio (GER) in pre-primary education (percentage)

Name of country Botswana Congo Cote d’Ivoire Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Kenya Lesotho Mali Mauritius Namibia Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles South Africa Togo Uganda Zimbabwe

Gross enrollment ratio 1999 Total male female 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 6 6 5 1 1 1 20 20 20 40 40 40 44 44 44 23 23 24 1 1 1 100 99 101 19 18 21 27 26 28

Gross enrollment ratio 2005 Total male female 2 2 2 6 6 6 3 3 3 12 12 12 2 2 2 20 20 20 55 55 57 52 52 52 34 33 35 3 3 3 95 95 96 29 27 30 32 31 33

3 109 20 2 4 41

8 109 37 2 4 43

3 107 20 2 4 40

3 111 20 2 4 41

7 110 37 2 4 43

8 109 38 2 4 43

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Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 272-274.

Gender disparities in enrollment at the national levels as shown in Tables 3.1 and 3. 2 are not significant. In fact, gender disparities in pre-primary education are less marked than at other levels of education, probably because children at this level tend to come from more affluent groups, where gender biases are less pronounced than among the poor. The proportion of girls enrolled in ECCE in the high- and low-enrollment countries compares favourably with that of the boys, but slightly higher in Mauritius, Seychelles, Sao Tome and Principe and Ghana. Participation rates in the ECCE programs are considerably higher for urban children than those living in rural areas. Countries with higher than average participation rates have minimized differences between urban and rural areas. In addition to gender and urban versus rural participation, millions of children who belong to disadvantaged groups and live in vulnerable settings do not have access to ECCE, despite evidence of the considerable benefits accruing from their participation.

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Table 3.2. Net enrollment ratio (NER) pre-primary education (percentage)-2005 Name of country Benin Cameroon Cape Verde Congo Cote d’Ivoire Eritrea Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Mauritius Niger Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles South Africa Swaziland Togo Uganda United Republic of Tanzania

Total 3 51 2 6 3 8 36 6 29 27 85 0.9 12 32 4 96 17 13 2 0.9 30

Male 3 51 2 6 3 8 35 6 28 26 85 0.9 12 31 4 97 17 13 2 0.9 29

female 3 51 2 6 3 9 37 6 29 28 86 0.9 12 33 5 95 17 13 2 0.9 30

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Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 272-274.

THE QUALITY OF ECCE PROGRAMS An assessment of the quality of provision of early childhood care and education is more challenging than that of other levels of schooling. This is because achievement tests, examinations and diplomas are largely absent at this level. At the same time, national data showing provision and inputs are limited and often not easily comparable, although at program level various quality instruments have been developed. Some examples of such instruments include the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS), the High Scope Program Quality Assessment (PQA) and an observational instrument developed for the IEA Preschool Project (UNESCO 2004). Despite the lack of reliable standardized instruments for assessing quality in the ECCE programs, there is a general perception that children whose basic health, nutrition and psychosocial needs are normally met, develop and perform better than those who are less fortunate. It is also perceived that children who develop well physically, mentally, socially and emotionally during the early years are more likely to be happy and productive members of society than those who do not. However, such perceptions are supported by research on early childhood development. The literature is vast and varied, encompassing research carried out by psychologists, medical doctors, anthropologists, neurobiologists, educators, sociologists,

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nutritionists and others. In general, the research concludes that the early years of life are a key period for the development of intelligence, personality and behaviour; and that early childhood learning and development can be enhanced by ECCE programs. The effects of such programs are likely to be greater for children from disadvantaged backgrounds than the more privileged peers; and good programs are sensitive to differences in cultural, social and economic contexts (UNESCO 2004). Although most of the research compares children who followed a certain program with those who did not, some emerging studies have tended to focus explicitly on quality, comparing outcomes for children in ECCE centres that differ in the levels of quality. It is evident from these studies that even where pre-primary programs operated with modest resources, and at times with unfavourable class sizes, they often show a positive impact on children. On the whole, therefore, the research evidence indicates that better childcare for children of preschool age is associated with better cognitive and social development. It is observed that organized preschool care and education, provided with some material resources and qualified teachers, gives children stimulation and some choice of activities and hence leads to better cognitive and social development later in life than does an absence of such programs. The impact of quality in ECCE appears to be important for children from all backgrounds, but more particularly for the least advantaged children (UNESCO 2004). In this section, an attempt is made to assess the quality of preschool programs in the SubSaharan African region by analyzing policy strategies; inputs that include the teaching force, facilities and equipment; curriculum and instructional materials; costs and financing and transition to primary schools.

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Policies and Strategies In most countries, ministries and departments that are in charge of ECCE programs try to ensure that they provide quality education by providing policy guidelines in areas such as curriculum and staff development. In curriculum development, for example, emphasis is placed on providing guidelines that are expected to ensure that certain basic standards are maintained in accordance with national goals and objectives and are the basis for curriculum development at the local levels. This is similarly the case with professional development of staff. Through the use of national guidelines, supervisors and tutors trained at the national level are expected to train teachers and other professional staff at the local level. This is because locally based training should take into account the cultural and social contexts in which ECCE centres operate. The guidelines generally incorporate the expanded concept of ECCE, which embraces healthcare, nutrition, immunization and the development of preschool children. While ECCE programs in many countries have made considerable progress as a result of the policy strategies and guidelines, the quality of many programmes is still unsatisfactory, especially with community-based ECCE centres. Among the key contributory factors to this situation is the policy that makes parents and local communities responsible for the development and recurrent costs of ECCE centres. This has led to the establishment of many unregistered institutions with very poor facilities. Many of them operate at sub-standard levels, especially with regard to physical facilities and teaching and learning materials, as well as teachers. Furthermore, the supervision and inspection of ECCE centres is, on the

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whole, quite inadequate. Most of the field school inspectors, who combine their duties with inspection of these institutions, are not quite conversant with ECCE objectives and standards. They are also overburdened and lack basic facilities such as transport to enable them carry out their duties efficiently. Consequently, most of the ECCE centres do not get the necessary professional guidance to implement their programs. This, too, applies to the ECCE centres, which are attached to primary schools as head teachers generally lack relevant training and experience in early childhood activities. Due to the low priority some governments attach to ECCE, many officers charged with the responsibility to manage and guide ECCE programs at the national level are not only insufficient for the task, but also lack the requisite training in such programs. Above all, in spite of most governments’ commitment to ECCE programmes, the constraints in making public budgetary allocations to these programs severely undermines their quality (Hyde and Kabiru 2003).

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Cost and Financing of ECCE Since, in most countries, ECCE programs are not part of the formal education systems, they do receive funding from the public expenditure, although there is some small allocation for staff responsible for ECCE programs at the headquarters and district levels. In this regard, parents, community bodies and other organizations play an important role in providing both capital and recurrent costs of the programmes. In the capital costs, they are responsible for land on which to build preschools as well as construction and maintenance of physical facilities. For community-based ECCE programs, most school facilities are put up on a selfhelp basis, with parents and communities providing labour and materials. In this context, it is not easy to arrive at figures that would accurately illustrate the local contributions to capital development, because first, the cost of land and the quality of facilities greatly vary across the geographical areas, and second, it is difficult to cost the labour provided. The parental and community contributions also meet the recurrent costs, which include the provision of teachers’ salaries, teaching and learning, recreational facilities, feeding programs and transport to and from school. As a result of such costs, ECCE centres normally charge some fee which varies considerably, depending on whether the centre is sponsored by parents, religious organizations or local government authorities. Private schools generally charge very high fees. Where an ECCE centre has developed a feeding program, parental contributions include money as well as payment in kind though the provision of labour. Due to the large variations in the financial capacities of sponsors, teachers’ salaries also vary greatly, with private centres paying relatively higher salaries as compared to communitysponsored centres, in which some do not regularly pay the salaries as teachers have to work for several months without receiving any payment. In many countries, local government authorities have been supporting ECCE programs for many years. Their contributions include payment of teachers’ and supervisors’ salaries, costs of teacher training, and provision of facilities and materials. Teachers employed by local government authorities normally have much better terms and conditions of service than their counterparts who are employed by parents and communities. Local government authority remuneration generally includes salaries and benefits such as housing, leave and retirement. ECCE centres that are supported in the provision of facilities and materials by local government authorities are relatively of higher quality. However, the level of support by local

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government authorities is generally dependent on the revenue available to the local government authority (Hyde and Kabiru 2003). In many countries, external donors have assisted the provision of ECCE activities. Among the key agencies that have provided grants to ECCE activities in a good number of countries have included the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BVL), UNICEF and the Aga Khan Foundation. These agencies have provided substantial donations to the ECCE programs. Donor support has also taken the form of grants channelled through local NGOs and religious organizations that have been heavily involved in early childhood programs. Donor funds have supported both capital and recurrent costs. With regard to capital development, for example, the Bernard van Leer Foundation provided around 5 million US dollars for the construction of the National Centre for Early Childhood Education (NACECE) building at the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) in Kenya. Another grant from the U.S. Aid was recently provided to expand that facility. Donor funding has been provided for the purchase of vehicles for use in ECCE programs in some countries. With regard to recurrent costs, donor funding has played an important role in the areas of curriculum development and materials, training staff, including preschool teachers, research and community mobilization. There has also been donor funding in ECCE activities, especially the World Food Program’s support for the school feeding programs and UNICEF’s efforts to improve health and nutrition status of children in ECCE programs in some countries. Although donor assistance plays an important role in ECCE programs, like similar support in other sectors of development, it has a number of inherent weaknesses. First, dependence on donor funding not only creates a dependency syndrome, but it also means that governments have no full control prioritizing ECCE activities. As expected, each donor tends to insist on assisting in areas of its own interest, but which may not necessarily reflect national priorities. Second, the development of a national strategy that is sustainable may in the long run be ignored. And in the absence of continued support from without, community enthusiasm for donor-initiated projects is likely to diminish at the end of external assistance. This would be prevented if the projects were initially planned as part of a national strategy that specifies sources of local resources that would eventually replace external assistance.

The Teaching Force and Support Staff The interaction between the carer and teacher is one of the key determinants of the quality of ECCE programs (UNESCO 2006). High pre-primary pupil/teacher ratios (PTR) indicate insufficient numbers of teachers and poor quality teaching and learning processes, as each teacher will provide less attention to individual pupils and will have fewer opportunities for child-centred teaching and learning approaches. However, the adequate level of teachers varies among and within countries, depending on conditions of schools and classrooms, type of pupils, and teacher qualifications and skills. As it takes into account the total number of teachers, the PTR is a rough approximation of class size, although not necessarily equivalent to it, since countries have differing mechanisms or policies for allocating teachers to classes. In this regard, unless teacher recruitment accompanies pre-primary expansion, deterioration in the quality of child-teacher interactions is to be expected.

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The ECCE teachers are not equally distributed within countries, as the disparities between public and private institutions generally indicate. In most of the countries in the SubSaharan African region, PTRs in public schools are more than double those in private schools, suggesting that children in public ECCE centres have access to fewer teachers and are, therefore, likely to experience worse teaching and learning conditions. The teacher shortages recorded in many African countries are compounded by low percentages of trained teachers. In the countries where data on the teaching force is available, the percentage of trained teachers ranges from less than 25 percent to higher than 60 percent. Ratios of pupils to trained teachers are usually much higher than the overall PTRs show, in some countries as high 100:1. In many of the countries, the pupil/trained teacher ratio reveals a shortage of trained teachers not captured by the PTR (UNESCO 2007). The policy on free kindergarten in Ghanaian public schools, for example, was accompanied by a rise in the pupil/trained-teacher ratio to 155:1 from an already high 103:1 ratio. The shortage resulted from an increase in enrollments, and the teacher numbers were associated with a decrease in the absolute number and share of trained teachers. The issues of teacher qualifications and PTRs are really major challenges in ECCE centres, as they vary considerably among the countries and within the countries themselves. There are notable regional differences in the qualifications of ECCE teachers. The PTRs do vary from as high as 70 percent trained teachers in the urban centres and as low as 5 percent of such teachers in the rural areas. Even within the rural settings, in some countries, the differences are exacerbated by the existence of ASAL districts, where the ECCE teachers have very low academic levels. Many do not meet the minimum academic grades required for a regular teacher training course. This contrasts with the high potential regions of the countries and in urban areas, where ECCE centres are staffed with teachers who possess higher qualifications, including university degree graduates (Hyde and Kabiru 2003). The responsibility for staffing ECCE centres rests largely with the school managers, sponsors and proprietors. Most ministerial guidelines generally recommend the acceptable PTR and the minimum age, academic, training and certification of the teachers. However, since ECCE teachers have to be remunerated by the school owners, many of the bodies who own schools are unable to pay high salaries. Consequently, many teachers have low academic qualifications, some being school dropouts, as well as being untrained; they cannot, therefore, effectively implement the recommended programs. As many ECCE centre owners are unable to establish and maintain the recommended PTRs, many preschools have, therefore, unacceptably high PTRs. The most hard-hit centres in this regard are parents’ and community centres, whose financial capacity to employ sufficient numbers of teachers is very low. In ECCE centres where salaries are met by the local government authorities, religious organizations and private entrepreneurs, much lower PTRs are maintained (Hyde and Kabiru 2003). In some countries, administrative units in the respective ministries have been set up to manage and facilitate the implementation of ECCE programs. Many of the officers deployed in such units have been given some orientation in ECCE activities. However, like the management of other government departments, such units experience problems with rapid staff turnover. Such staff turnover is often associated with low morale and motivation, which largely emanate from slow paces in effecting promotions and lack of systematic and continuous schemes of professional development of staff. In some countries, such units are inadequately staffed in terms of both numbers and specialization. Not only are more officers

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needed in order to cope with the stated responsibilities and rapidly increasing numbers of ECCE centres, but also the officers need further academic and professional training in the areas of child development, curriculum development, planning and management, assessment and evaluation, as well as research.

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Facilities and Equipment As a result of different financial capacities of the different ECCE sponsors, preschool facilities show a great variety in terms of quality and quantity. They also reflect the general awareness of the community, resource capacity, training of teachers and the enthusiasm of the promoters of ECCE centres. Generally, physical facilities range from permanent classrooms for private centres in the urban areas to mud classrooms, church halls and even under-the-tree arrangements in the rural areas. However, in some countries, through community mobilization and support by local government authorities, permanent classrooms have been constructed with improved ventilation in the rural areas. They have also constructed improved kitchens and provided learning materials. On the whole, the teaching and learning materials remain one of the greatest challenges for community-sponsored centres. Furniture is often unsuitable for young children, as it consists of desks meant for older children or even adults. Children are usually uncomfortable using such furniture, and it poses a serious threat to their health. They also have inadequate quantities of teaching and learning and play materials. This greatly contrasts with private ECCE centres, which seem to be over-supplied with both indoor and outdoor learning and play facilities. In many centres, basic facilities such as safe water, adequate play ground and toilets, however, remain a major challenge. (Hyde and Kabiru 2003; Wawire 2006). There is also the problem of ECCE programs operating as integrated projects, in which different aspects of the socio-economic development, such as health, nutrition, education as well as income-generating activities, are included. In this regard, adequate nutrition and healthcare would boost enrollment and retention in schools as well as the economic production in the community, while improved economic production, including food production, would lead to improved provision of services such as health and education. Indeed, some studies have demonstrated that where a linkage exists between ECCE and feeding programs and organized healthcare, such as immunization and visits to health clinics, there are improved enrollment and retention levels. This is especially the case where health and nutrition projects also benefit adults directly (Republic of Kenya and UNICEF 1992). However, an integrated approach has major implications for other sectors, such as health, nutrition and general community development. For the ECCE potential to be fully realized, the program is best organized in such a way that it has linkages with other activities that are vital for the development of the community, but which are the responsibility of other ministries such as health, social services and local government and which could prove difficult to coordinate. In this regard, ECCE centres need to incorporate various health and development activities, such as immunization, de-worming, growth monitoring and nutrition, adult education and community development.

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Curriculum and Instructional Materials In many countries, curricula guidelines developed by the national ECCE units aim at enabling ECCE programs to incorporate environmental, cultural and socio-economic features of the local areas. It is expected that there should be an emphasis on the use of locally available materials, the use of the mother tongue, and local folklore such as songs, stories, poems, games and material culture. This is intended to develop and implement a curriculum relevant to the way of life of the local communities to which children belong. The local curricula are meant to nurture affective, cognitive and physical abilities of the children through the transmission of culture and by working with a large array of materials. Success in this area is, however, hampered by large numbers of untrained teachers and parents’ demands that their children be prepared to undertake primary school work by largely being taught number work and the alphabet, as well as a foreign language such English, French and Portuguese.

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Transition to Primary Schools In most countries, preschool children are expected to enrol in the primary school at the age of six years. In many education systems, this transition is generally automatic, as preschool enrollments are quite low. Therefore, many primary schools do not select on the basis of preschool experience. The automatic transition also takes place where children attend preschool units attached to primary schools. In practice, there is a dichotomy between preprimary experience and entry into the first grade of the primary school. Few primary schools do require children’s full and systematic preschool records as the basis for determining their level of readiness for primary school work. The foundation laid by ECCE programs as physical, social, moral, cognitive and a healthy development, as well as the role of play in learning and others, are ignored and lost. In countries where preschool enrollments are relatively high and there is competition for entry into the best achieving primary schools, attendance at preschool and achievement become vital criteria for selection. This is usually a common feature in the urban areas, and head teachers normally employ a variety of selection mechanisms. The most common approach is the use of cognitive tests, either oral or written, to grade standard one entrants. The highest performers in the tests, which usually put more premium on literacy and numeracy, are selected. Some primary schools give attention to the level of physical maturation and socialization achieved in preschool, but in many cases, cognitive development is given more prominence.

SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY A number of measures need to be put in place to improve the quality of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). As already discussed, many countries have not established national frameworks for the financing, coordination and supervision of ECCE programs for very young children. Often, however, there is neither a clear lead ministry or agency for

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ECCE policy, nor a developed national policy with goals, regulations, quality standards and funding commitments. It is apparent that in the foreseeable future, the provision of ECCE in most countries will continue to rely on partnership among governments, parents, communities, the private sector and donor agencies. Therefore, the responsibility for coordination and management is best left with the government. With improved coordination and policy application of resources, there is a need for increased sensitization of parents and communities on the wide range of benefits that ECCE offers and the provision of resources, supervision and management. The quality of ECCE is generally compromised by the tendency to focus exclusively on providing an academic head-start at the expense of all other desirable and prescribed objectives. Children are being deprived of the real benefits of preschool education. In many cases, they are simply being subjected to drilling for standard one work. The potential benefits of ECCE are not fully appreciated by parents and communities. In this regard, there is an urgent need to control the mushrooming of unregistered ECCE centres to ensure that the stated objectives and goals are pursued and minimum standards are maintained. Such a move will also protect the public from undue financial exploitation and safeguard young children from bad treatment by unscrupulous entrepreneurs. The interaction between the child and the caretaker or teacher is the key determinant of the quality of ECCE programs. High preschool pupil/teacher ratios generally indicate insufficient numbers of teachers and poor quality teaching and learning processes. In many countries, the quality of ECCE is not only undermined by high pupil/teacher ratios, but also a high proportion of unqualified and untrained teachers. This is because most rural populations cannot afford to pay the salaries of qualified and trained teachers. There is, therefore, the need for the government to subsidize salaries of community-managed ECCE centres. Teachers also need to be trained in various aspects of simple childcare, health monitoring, nutrition and cognitive stimulation. The syllabus for such training needs to be basic, with an emphasis on practical competence rather than theory. The incidence of malnutrition and disease is especially high among preschool children. By the time such children reach school age, a large proportion are physically stunted (below normal in height), a condition frequently accompanied by impaired mental ability. Many of those who are malnourished and sick will never attend school. Of those who enrol, their attendance and academic achievement obviously suffer because of hunger and frequent bouts of diarrhea, malaria, fever and others. There is, therefore, potential for high returns in programmes of primary healthcare, including parental care, nutrition education for mothers, preschool education for children and school feeding programs. Governments should consider giving more attention to preschool child development, especially to nutrition and primary healthcare. School feeding programs that target those at greatest nutritional risk should provide the most effective means for improving children’s ability to learn. The food required for such programmes is often provided from external sources such as the World Food Program, in collaboration with government ministries/ departments.

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Early Childhood Care and Education

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is open to a diversity of terminology adopted by international agencies, and academics. Furthermore, definitions associated with ECCE are contentious. Most definitions of ECCE are child focused and stress the holistic nature of the concept, namely; recognizing cognitive, emotional and physical needs of children. Research evidence suggests that new entrants into primary schools are better prepared for the school environment and that they do make better use of school resources if they have been exposed to preschool education prior to their entry into the regular school system. Despite efforts to promote ECCE in Sub-Saharan African countries, access continues to be a significant challenge. Enrollment rates in preschools in the region are often below 10 percent, mainly due to limited facilities available and the effect of poverty. While there seems to be a common agreement on the need to increase access to preschools, this is not without tensions and dilemmas, including who should provide preschooling and how it can be financed. Some historical perspective provides an explanation of the present state of ECCE programs in many countries in which such programs are generally a post-independence development having seriously been limited by the colonial regimes. As the dual role of preschool centres as custodial-care providers as well as providers of education, spread from urban to rural areas, amidst the early 1960s of independence euphoria about the role of education in development, preschools came to be perceived by communities as avenues through which their children would get a ‘head start” in the competitive and examination-oriented education systems. Consequently, most preschool centres laid more emphasis on the academic aspects of ECCE, by concentrating more on the teaching of the alphabet and number work, a practice that has continued to the present. Although in many countries in the Sub-Saharan African region, preschool education is not part of the formal education system, governments do appreciate the value of preschool education, and the sector is contained in official policy documents. An examination of official policy documents from many countries reveals that goals and objectives are clearly stated and are generally similar. They define goals and objectives of ECCE centres as offering nonformal education that aims at not only providing an all-around development of children, but also preparing them for formal education. There is the compelling case for more and better ECCE programs as they help to reduce existing and future disadvantages faced by many children, through addressing their nutritional, health and educational needs. ECCE participation reduces the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting, improves cognitive development and contributes to increased school participation, completion and achievement. ECCE, in this, becomes the guarantor of children’s rights and can open the way to all the EFA goals. While ECCE programs in many countries have made considerable progress as a result of the policy strategies and guidelines, the quality of many programs is still unsatisfactory, especially with community-based ECCE centres. Among the key contributory factor to this situation is that the policy that makes parents and local communities responsible for the development and recurrent costs of ECCE centres has led to the establishment of many unregistered institutions with very poor facilities. Many of them operate at sub-standard

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levels, especially with regard to physical facilities, teaching and learning materials as well as teachers. A number of measures need to be put in place to improve the quality of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). Many countries should establish national frameworks for the financing, coordination and supervision of ECCE programs for very young children. There is an urgent need to control the mushrooming of unregistered ECCE centres to ensure that the stated objectives and goals are pursued and minimum standards are maintained. There is also the need for the governments to subsidize salaries of teachers in community-managed ECCE centres. Teachers also need to be trained in various aspects of simple childcare, healthmonitoring nutrition and cognitive stimulation. The syllabus for such training needs to be basic, with an emphasis on practical competence rather than theory. Above all, it is important to provide school feeding programs for ECCE centres.

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Chapter 4

PRIMARY EDUCATION

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INTRODUCTION This chapter provides a brief introduction on the development of primary education; structure of the school systems; goals and aims as well as curriculum of primary education; returns of primary education; access and participation; international influence; universal primary education; and issues of quality education. In many African countries, primary education represents the most open cycle of the education systems, as it is the only formal education that is accessed by a majority of the school children. On the whole, primary education is generally expected to provide knowledge that is essential for an individual, household, community and national development as well as providing the foundation for further formal education and training. The primary education level is perhaps the oldest sector of many education systems in Africa. It was introduced at the dawn of the colonial period. At the onset, religious organizations, both Christian and Muslim, introduced modern education as part of their efforts to convert Africans to the new religions. Gradually, encouraged by the need to train semi-skilled and skilled labour for the colonial administration and economy, the colonial governments began to collaborate with the religious bodies in the development of education systems. During the colonial era, the governments got involved and played an increasingly important role in the formulation of education policies, management and financing. However, in some countries, reflecting on the beliefs and values of the regimes of the time, colonial education was characterized by a number of features that epitomized the political and socio-economic structures. These included racial segregation into distinct categories. The type of education offered to Africans was different from European education. While European education was geared to the development of the whole personality of the learner and the colonial state, African education was generally inferior and oriented towards the acquisition of practical skills, such as agriculture, carpentry and masonry and moral practices based on the new religions. As a matter of fact, some of the current misgivings about the teaching and learning of practical subjects are a consequence of the colonial legacy. Furthermore, while the governments provided for the education of the migrant children, inadequate government grants were made towards African education. Most of the expenditure on African education was met through resources provided by religious organizations, grants from the local native authorities and communities. The low level of government contribution

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towards African education greatly limited its expansion. Schools were generally located in the areas directly exposed to missionary and colonial penetration, with most other areas remaining untouched by modern Western education. To a great extent, the current pattern of disparity in educational participation in many of the Sub-Saharan African countries is a reflection of the colonial legacy. It was as a result of the weaknesses of the colonial education systems that helped to shape the development of education in some countries following the attainment of independence. Such development included the following: due to the African dissatisfaction with segregated and limited colonial provision, education became a central issue in the nationalist struggles for independence. The achievement of independence was expected to lead to the abolition of racial segregation and a rapid expansion of education for Africans. This was seen as a necessary step in reducing the inequalities associated with the colonial rule. Emanating from the perception that superior European education had contributed to the high status of the colonial ruling class, after independence, great emphasis was placed on an education that offered learners full intellectual growth. It was commonly believed that such an education was the gateway to high status positions in the modern sector of the economy. This is the antecedent of the current high social demand for education, which manifests itself in the expectation of the highest academic level denoting the best success. Another important legacy of the manner in which colonial regimes provided primary education was that their unwillingness or inability to fully offer African education laid the foundation of the partnerships that currently provide for primary school education. As in the colonial period, religious organizations and parents have continued to meet some of the basic costs of education. Under the aegis of the spirit of traditional communal self-help, enhanced by colonial deprivation, community support for schools continues to be a key factor in the development of education.

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STRUCTURE OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS The structures of primary school systems vary considerably between the countries. Generally, they vary between five to eight years. In some countries, pupils spend four years in the lower primary school, which includes sub-standards A and B and standards I and II; two years in the middle primary school, namely, standards III and IV; and two years in the upper primary school of standards V and VI. Some countries have two stages of the lower primary of standards I-IV and the upper primary of standards V-VII or VIII, thus providing eight years of primary education. In most of the French-speaking countries, primary education consists of three two-year cycles, which are called, cours preparatoire, cours elementaire and cours moyen. In some English speaking countries, a reform has been undertaken in which a high proportion of primary school pupils continue their education to the secondary school, embracing forms one and two. In many countries, primary education is no longer considered as a selective process in which pupils are promoted by having to pass annual examinations. Some, however, still retain a national or regional competitive selection examination for pupils to qualify from lower to the upper primary school. The retention of such examinations is believed to enhance the provision of quality education, although in many cases, these kinds of examinations tend to seriously undermine enrollment and access to primary education.

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GOALS AND AIMS OF PRIMARY EDUCATION

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The goals and aims of education in many countries are embedded in the national philosophies, which include, among other things, fostering social justice, attaining freedom from want, eradicating ignorance and disease, promotion of human dignity, freedom of conscience, creating opportunities for all citizens, promoting national unity, equitable distribution of wealth and many others. However, among the major considerations in the provision of education at the primary school stage is offering children the opportunity to continuously meet their basic needs. This includes opportunities for physical development and recreation, learning manual skills and providing facilities in simple creative arts for development and satisfaction of their curiosity about the immediate environment. It also needs to provide training in the basic skills of reading, writing and number work and opportunities for the child to become sufficiently familiar with these processes and to draw on them freely and fluently towards the end of the primary school course. Most children will want to become proficient in these skills and the school has, in any event, a clear responsibility to society to ensure that they do so. Another most important aspect of education at the primary school stage is the development of acceptable standards of behaviour and a sense of social responsibility. Children’s ideas of what is good behaviour will obviously change very much during the time they are in the primary school, but in every school, frequent opportunities arise for expressing these general ideals of conduct in a practical way, and it is a major responsibility of the primary school to discover such opportunities and use them in teaching (Burns 1965). All the above factors and others are generally included among the educational goals and objectives of primary education of many countries in Africa, and they are implicit in the statements of aims set out in official documents, and, among others, include the following: • • • • • • • • • •

To impart permanent literacy, numeracy and manipulative skills; To develop self-expression and utilization of the senses; To develop logical thinking and critical judgement; To lay a foundation for further education, training and work; To develop awareness and understanding of the environment; To develop the learner’s physical, mental and spiritual capacities; To inculcate appreciation and respect for the dignity of labour; To develop positive values and attitudes towards society; To develop sound standards of individual conduct and behaviour; and To develop a lively curiosity leading to the desire for knowledge not confined to the immediate environment.

A number of clarifications need to be made regarding statements of objectives or aims. First and foremost, since the realization of objectives is not wholly dependent on what happens in school, it is difficult to measure the extent to which they are actually realized. Secondly, since in most education systems parents and society at large tend to put more emphasis on cognitive development as measured in public examinations, which is perceived to be directly influencing the learner’s future material production, less premium is put on other objectives. This emphasis has the effect of detracting from the importance of developing

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the whole personality of the child. Thirdly, strategies developed as a basis for achieving the objectives could be too ambitious in that such strategies do not fully take into consideration resource constraints.

CURRICULUM In response to the stated objectives, curricula have been designed to provide children with the needs of childhood. Four major fields of experience could be distinguished in the curriculum at the earliest stage, each of which is likely to be progressively differentiated as the child moves up the school. These include training in language; an introduction to the main elements of human experience, history, geography, the beginnings of science and mathematics; opportunities for the learning of manual skills; and expression in the creative arts and physical training. As the child moves up the school, subjects become distinctly differentiated into geography, history or general knowledge and civics. Regular instruction in foreign languages and other subjects are introduced, which are intended to develop the child’s artistic sensibilities and manual dexterity, as well as to provide practical elements in the course. In terms of teaching time, these expanded interests are allowed for by either increasing the number of lessons in the week or the length of each lesson and sometimes both. As recommended in the Final Report of the UNESCO Conference of African States in Addis Ababa (UNECA/UNESCO 1961), the primary school curriculum should therefore broadly cover the following areas:

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Table 4.1. Curricula of primary education Lower Primary School Religious Education Reading, Writing and Language Foreign Language Health Education Arithmetic/Number Work Nature Study/Environmental Studies Elementary Science Social Studies Art and Crafts Music Physical Education Agriculture

Upper Primary School Religious Education Local Language Foreign Language Civics (Social Studies) Geography History General Knowledge Mathematics Nature Studies/Environmental Studies Elementary Science Health Education Agriculture Art and Crafts/Handwork Music Physical Education

On this basis, the following curricula/subjects of study are followed in many countries in the Sub-Saharan African region. • A language for everyday communication; • A language of wide currency;

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Manual activities; Fundamentals of the arithmetical process; An introduction to the study of nature and to the basis of citizenship and moral values; An elementary knowledge of the human body and how it works; and The development of healthy habits and the right attitude to nutrition.

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RETURNS OF PRIMARY EDUCATION Education is often seen as a key factor in economic development. Many researchers have identified the enormous positive benefits to families and a nation’s economic development when all children participate in primary education. Research indicates that primary education, besides generating substantial positive benefits to the students themselves (private benefits), generates benefits to society (social benefits) that exceed by far the private benefits (Psacharopoulos 1994; Rosenzwig 1995). Education of mothers has a strong impact on health, family welfare, and fertility. Studies show that there is a strong correlation between primary educated mothers and reduced fertility, reduced infant and maternal mortality and enhanced family welfare (Benavot 1989; Rosenzweig 1995; Stromquist 1999). The child of a Zambian mother with primary education, for example, has a 25 percent better chance of survival than a child of a mother with no education (UNESCO 2001). Other benefits of primary education at the national level include increased agricultural productivity, earnings, and overall economic productivity for the larger economy (Benavot 1989; Colclough 1982; Glewwe 1996; Lloyd and Blanc 1996; Psacharopoulos 1994). In Uganda, for example, four years of primary education raises a farmer’s output by 7 percent (UNESCO 2001). In India, a study showed that literate farmers produce higher yields per acre because they have more access to agricultural and cooperative training, seek more contact with agricultural extension workers, and are better able to implement new ideas and to use existing facilities (Floro and Wolf 1990). There has also been evidence suggesting a strong link between primary education and informal training programs, because it broadens participants’ horizons, raises their aspirations and familiarizes them with modern concepts and institutions. Basic skills are therefore a necessary condition if further non-formal training is to be successful (Floro and Wolf 1990). One social return that is often not given prominence, however, is that of the skills gained in school that tend to enhance more social interaction. It is generally assumed that the most important skills that girls gain from primary education are literacy and numeracy. In a study with rural women in Zimbabwe, they stated that “Education is very important these days. Without it I cannot even read the signs on the road. Also education will help us when we are working and speaking in cooperatives.” The study also found that lack of any formal education clearly influenced how women perceived themselves. “Without education, you are nothing in this world.” In Nigeria, Callaway found that one of the primary impacts of education for girls in the society was increased contact outside their households and opportunity to find social reinforcement for self-conceptions and aspirations that they had developed (Callaway 1980).

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On the overall, research indicates that six years of primary education is needed to reach sustainable levels of literacy and numeracy necessary for individuals to improve their lives and participate effectively in civil society (Colclough 1982). Research conducted in the OECD countries revealed that one extra year of education leads to an increase in an individual’s output per capita of between 4 and 7 percent (Colclough and Lewin 1993). In this regard, primary education is a very important ingredient in the economic and social development of a country. Some studies, which have measured empirically the rates of return (RORE) to education, have consistently revealed primary education to have the highest private and social rates of return (Colclough 1982; Glewwe 1996; Psacharopoulos 1994; Rosenzweig 1995). As far as African education is concerned, the World Bank has emphasized the rate of return on education (World Bank 2000; Psacharopoulos 1991) to determine the funding priorities in education. The RORE has represented an attempt to use a market compatible rationale of state expenditures on education. The World Bank has concluded that the social RORE on primary, secondary, and tertiary education are 24 percent, 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively (Mkandawire and Saludo 1999). Since higher education offers a lower RORE, the argument is that it is not worth supporting. This conclusion, in part, explains the World Bank’s current emphasis on basic education to the neglect of secondary and tertiary education in many African and other developing countries. However, based on the findings of many researches, economic efficiency demands that primary education should be the key priority in public resource allocation to the education sector. This argument, coupled with the need to achieve equity, strongly justifies the need for universal primary education in the less industrialized countries (Mutangadura and Lamb 2003).

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ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION IN PRIMARY EDUCATION Considering the importance of primary education in national development, it would be expected that many countries would have launched programs to increase access leading to achieving universal primary education. This has, however, not been the case with many of the African countries. They reflect enormous differences in enrollments and participation, with some countries having achieved close to universal provision, while others continue to lag behind. The slow move at universalisation of primary education in Sub-Saharan African countries can partly be attributed to post-independence strategies. Following the achievement of independence in the 1960s, development strategies were strongly influenced by the human capital and modernization theories and the need to replace the upper- and middle-level foreign personnel who directed administration and commerce since the colonial period, as already discussed. Consequently, there was more emphasis on the expansion of secondary and tertiary education as compared to primary education. Despite that emphasis, primary education was allowed to expand at a relatively steady rate in most of the countries. Gross primary school enrollment was only 36 percent in 1960, half the rates of Asia and Latin America at the time. Between 1960 and 1983, striving to meet the needs of independence and economic growth, the region quintupled student enrollment in schools at all the levels to 63 million, a higher growth rate than in any other developing region.

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Among the key underlying factors affecting primary school enrollment rates are economic ones. Researches indicate that poverty is one of the most important economic factors accounting for the low participation. Many households, especially in the rural areas, are too poor to afford direct and opportunity costs of their children to enrol in school (Colclough and Lewin 1993). As economists tend to demonstrate, economic development normally boosts educational growth. In this regard, countries that have more resources to allocate to education, both as an investment and as a consumption good, achieve a higher participation in education as shown by evidence from more industrialized countries (Lee 1988; Shultz 1987). Although it is generally difficult to pin down the relationship between economic growth and school participation in the African context by the per capita gross national product (GNP), it is apparent that countries such as Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, having the lowest levels of NER, also have a lower GNP, while Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and others in that category have a higher NER as well as GNP. In addition, among the economic factors, studies on debt and the education sector show that unsustainable debt continues to stifle many low-income countries, diverting resources away from investment in basic education, especially when the debt is associated with requirements of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). There is now a considerable body of research showing the negative impact of the structural adjustment programmes on the lives of the majority of the population in countries where SAPs have been implemented (Colclough and Lewin 1993; Cornia 1990; Graham 1992; Williams 1999). A combination of rising prices of commodities, lower real income and cutbacks of government spending in the social sector tend to lead to a serious deterioration in living conditions of the poor majority of these countries. It is reckoned that governments play an important role in the provision primary education. A common feature in most countries that have a high GNP is that they spent a high public expenditure on education both as a proportion of the total GDP and total expenditure. In this regard, educational outcomes tend to improve with improvements in educational expenditures. In this context, SAPs, which require governments to cut back social expenditures, actually act as a brake on educational expenditures. For example, a ten-nation study carried out by UNICEF showed that for African and Latin American countries that implemented SAPs, social indicators such as enrollments in education, infant mortality rates, children’s nutritional status, levels of unemployment, and numbers living in poverty had all worsened during the adjustment period (Cornia 1990). The introduction of cost sharing in school fees was reported to lead to a fall in enrollment rates in Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Zambia (Appleton 1999). A review of 21 African countries that adopted SAPs and ten that did not revealed that 62 percent of those countries with SAPs decreased their educational expenditures as a proportion of the GNP. This was in contrast to only 20 percent of countries that did not embark on SAPs (Stromquist 1999). Other studies also indicate that reductions in educational budgets caused by SAPs in the 1980s, coupled with increases in school fees, resulted in decreases in enrollment rates in both primary and secondary schooling in African countries ( Lee 1988; Lloyd and Blanc 1996). A World Bank study and publication, Improving Primary Education in Developing Countries by M. Lockheed and A. Verspoor (1991) attributed the decline in net enrollments in primary schools in 15 out of the 25 adjusting countries during the 1980s to the reduction in public expenditure on education arising from SAPs. The publication, for example, showed that in Nigeria, the impact of adjustment on education had contributed to a decline in primary

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school enrollments from 14.7 million in 1983, to 12.5 million in 1986. Furthermore, relations between the Ministry of Education and teachers had also soured, the result of which led to some teachers leaving the job, while others were fired. The budget categories for educational materials, building and facilities had virtually disappeared (Lockheed and Verspoor 1991).

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INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE The General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the provisions of which include the right of everyone to education, which “shall be free at least in the elementary and fundamental stages.” To promote the right of everyone to education in Africa in line with the UDHR, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation in conjunction with UN Economic Commission for Africa sponsored an African regional conference on education, held in Addis Ababa in 1961. The conference, which was attended by ministers of education, set the goal for the achievement of universal compulsory 6 year primary education in Africa by 1980 (UN Economic Commission for Africa/UNESCO 1961). The growing populations, coupled with the mounting debt burden and economic decline as well as SAPs, caused enrollments to stagnate and educational quality to decline in much of the region in the early 1980s. Between 1980 and 1990, for example, the proportion of primary school-aged children in school declined from 78 to 70 percent. Comparative data from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East indicated that in 1991, both the gross primary and secondary enrollment ratios were significantly lower in the Sub-Saharan region than in other developing regions. And the net primary enrollment ratio for the region had declined from 68 percent in 1970, to 48 percent in 1991 (World Bank 1994), a clear indication of the large number of children who remained outside the formal education system. The state of basic education in the less industrialized countries in general and Africa in particular led to the convening of the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in March, 1990. The overall aim of the organizers for the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, was, therefore, to get developing countries and donors to turn round the downward trend of falling enrollments, falling completion rates and poor learning outcomes within primary education in the developing countries. The aim was targeted to be reached by the beginning of the new millennium, namely, by the year 2000 (McGrath 1999). The conference was convened jointly by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the World Bank. The conference was cosponsored by an additional 18 governments and non-governmental organizations and was hosted by the Royal Government of Thailand. During the conference presentations and deliberations, a number of the Southern countries, including Sub-Saharan African ones, were signatory to a recommendation that targeted debt as the main problem preventing poor countries from meeting their citizen’s basic needs, including education, and placed responsibility on the North to take the initiative. A much stronger proposal on the same is said to have been made by the African Association for Literacy and Adult Education (AALAE) and the Association for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), supported by a number of other NGOs. This, too, placed the responsibility

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squarely on the North for the conditions that constrain the South, leading to economic recession whose consequence had been sharp declines in educational expenditure, and hence school participation rates (Brocke-Utne 2000). The main consensus by many of the Southern countries and NGOs for increasing school participation and completion, as well as the quality of education in the South, was that the issue of the debt crisis needed to be addressed by the North. The World Bank and other aid agencies, however, maintained that the debt burden and structural adjustments were in large measure not responsible for the general deterioration of the education sector in the South during the 1980s, suggesting that Southern delegates were “confused” about the cause of their problem. The structural adjustment was said to be the medicine and not the cause of the disease, and that Africa’s economy was poised to improve during the 1990s as a result of the SAPs. African and Latin American delegates repeatedly expressed doubts about these kinds of predictions and were emphatic that charging school fees caused parents to pull out their children from school, bringing down the enrollment rate and that increasing class size and introducing double shifts affected the quality of teaching, causing a drop in the literacy rate (Brock-Utne 2000). As a result of the intransigence by the donor community, the debt burden, which was at the centre of the economic crisis in the South, was not given much attention in the final conference text, let alone an acknowledgement of the responsibility of the North for the bad state of the social sector in the South. This meant that despite the many noises on the need for partnerships in promoting increased participation in primary education, it was going to be “business as usual,” with donor agencies determining what was to constitute “Education for All.” The conference, therefore, turned out to be another fashionable jamboree, and, consequently, even accomplishing some of the minimum conference recommendations proved very difficult. Among the key targets set to be achieved were as follows:

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•

• •

•

•

•

Expansion of early childhood care and developmental activities, including family and community interventions, especially for the poor, disadvantaged and disabled children; Universal access to, and completion of, primary education (or whatever higher level of education is considered as “basic”) by the year 2000; Improvement in learning achievement such that an agreed percentage of an appropriate age cohort (e.g., 80 percent of 14-year-olds) attains or surpasses a defined level of necessary learning achievement; Reduction of the adult illiteracy rate (the appropriate age group to be determined in each country) to, say, one-half its 1990 level by the year 2000, with sufficient emphasis on female literacy to significantly reduce the current disparity between male and female illiteracy rates; Expansion of provisions of basic education and training in other essential skills required by youth and adults, with program effectiveness assessed in terms of behavioural changes and impacts on health. employment and productivity; and Increased acquisition by individuals and families of the knowledge, skills and values required for better living and sound and sustainable development, made available through all education channels including the mass media, other forms of modern and

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura traditional communication, and social action, with effectiveness assessed in terms of behavioural change (World Conference on Education for All 1990).

Mobilising Resources for EFA The amount of money the Sub-Saharan African countries devoted to education illustrated their commitment to the development of this sector and is explained in part by the progress made during the 1990s, following the Jomtien conference. At the same time, however, due to the declining economies in real terms, many countries witnessed a decrease in their governments’ contributions and allowed or encouraged other partners, especially faith-based bodies, communities, donors and NGOs to make contributions under their supervision and control. With a focus on international funding and technical assistance agencies as they related to education in general and basic education in particular, however, a study by Bennell and Furlong (1997) seemed to indicate that:

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In real terms, total aid for the education sector from bilateral agencies was lower in the mid1990s than before the World Conference on Education for All. The additional external resources that have been and are likely to be forthcoming will be insufficient to meet the basic Education for All objectives by the year 2000.

Focusing on the World Bank in particular—which seemed to have increased its resources for primary education, for example, the picture for support with regard to regions of the world like Africa, whose needs were high—the study makes a very interesting conclusion. It is observed that while the overall proportion of lending for education had increased, its relative share for Africa had declined from 11.2 percent in 1990, to 4.8 percent in 1996. Similarly, it declined from 11.6 percent to 8.1 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, and remained about the same in South Asia from 16.6 percent in 1990, to 17 percent in 1996 (Bennell and Furlong 1997). It is on the basis of this kind of funding level that McGrath (1999) makes the following conclusion with regard to the realization of the Jomtien 2000 objectives: Perhaps the most telling indicator of the failure to deliver on Jomtien goals is the fact that the development community was by 1995 pledging itself to the goals of “universal primary education by 2015” and the end to gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005. Thus, five years after Jomtien, the time-scale for education for all was to be extended from ten to twenty-five years, even in its narrower form excluding education for youths and adults (McGrath 1999).

The World Education Forum, which was held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000, was sponsored by five convening agencies, namely, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank. Participants included delegates from 164 nations as well as representatives of the sponsoring agencies, NGOs and other agencies and groups with interest in global education issues. It was noted that while the World Conference on Education for All in 1990 had set the goal of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) by the year 2000, and while some progress had been made in some regions, the goal had not been realized by all the countries.

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In the final deliberations, the World Education Forum adopted a Framework of Action committing governments to “the achievement of education for all (EFA) goals and targets for every citizen and for every society.” The forum characterized the Dakar Framework as “a collective commitment to action” specified mechanisms at the national, regional and international levels to coordinate the global push for education for all. The participants also committed themselves to finding the financial support necessary to assure that “no countries seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by lack of resources.” While citing the significant progress made towards education for all, the Framework added that it was unacceptable that in the year 2000, more than 113 million children had no access to primary education, that 880 million adults were illiterate, that gender discrimination persisted, and many children and adults were denied access to the skills and knowledge necessary to fully exploit their potential.

Goals and Strategies The Forum participants collectively committed themselves to attaining six specific goals related to EFA. The goals were as follows: •

•

•

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• •

•

Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education of participants in their societies (UNESCO 2000), especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children; Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality; Ensuring that learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs; Achieving a 50 percent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults; Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality; and Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all, so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy and essential life skills.

In order to achieve these six goals, the delegates pledged to collaborate on a number of broad strategies. These included an over-arching plan to “mobilize strong national and international political commitment for education for all, develop national action plans and enhance significantly investment in basic education.” Another broad strategy was to “create safe, healthy, inclusive and equitably resourced educational environment conducive to excellence in learning, with clearly defined levels of achievement for all.” Specific strategies included linking education for all policies to anti-poverty and development efforts, collaboration with institutions of civil society, and devising of new and improved educational accountability systems (UNESCO 2000).

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Resource Mobilisation The Framework of Action acknowledged that many countries lacked the financial resources to achieve such goals within an acceptable timeframe and observed that “New financial resources, preferably in the form of grants and concessional assistance, had therefore to be mobilized by bilateral and multilateral funding agencies, such as the World Bank, regional development banks and the private sector.” In order to carry out the pledge that no countries “seriously committed to education for all” would be kept from achieving this goal because of lack of resources, the Framework called for a global initiative aimed at developing the strategies and mobilizing the resources needed to provide effective support to national efforts (UNESCO 2000).

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UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION (UPE) Universal Primary Education (UPE) means that all children of primary-school age participate in the school system and complete primary school. This requires initial enrollment at the officially prescribed age, regular attendance and the progression of most pupils from one grade to another at the appropriate time, so that everyone completes the curriculum. Such results are possible only if the school system has the capacity to accommodate the entire cohorts of children and deliver decent, quality teaching. Timely completion of primary schooling with a reasonable degree of mastery of the curriculum, notably basic cognitive skills such as literacy and numeracy, which appear to be necessary for primary education to yield expected benefits over the long run, are obviously a condition for successful participation in post-primary education. As far as UPE is concerned, quantitative and qualitative objectives are inseparable. For example, improving school quality is one way to increase demand for education and improve school participation. The returns accruing to children from a given amount of schooling will also be crucially affected by its quality (UNESCO 2004). In line with the Addis Ababa conference, many African countries embarked on the provision of universal primary education through the remission of school fees at the primary school level. In Kenya, school fees remission started in 1974 though 1978, in Tanzania in 1977, Nigeria in 1976, when the country recorded an impressive economic performance due to the boom in crude petroleum oil revenue. Most of the countries that introduced fee remission experienced massive enrollments, as many children from disadvantaged groups took advantage of the policy intervention to send their children to school. However, the UPE schemes began to suffer serious setbacks as the capitation grants began to dry up due to the governments’ drastic cutbacks in expenditures on social services occasioned by the severe economic recession. Among the effects of the budget cuts was the introduction of costrecovery and containment measures in education, including the reintroduction of school fees in primary education (Obasi 2000) In response to the globalised framework of Jomtien and Dakar as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for achieving universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, many Sub-Saharan African governments have abolished school fees in public primary schools under the banner of the free primary education policy. In addition, increased access to good

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quality education is seen as an important means of achieving many of the other development goals. Following the introduction of free primary education, many countries have experienced robust increases in primary education enrollments. Despite such enrollment increases, especially over the last decade, many countries have fallen short of achieving the goal of primary schooling for all in both quantitative and qualitative goals (Kadzamira and Rose 2003; Sawamura 2005). The evidence of actual impact of UPE is mixed. While some studies indicate that the UPE policy effectively improved access to primary education for children of poor families by removing tuition for public primary education (Deiniger 2003), others show that various fees are still charged under the UPE policy (Suzuki 2002). There are now serious questions being raised about the viability of UPE approaches by many of the African governments and whether or not the policy is promoted largely for purposes of political expediency. It is contended that governments of fragile states find the expansion of primary education to be a very attractive policy, mainly because it signals mass opportunity and symbolises modern statehood (Fuller 1991). Studies of earlier UPE interventions in Africa show that they have been used for political exchange, not only through their symbolic value, but also through the process of resource allocation (Abernethy 1969; Cowan 1970; Urwick 1983). Political exchange has often taken precedence over professional requirements, as there is a high degree of dependence on external assistance as donor contributions account for a greater proportion of the funds provided for UPE. Such dependence clearly demonstrates a high degree of lack of sustainability. In a majority of cases, the promise of the abolition of primary school fees as a means of increasing access to education is normally high on the agenda of most of the political parties during the general elections. Once in power, the party that wins the elections immediately fulfills its pledges. It is also important that FPE plays an important role in the elections, since success in increasing access to primary schooling through the abolition of fees is normally highly visible and also guarantees financial support of international agencies. By contrast, on other issues such as food security, which would, perhaps, be more crucial for the immediate livelihoods of the poor, are less visible, and its attainment more elusive (Kadzamira and Rose 2003). Low levels of education are a cause and an outcome of poverty, both at the level of the household and community. Under the UPE policy, governments pledge to provide resources for schools and ensure the quality and equity of education. Schools normally receive a capitation grant based on the number of pupils in the school and subsequently spend the grant by following some guidelines (Nishimura et al. 2006). Some empirical studies now show that even under the UPE policies, the remaining private costs of education are still impediments for enrollment and equity as well as the quality of education. The UPE policy normally subsidises tuition fees only, leaving other direct and indirect costs to be borne by parents and communities. Households, therefore, still incur substantial direct costs of sending children to school, which often means that the disadvantaged groups are unable to receive the full benefits of UPE (Avenstrup et al. 2004). In many cases, while governments are supposed to provide certain materials, these are often insufficient such that households have to supplement the supply from the governments. In addition, studies show that despite the abolition of fees, schools continue to request contributions to meet some essentials as well as labour and materials for school construction and maintenance. These additional cost turn out to be obstacles for the disadvantaged groups to attend school (Kadzamira and Rose 2003). Considering that the provision of UPE has been also a priority of donor agencies, it has been possible to implement FPE as donors have provided the much needed financial support

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to the programs through the construction of classrooms and schools in some of the countries as well as the provision of teaching and learning materials and training of teachers. However, issues of sustainability have been raised if governments’ and donors’ priorities shift, as they often do. Fears have been expressed that if several of the donors to education decide to withdraw, the FPE intervention would collapse (Bernbaum et al. 1998). There have been already indications of large amounts spent on education in some countries not being sustainable, with the share of the budget allocated to education in many countries showing a decline as expenditures on other sectors show an increase (World Bank 2001).

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ENROLLMENT Enrollment is the most basic element of school participation. It is also the most easily measurable indicator of progress towards UPE. It is first distinguished by the gross enrollment ratio (GER). The gross enrollment ratio is the ratio of the number of children enrolled at a given level (e.g. in primary school), whatever their age, to the number in the age range officially corresponding to that level (e.g. ages 6 to 12 for primary). The GER is expressed as a percentage. It can exceed 100 percent, because of early or, more frequently, delayed enrollment, as well as grade repetition, which results in children other than those of the official ages being enrolled at a given level. GERs measure the overall capacity of school systems in purely quantitative terms, though wide differences in levels of resources per pupil often make broad comparisons difficult. It is estimated that 40 percent of the number of new entrants in the Sub-Saharan Africa region is a key achievement reflected in the GERs as shown in Table 4.4. Policy measures to facilitate access to education for the most disadvantaged, for example the abolition of school fees in the early 2000s, explain to a great extent the improvements in access in most countries. Some of the countries could approach universal enrollment in grade one by the year 2010, a condition for attaining universal primary completion by 2015. On the other hand, the levels and trends in access to school point to the difficulty of achieving UPE in a number of countries with GER below 70 percent. A country’s distance from UPE appears most clearly in terms of the net enrollment ratio (NER), the share of children of official primary school age who are actually enrolled in primary schools. The NER only takes into account enrolled children who belong to the official age range (e.g. 6 to 12 year olds enrolled in primary school), regardless of whether younger or older children are also enrolled; thus it cannot exceed 100 percent. As a measure of coverage of children in the age range officially associated with a given level of education, the NER comes closer to being an indicator of school quality. UPE implies a NER at or near 100 percent. A high GER is not necessarily a sign of progress towards UPE if the NER is much lower (UNESCO Publishing 2004).

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Table 4.2. Gross enrollment ratio (GER) %

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Country Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Chad Congo Cote d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles South Africa Swaziland Togo Uganda United Republic of Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe

Gross enrollment ratio 1999 Total Male Female 74 89 59 102 101 102 44 52 36 61 68 54 89 98 80 119 122 116 64 81 47 50 51 48 70 80 60 48 51 46

Gross enrollment ratio 2005 Total Male Female 96 107 85 106 107 105 58 64 51 85 91 78 117 126 107 108 111 105 77 92 62 88 91 84 72 80 63 62 69 54

57 59 132 80 76 57 93 105 94 139 51 105 69 104 29 93 99 106 61 116 114 100 112 126 64

62 72 132 86 79 68 94 101 95 143 59 105 79 103 34 102 100 108 66 117 116 102 127 132 64

51 45 132 74 72 45 92 110 92 136 43 106 59 105 23 83 98 105 57 116 113 98 96 120 64

64 100 130 81 94 81 112 132 138 122 66 102 103 99 47 103 120 134 78 116 104 107 100 119 110

71 107 130 79 94 88 114 132 141 121 74 102 111 99 54 111 119 135 80 115 106 111 108 119 112

57 94 129 84 93 74 110 131 136 124 59 102 94 100 39 95 121 132 77 116 102 104 92 119 109

75 98

78 100

72 97

111 96

114 97

108 95

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura Table 4. 3. Net enrollment ratio (NER) percentage

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Country Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Cape Verde Chad Cote d’Ivoire Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe Senegal South Africa Swaziland Togo United Republic of Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe

Net enrollment ratio 1999 Total Male Female 50 59 40 78 77 80 35 41 29 99 99 98 52 64 40 53 61 46 36 39 34 33 38 28 67 71 62 57 58 56 44 51 36 64 63 64 60 56 63 63 63 63 98 99 97 40 46 34 91 90 91 52 58 46 73 70 76 24 29 20 61 67 56 85 85 84 52 55 48 93 92 94 75 74 75 79 89 70 48 47 49

Net enrollment ratio 2005 Total Male Female 78 86 40 85 85 84 45 50 40 90 91 89 61 72 50 56 62 50 47 51 43 68 71 66 77 77 77 69 69 70 66 70 61 79 78 79 87 84 89 92 93 92 95 92 97 51 56 45 95 94 96 77 81 74 72 69 74 40 46 33 68 72 64 97 97 96 69 70 67 87 87 87 80 79 80 78 84 72 98 99 97

63 81

89 82

64 81

62 82

89 81

89 82

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

It needs to be emphasized that progress in enrollment is rarely uniform across all sub national divisions within countries. For example, while children in the urban areas are enrolled, this is not generally the case within the rural settings. Households in rural, remote or scattered communities, or those located in large distances from urban populations centres have less access to primary education. They also tend to be poorer and more socially marginalized than other groups, with less access to good quality basic education. However, not all children who grow up in the cities benefit from the “urban advantage” in education. In many contexts, the educational participation and completion rates of children living in slums, or belonging to poor families living in non-slum urban areas, are considerably lower than

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those of other urban children. A UN-HABITAT analysis of urban survey data found that NERs in the United Republic of Tanzania increased in both rural and non-slum urban, but decreased in slum areas. Similar developments were reported in Zambia and Zimbabwe (UNHABITAT 2006). Poverty significantly reduces the likelihood of school participation. In many countries, children from poor households, whether urban or rural, attend school less than children from more affluent homes (Smits et al. 2007). Achieving UPE implies addressing such inequalities. In principle, disparities tend to be lowest in countries that are nearest to universal enrollment (UNESCO 2007).

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PUPIL PROGRESSION To reach universal enrollment in primary schools is necessary for UPE, though not in itself sufficient. UPE also requires universal or, more realistically, near-universal completion of the primary curriculum, which can be achieved only if schools are of sufficient quality. Assessing the progression of pupils through primary schooling provides information on further quantitative aspects of the school system as well as assessing quality. One key issue in assessing progression rates is the age at which children are enrolled in school. While primary education is officially meant to start at age 5 or 6 in most countries, late enrollment is quite common throughout Africa, for a variety of reasons, such as children’s participation in family economic activities and long distances to school. Late enrollment means children complete their primary education at an age when constraints on school participation become stronger than during early childhood; more opportunities or pressure to work or get married and more limitations on girls’ mobility may reduce the probability of completing primary school. Furthermore, late mastery of basic cognitive skills provides weaker foundations for further learning (UNESCO Publishing 2004). Once children are enrolled, it is important to ensure that they remain in school long enough to complete the curriculum and acquire basic skills. For a variety of school and or family-related reasons, large numbers of children drop out of school, or more accurately are “pushed out,” for example, by high costs of schooling or by a child-unfriendly environment in the classroom or “drawn out” to participate in household economic activities before completing the primary school. These children are likely to be those who find it quite difficult to cope with school and whose achievement levels are particularly low. The returns they have from a couple of years of school attendance could be insignificant compared with those who complete primary schooling. The survival rate varies quite considerably in most countries, but it is especially low in the Sub-Saharan African region. It is estimated below 60 percent for many of the countries for which data is available (UNESCO 2004). Grade repetition is among the key indicators of pupils’ progression rate, but is difficult to interpret because it depends on the policy as some countries automatically promote pupils to the next grade, while others apply stringent achievement criteria. There is also the pervasive problem of obtaining accurate information on children who repeat in many school systems. Where grade repetition is possible, its incidence is also a measure of the proportion of children who do not master the curriculum, partly because school quality is inadequate. A high level of grade repetition is a sign of a dysfunctional school system, often exacerbating high drop outs due to poor school environments and family factors (UNESCO 2004).

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QUALITY OF EDUCATION As discussed previously, the UPE policies in many countries seem to have reduced an economic burden of primary education for the disadvantaged groups as well as decreasing delayed enrollment, hence boosting increased participation. Consequently, UPE policies have had positive impacts on the poor in improving access to schooling. In this respect, UPE policies have contributed significantly to access and equity in primary education. However, the push for UPE in many countries has come to be identified with increasing deterioration of the quality of primary education right from the provision of physical facilities, teaching and learning materials, deployment of teachers, performance and transition from primary to secondary education (Sawamura and Sifuna 2008). There seems to be strong evidence of internal inefficiency due to enrollment of over-age children, high rates of repetition and dropout rates, and use of unsound pedagogical approaches.

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Physical Facilities Since the colonial period in most parts of the African countries, especially outside the gazetted municipalities, parents and communities have had the responsibility of providing school buildings, including teachers’ houses and other physical facilities in primary schools. In countries where vocational subjects are offered, they are also expected to put up, equip and maintain workshops, special rooms for home science and in some cases science laboratories. This means that parents are required to dig deep into their pockets to finance the education of their children. As a consequence, where parents have not been able to raise the necessary resources, these facilities have not been provided, and thus the practical, vocational and other aspects of the curriculum cannot be effectively implemented. Given the uneven distribution of household income in many parts of the countries, it is usually likely that the patterns of disparity are repeated within the different regions of the countries. The mode of mobilizing resources for physical development of schools is expected to be through the community effort of self-help. In many schools, as a condition for enrollment and continued stay in school, parents are required to pay a stated development levy, which in many cases is beyond the ability of the households. Hence, in many countries, the provision of school facilities is normally a major challenge, long before the provision of UPE. A Kenyan National Primary Baseline (NPB) survey carried out in 1998, four years before the introduction of free primary education in 2003, for example, established that 38 percent of the primary school heads were of the view that their schools were in need of major repairs, and 42.8 percent of schools in one province had open air classrooms, 16 percent of them nationally did not have an office for the school head, 34 percent had no storerooms and 23 percent had no gardens, despite the fact that agriculture depends on access to a school garden (Ackers et al. 2001). The NPB also generated data on latrines per pupil, not at the least due to the important impact of this variable on participation rates for girls, as suggested by an earlier Population Council study on adolescent girls in Kenya in 1998. The national pupil to latrine ratio was 52:1, with one province having as high as 99:1 and another at 30:1. The national mean in Kenya compared very unfavourably with that in Zimbabwe, where the mean was 31.6 percent

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pupils to one toilet. At the same time, the Zimbabwean authors went on to argue that “These ratios were far too high, as the acceptable ratios were 1:20 and 1:25 for water borne and blair toilets” (Machingaidze et al.1998). Clearly, therefore, overall physical facilities were in a seriously poor state in Kenyan schools, and in some cases the situation was critical. Despite this fact, the government had no plans or resources to improve school facilities, and the donor focus was elsewhere before the introduction of UPE (Ackers et al. 2001). It is apparent that the implementation of UPE in many countries indicated a real commitment by the governments to primary education and was supported by a substantial increase in resources to the sub-sector. However, the impact of the abrupt increase in enrollments meant that access to facilities could not expand concomitantly. Instead, it led to an increased number of children using existing facilities more intensively, resulting in a substantial increase in class sizes, particularly in the early standards, and more classes being taught in the open air. In some countries, individual schools had classes of as many as 200 pupils or more (Kadzamira and Rose 2003; Sumra 2003).

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Teaching and Learning Materials Since the 1980s, various studies have attested to the importance of having access, not simply to school but to a minimum level of resources (World Bank 1980; Lockheed and Verspoor 1991; Rosenburg 1998). The economic recession and the severe reduction of public budgetary allocation of the 1980s and 1990s signalled many governments’ discontinuation of the provision of textbooks, stationery and other instructional materials to schools. Parents were required to take over these expenses. With a rapidly rising rate of inflation and the inability of an increasing proportion of households unable to meet the higher costs of education, the provision of instructional materials seriously deteriorated. For instance in Kenya, a Ministry of Education survey found that nationally the primary school textbook to pupil ratio had gone up to 1:17. With donor assistance, the government made efforts to improve the situation, particularly in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) and other poor areas. However, in most primary schools, the intention of improving the textbook to pupil ratio to 3:1 by the year 1995/96 and 1:1 by the year 2000 remained a distant dream. However, under the UPE intervention in some countries, the supply of teaching and learning materials has considerably improved, although there are still fewer materials compared to the number of pupils. They have to share books in the ratio of 1:3 and in some subjects in the ratio of 1:5 or higher, which makes it difficult for the pupils to do their homework and other assignments (Sifuna 2007). The lack of teaching aids is also one of the key challenges of teaching in primary schools. Although the nature of shortages varies from one country to another, the teaching aid most often used, and often the only one, is the chalkboard. It is generally described as the main teaching resource at the primary school level (Ntoi and Lefoka 2002). However, in the highly disadvantaged schools, even the chalkboards are either unavailable or extremely small and dilapidated. Charts are either unavailable or old and almost illegible for the pupils to grasp what they are expected to depict. Teachers also hardly ever make use of pictures in pupils’ textbooks, in cases in which pupils have such books. Pictures could make lessons interesting and easy to understand. In many cases where attempts are made to use teaching aids, they are often too small to serve the purpose (Moloi et al. 2008).

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In some countries where teaching and learning resources are available, there are serious problems of distribution. Books are supplied to schools, but in many cases, they do not arrive on time or are too few. This normally arises due to lack of means of transportation or logistical terrain problems, especially for schools in the remote parts or hard-to-reach areas of the countries. In some schools, head teachers opt to keep books safely in the stores or cupboards for fear of being lost or torn by pupils if they are provided for use. In other cases, some books are torn or have lost pages, making it difficult for use in teaching. As a result of the prevailing attitudes to “free primary education,” parents do not seem to see the need to pay for the purchase of more books or for the cost of being repaired so that other children can have access to them in subsequent years. The general perception is that governments have the duty and responsibility to supply everything to schools.

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Teachers and Teaching Processes In many countries, there has been a steady improvement in the training of primary school teachers since independence, with the proportion of professionally unqualified teachers declining as much as 30 percent. However, the UPE intervention has contributed to the increase in numbers of unqualified teachers. In Malawi, for example, the government responded to the increased demand by recruiting around 18,000 untrained teachers, but these were both insufficient to provide classes of an acceptable size and also meant that a large proportion of the teaching force were inexperienced and unqualified (Kunje 2002). In Tanzania, the increased enrollments arising from UPE was to the extent that there were not enough secondary school graduates to supply the demand. Primary teachers were, therefore, drawn from populations who had not attended secondary school and trained through distance programmes (Wedgwood 2007). The problem of poor professional qualification is compounded by the inadequacy of teachers. Due to unequal distribution of teachers in the countries and within schools, the class size is considerably larger in the earlier standards in Malawi, ranging from 113 pupils per class in standard one, on the average, to 27 pupils per class in standard eight (Kadzamira and Rose 2003). In addition to the proportions of untrained teachers, continued teacher development through in-servicing, in both pedagogy and management, which in the literature on school effectiveness is considered a necessary condition for sustaining and improving achievement, is neither regular nor systematic. The challenge of teacher quality is not only confined to professional qualifications and training, but it is also anchored in the motivation and aspiration. According to a Kenyan study on Teacher, Motivation, Thinking and Practice (Juma and Ngome 1999), overall teacher motivation appeared low. Principle concerns expressed by teachers were poor conditions of service; housing, especially in the high cost urban areas; the lack of promotion on merit; inadequate involvement in school planning; the poor quality of school management and support systems; and poor relations with parents. The same authors found that these low levels of motivation seemed to manifest themselves in the poor performance in the classroom: “Teachers hardly spend any time preparing their lessons, they often don’t use schemes of work, nor do they keep records of work covered by pupils… discipline relies too heavily on punishment… .” Studies in Malawi seem to suggest that teacher performance has deteriorated following free primary education due to low morale, which also has implications for the quality of education delivered. In addition, parents blame increased problems of discipline in

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school on teachers, as they no longer feel accountable since parents are no longer paying for schooling and cannot, therefore, make demands on teachers (Kadzamira and Rose 2003). Studies on primary school interaction in Africa tend to show that while teachers do keep pupils occupied through their lessons, the concept of learner-centred methods of teaching are lacking. For them, having communication with pupils and having them write is all that appears important. A teacher-centred pedagogy and lecture-driven pedagogy are prevalent across the interaction process. Due to the high degree of use of choral responses and lack of follow-up to individual answers through teacher probes and comments, pupils are rarely encouraged to contribute and extend their contributions. Rather than allowing pupils to play an active part in the classroom discourse by answering questions, contributing points to a discussion and explaining and demonstrating their thinking to the class, the lecture and drill approach means that the pupils often remain passive (Hardman 2008). There is normally very little assessment of pupil understanding before moving to the next part of the lesson, and a tendency to teach the top and middle of the class is prevalent. The large proportion of class time is allocated to teacher-directed question-and-answer sessions, mainly with closed questions, presentation by the teacher, choral recitation; and individual written work by pupils does indicate a preference for activities in which control of the class is easier and teachers authority is emphasized (Arthur 2001). Restriction of the pupils to a mainly passive role becomes a shared norm among teachers, as it is convenient to minimize the movement of furniture and noise in general. A shortage of classroom space, a very common problem, is a further reason for such a practice. The high prevalence of rote and teacher-dominated teaching in Sub-Saharan Africa has been documented by many studies (Cleghorn et al. 1989; Fuller and Snyder 1991; Merrit et al. 1992; Prophet and Rowell 1993, Bunyi 1997; Ackers and Hardman 2001; Pontefract and Hardman 2005; Hardman et al. 2008). In explaining the recitation teaching procedures, some studies have attributed them to cultural determination because of perceived African respect for tradition and authority (Cleghorn et al. 1989; Prophet and Rowell 1993). However, Arthur (2001) and Chick (1996) suggest that the policy of teaching through the medium of English or French for the Anglophone, Francophone and Portuguese for the Lusophone countries, respectively for that matter, imposed during the colonial rule, exerts a powerful influence in shaping the discourse patterns found in many African classrooms, resulting in code switching and an overemphasis on the whole class teaching. Due to the disparity in the mastery of the foreign language between the teacher and pupils, whole class teaching is perceived to be a safer approach for teachers because it is less demanding on their foreign language and that of the pupils, especially in the chorus responses. Furthermore, in addition to the language policy, it is argued that the end of the primary school cycle examinations also seem to exert a powerful influence on instructional patterns and classroom interactions by encouraging a transmissive pedagogy in which there is a oneway transfer of knowledge. In most educational systems, examinations taken in the last grade of the primary school not only determine which pupils go for secondary schools, but are also used to rank schools according to pupil performance. Although the pencil-and-paper tests in many countries are seen as providing standardized assessments in order to provide equitable opportunities for entry to secondary education, in practice, they seem to be promoting teacher-centred approaches to rote learning by testing recall or production of factual knowledge (Arthur 2001).

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Efficiency of Primary Education On the whole, in a majority of the Sub-Saharan African countries, the primary education sector is quite inefficient, with very high attrition rates reaching an average of over 60 percent, especially in the Lusophone and some Francophone countries. The completion rates even in many Anglophone countries are hardly 50 percent and have consistently remained below that mark. Of particular concern are the modes of assessments, evaluation and examinations. It is appreciated that good teachers would aim at guiding the progress of their pupils through regular interaction in formal lessons and out of school activities and marked written assignments as part of lesson activity, homework and periodic tests. Assessment is actually an integral part of instruction, as it provides the teacher with a feedback on how to shape future lessons. Good schools weave assessment by individual teachers into school-wide systems in which learners’ records of progress are carefully maintained and used as the basis of remedial work for the slower or weaker learners while setting more challenging tasks for the faster or brighter ones. Equally important, good schools create situations in which the academic curriculum and co-curricular activities are integrated to nurture a holistic growth of pupils. Such approaches, which provide a feedback to spur learners towards achieving more, are based on the perception that learning is a natural process that entails change in the whole personality of the learner. Some studies show that teachers have poor knowledge of assessment strategies, including designing activities and test items relevant to their classroom work. The types of tests used are generally of such poor quality that they hardly challenge pupils in any way. Questions are framed in such a manner that pupils merely repeat what the teacher actually teaches. In other words, the questions call for low-order thinking skills only and give no room for application of concepts taught (Moloi et al. 2008). The nationwide assessment systems in the form of examinations are expected to constitute a positive feedback and implement the precepts of systems of evaluation in schools. However, in may educational systems that has not been realized. The national examinations are normally an end exercise course and normally confined to measuring learners’ changes in the cognitive domain. A system of providing a formative feedback during the primary course, such as an assessment aimed at measuring achievement in a broad spectrum that includes cognitive, psycho-social and psychomotor aspects, has not been developed. As a result, performance in such examinations is used for the selection for limited places in secondary education and tends to place more emphasis on ranking candidates as opposed to estimating how much of the curriculum they have mastered, predominantly on the basis of the mastery of factual knowledge in a limited number of subjects. Apart from a few subjects that require open-ended written responses, multiple-choice questions are used as the predominant mode of testing for the national examinations. A key reason for this predominance of such methods is given as the large numbers of candidates and pressure to process results within a very short time. The multiple-choice mode has the advantage of automated marking and computer-related processes. However, the mode has adverse effects on quality. With regard to test development, the mode is more suited to the measurement of learners’ abilities to remember facts or processes that have been taught. To a great extent, this is because the setting of multiple-choice questions that test the development of higher order skills and abilities, such as reasoning, problem solving and free expression, is a professional task that requires protracted practical training (Somerset 1982). This limitation

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is also associated with the tradition of acquisition of factual knowledge as the main teaching and learning approach in the school system. On the basis of this sort of testing, there is usually very marginal improvement on pupil performance. For example, according to the Kenya National Examinations Council, while the number of candidates for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination has kept rising, overall performance in key subjects like English, Kiswahili, Mathematics, Sciences and Social Studies for the years 1990-1995, for example, hardly hit the 50 percent score (Abagi 1999).

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SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY Among the measures to improve the quality of primary education, there is strong evidence that increasing the provision of instructional materials, especially textbooks, is among the most effective ways of raising the quality of primary education. The scarcity of learning materials in the classroom is the most serious impediment to educational effectiveness in most African countries (World Bank 1983). The availability of all instructional materials has declined in recent years as increased fiscal stringency has led to severe cuts in non-salary expenditures. The problem of the scarcity of appropriate materials, however, goes well beyond the availability of funds as most African countries have as yet to develop a national capacity for the development of low-cost teaching materials that are pedagogically sound and relevant to the national curriculum. An objective common to all African countries should be to develop national skills for adapting and editing written materials. For most countries, in addition, an increased capacity to write and publish classroom materials should be a major objective. With regard to the physical facilities, there is need for construction of buildings by use of local materials to reduce cost and greater local financing, which should include maintenance. Teachers’ use of time and other classroom resources is known to be a principal determinant of pupil achievement. To the primary school teacher falls the important task of turning into reality government strategies for improving quality. However, for that to happen, the teacher needs to be motivated and dedicated. The lifting of teachers’ morale through monetary incentives is a major challenge due to poor economies, but some measures need to be taken to regenerate their professional pride and enthusiasm through improving working conditions as well as increasing supervisory support and services. As already discussed, the use of language is an important factor in the provision of quality instruction. For most African countries, a central objective of primary education is that pupils emerge orally fluent and literate in the national language. However, on purely pedagogical grounds, the benefits of using the mother language for instruction in the initial years of the primary school seem to be established even when literacy in the national language is the ultimate objective. This is because research suggests that (a) the acquisition both of oral fluency and literacy in a second language is most successful when there is a strong foundation in the first language; (b) conversational skills in a second language are learned earlier than is the ability to use the language for academic learning; and (c) academic skills learned in school transfer readily from one language to the other, so that skills taught in the first language in transitional programmes do not have to be learned in the second language (World Bank 1988). For these reasons, most linguists agree that even where instruction is

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ultimately to be given in a language other than the child’s mother tongue, the most effective policy educationally is one of initial instruction using the mother language, followed by a gradual transition to the national language as a medium. Ideally, the study of the first language as a subject at least, will continue after the transition is complete.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION In many African countries, primary education represents the most open cycle of the education systems, as it is the only formal education that is accessed by a majority of the school children. On the whole, primary education is generally expected to provide knowledge that is essential for an individual, household, community and national development as well as providing the foundation for further formal education and training. The goals and aims of education in many countries are embedded in the national philosophies, which include, among other things, fostering social justice, attaining freedom from want, eradicating ignorance and disease, promotion of human dignity, freedom of conscience, creating opportunities for all citizens, promoting national unity, equitable distribution of wealth and many others. In response to the stated objectives, curricula have been designed to provide children with the needs of childhood. Four major fields of experience could be distinguished in the curriculum at the earliest stage, each of which is likely to be progressively differentiated as the child moves up the school. These include training in language; an introduction to the main elements of human experience, history, geography, the beginnings of science and mathematics; opportunities for the learning of manual skills; expression in the creative arts and physical training. Education is often seen as a key factor in economic development. Many researchers have identified the enormous positive benefits to families and nation’s economic development when all children participate in primary education. Research indicates that primary education, besides generating substantial positive benefits to the students themselves (private benefits), generates benefits to society (social benefits) that exceed by far the private benefits. Considering the importance of primary education in national development, it would be expected that many countries would have launched programs to increase access leading to achieving universal primary education. This has, however, not been the case with many of the African countries. They reflect enormous differences in enrollments and participation, with some countries having achieved close to universal provision, while others continue to lag behind. Among the key underlying factors affecting primary school enrollment rates are economic ones. Researches indicate that poverty is one of the most important economic factors accounting for the low participation. Many households, especially in the rural areas, are too poor to afford direct and opportunity costs of their children to enrol in school. As economists tend to demonstrate, economic development normally boosts educational growth. In this regard, countries that have more resources to allocate to education, both as an investment and as a consumption good, achieve a higher participation in education as shown by evidence from more industrialized countries. In response to the globalised framework of Jomtien and Dakar as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for achieving universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, many

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Sub-Saharan African governments have abolished school fees in public primary schools under the banner of the free primary education policy. In addition, increased access to good quality education is seen as an important means of achieving many of the other development goals. Following the introduction of free primary education, many countries have experienced robust increases in primary education enrollments. Despite such enrollment increases, especially over the last decade, many countries have fallen short of achieving the goal of primary schooling for all in both quantitative and qualitative goals. Although UPE policies have contributed significantly to access and equity in primary education, the push for it in many countries has come to be identified with increasing deterioration of the quality of primary education right from the provision of physical facilities, teaching and learning materials, deployment of teachers and performance and transition from primary to secondary education. There seems to be strong evidence of decline in internal efficiency, due enrollment of over-age children, high rates of repetition and dropouts rates, and use of unsound pedagogical approaches. Among the measures to improve the quality of primary education, there is strong evidence that increasing the provision of instructional materials, especially textbooks, is among the most effective ways of raising the quality of primary education. The scarcity of learning materials in the classroom is the most serious impediment to educational effectiveness in most African countries. The availability of all instructional materials has declined in recent years as increased fiscal stringency has led to severe cuts in non-salary expenditures. Teachers’ use of time and other classroom resources is known to be a principal determinant of pupil achievement. To the primary school teacher falls the important task of turning into reality government strategies for improving quality. However, for that to happen, the teacher needs to be motivated and dedicated. The lifting of teachers’ morale through monetary incentives is a major challenge due to poor economies, but some measures need to be taken to regenerate their professional pride and enthusiasm through improving working conditions as well as increasing supervisory support and services. There is also the need for most countries to address the policy of the medium of instruction, with an emphasis on the use vernacular languages in lower classes of the primary school.

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Chapter 5

SECONDARY EDUCATION

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INTRODUCTION This chapter provides an overview of the development of secondary education, the rationale for prioritizing the development of the secondary education sector following the achievement of independence in the 19960s, structures, purpose and curriculum, access and participation in secondary education and issues of quality education. Secondary education in the Sub-Saharan African countries is education at a higher and more advanced level than in the primary school, and pupils seeking to enter secondary schools are normally required to show that they have successfully completed a primary school course. Although secondary education in most countries is organized separately from primary education, it is evidently a development of the education that started in the primary school. There are a number of factors that justify such an interruption in the pupil’s career. First and foremost, a valid reason for such a break between primary and secondary education is that older children are able to apply themselves to a much wider range of subjects than is possible in the primary school, and the specialist training that these subjects require can be given more effectively in a school organized specifically to meet the needs of older children. Experience in other parts of the world tends to show that where education for children of all ages is organized within one school, there is often a tendency for the work of the lower and primary classes to be subordinated to the aims and supposed needs of the secondary school students (Burns 1965). Secondly, for psychological reasons, it seems desirable that a break is necessary in the long period of education from six or seven years to eighteen or nineteen years of age, and for those selected for secondary schooling, this should occur preferably at the beginning of what is virtually a new type of education. Furthermore, the changes in pupils’ attitudes, interests and physiques at adolescence strengthen the case for a change in the type and character of schooling that is offered to the pupil at the post-primary level. Above all, the amount of specialist teaching is so much greater at the secondary level that it is not merely convenient, but necessary, to organize teaching at this stage within a single institution to give it a greater measure of coherency and unity. In most countries, therefore, children who are to continue their education in the secondary level are transferred to the post-primary school after five to eight years of primary schooling and usually about the age of twelve to fourteen years (Burns 1965).

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The secondary school sector, like primary education, is among the oldest education sectors introduced during colonialism in Africa, but unlike the primary education sector, secondary education tends to retain certain Western traditional features and values that seem to be distinctly identified with it. It is not the express purpose of this chapter to delve into these features, but to highlight a few. Although since the achievement of independence, secondary education expanded dramatically in scale in the context of human resource development and modernization theories, it has changed little in its philosophy and character. While expansion has been welcomed, the continued use of the colonial-style curricula and focus on public examinations do little to meet the needs of most students (Ansell 2002). Secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa, with exception of university education, has been most subjected to the strains and stresses of various kinds. A good number of secondary schools, the leading ones established during the colonial period, have remained models transferred from Britain, France, Portugal and others. As a matter of fact, as well as stressing Western academic culture with all its implications for neocolonialism and the political and cultural values of nation-building, these secondary schools have also continued to exhibit strong institutional cultures that are continually torn between the colonial and nationalistic influences, on the one hand, and between African versus what is Western on the other hand (Steiner-Khamsi and Quist 2000). To analyse the Western-European heritage via the lenses of colonial rule and colonialism, secondary education has provided a curriculum that is basically foreign. With English, French and Portuguese languages still serving as the main media of instruction, and with most students exposed to literature in these languages and their associated cultural underpinnings, secondary school students find themselves imbibing cultural characteristics, mannerisms and attitudes that undermine the promotion, development and sustenance of African culture and traditions. However, at the same time, such Western-patterned secondary education has exposed young people to ideas about nationalism and human rights, which to some extent are useful in understanding the nature of European societies (Altbach 1982). These schools stimulated, and continue to do so, strong desires for social and occupational mobility, leading many graduates of the school system to compete for and want jobs in the Westernised sector of the economy, which includes clerical and administrative positions and professions of law and medicine among others. In the colonial era, however, the curriculum and methods were fashioned on European examples with some features of traditional values (Quist 2001). A close examination of the established secondary schools is quite revealing. Having been patterned on the typical Western models of British, French, Portuguese and, in recent years, American, these secondary schools have been more biased towards traditional academic literary practices than technical or vocational education, despite the attempts, especially by the British during the colonial era, to combine an academic and technical/vocational education curriculum that would produce an African capable of adapting to an African environment that was considered to be essentially agricultural and rural (Steiner-Khamsi and Quist 2000). Serving the educational needs of the few who became the professional elites, these schools contributed, and continue to do so, to the reproduction of the elite as a class. These schools are, therefore, innocent sites of cultural transmission, or places for the inculcation of consensual values, and they cannot be understood as meritocratic springboards for upward mobility, the great levelling mechanism, according to the dominant liberal ideology (Carnoy and Levin 1985). These schools still represent vestiges of the colonial era, although the African countries are now independent.

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The established secondary schools continue to manifest the highly selective, elitist and academic qualities inherited from the colonial models they replicate. Most of these institutions continue to have a school climate that fosters Western cultural elements and values among their students. For example, most of them have continued to insist on the everyday use of a spoken foreign language rather than a local language on their compounds. Students who break this cardinal rule are routinely punished, as was the practice during the colonial period. Teaching in all these secondary schools is still based on Western theories and methods as the media of instruction still remain the foreign languages (Bishop 1995). Knowledge in the sciences most especially, and to an extent in the arts, taught in these schools still reflects knowledge created by Western scholars (Altbach 1995; Docker 1995; Quist 1999). These schools continue to keep abreast with foreign models as part of reform measures. More importantly, increasing exposure to Western media and technology and the growing desire among secondary school students, especially those in the prestigious schools of travelling, studying and staying in Europe or the United States, remain a potent factor. The attractions of the West, including Europe and the United States, still remain very strong, including vigorous campaigns by universities in these countries for opportunities for higher education studies that cover offers of scholarships. The reality is a continued inclination of secondary education and its products towards neo-colonial influences. The political and cultural biases of Western education remain and, with other factors such as politics and economics, tend to impede the creation of a national consciousness critical to the postcolonial cultural and political intervention of national development. The consequence of the cultural settings of these schools has been the psychological conflict in relation to the acceptance and/or rejection of indigenous vis-à-vis Western cultural elements and values. Currently, secondary school students, especially in the urban settings, find themselves torn between learning and mastering their own local languages rather than the English, French or Portuguese languages; accepting and appreciating indigenous values, traditions and customs as against internalizing and assimilating Western counterparts; appreciating national and indigenous music, local drama and the arts and traditional forms of dressing, music, arts as well as watching Western films, and reading novels by Western writers in contrast to those by their own local writers. In all these cases, it is the West represented strongly by Britain, France, Portugal and the United States that is the key factor (Quist 2001). Studies generally tend to show lack of interest among many secondary school students in their own traditions and customs, a development surprisingly encouraged by some of their educated parents; inability to speak their own indigenous languages as fluently as they speak English, French or Portuguese; a greater tendency and preference for Western ways of dressing, mannerisms, culture, arts, films and dances. The overall effect has been the undermining of the postcolonial interventions of reform and cultural perspectives of nation-building (Quist 2001). Secondary schools are generally classified into two groups: public and private schools. In some countries, public secondary schools are further subdivided into national schools, most of which are established colonial boarding; provincial schools, which are boarding; and district schools, which are a mixture of day and boarding schools. Most of the private schools are owned by entrepreneurs whose uppermost objective is to convert the excess demand for education, especially for those not selected into public schools, into maximum profit. However, some private schools cater for a cadre of high-performing students, particularly

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from elite backgrounds, and in many cases, are as good as some public schools and even better than the national schools. In terms of management, secondary schools operate on a partnership basis, especially following the economic turndown of the 1980s, which led to the introduction of the structural adjustment programmes. The public budget provides for teacher remuneration, professional and support services, which include curriculum development, public examinations, administration, supervision and teacher education. Parents and communities are expected to meet school development costs, as well as all other recurrent costs including those of teaching and learning materials, catering and boarding, school uniforms, transport, medical expenses, co-curricular activities, remuneration of non-teaching staff and a host of other school requirements.

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PRIORITY FOR EXPANSION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION One of the major recommendations of the Conference of African States in Addis Ababa in 1961, in line with human resource and modernization theories, was that investment in secondary education over the plan period up to 1980, should be approximately twice as heavy as in the primary education, and that the number of pupils to receive some form of secondary education should gradually rise to 30 percent of those completing their primary education. Such a scale of priority for secondary education was reflected in many of the Development Plans of most countries in the Sub-Saharan African region at the time. Priority was put on the expansion of secondary and higher education. For example, Ghana’s Second Development Plan (1959-1964) projected capital investment in education as 27.8 million pounds, being 11.4 percent of the total expenditure and second only to the outlays for communication, health and water. The objective was to raise the secondary school intake to 10 percent of the potentially eligible candidates compared with the previous one of 4 to 6 percent. In 19611962, recurrent expenditure on education stood at 17.3 million pounds, being 13.4 percent of the national budget. In Nigeria, a six-year educational plan of development was devised, following the Ashby Commission Report, in which 32.8 million pounds was to be spent on education. In Tanzania (mainland), the Three-Year Plan proposed that a high proportion of the central government funds available for education be devoted to secondary school expansion. Between 1961 and 1962, about 30.5 million pounds was spent on education, being 16.5 percent of the national budget. Similar plans were made in the French-speaking countries, several of which allocated education expenditures in line with manpower requirements. Developments in secondary education, therefore, centred on human resource development. The major objective of all the countries in the region was to expand their secondary education systems, to create and expand a cadre of educated personnel to occupy the medium-level and subsequently high-level positions in the public and private sectors. The urgency of developing human resources was justified by the existing human capacity in the various countries. For example in Tanzania, there were only 70 university graduates at the time of independence, 20 of whom were teachers; 23 in Malawi, and 100 university graduates and 1200 ordinary level certificate holders in Zambia. Two years before independence in Botswana, it was estimated that there were only 145 local officers in an establishment with

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802 posts, of which 502 were held by expatriates and 155 were vacant. By independence an official estimate of local personnel in Botswana reported an absence of doctors, dentists, engineers, agricultural and veterinary officers and many others. In Ethiopia, which had been independent for long, a manpower survey showed a very small number of graduates in science, engineering, agriculture, health and other areas (Ishumi 1990; Luke 1996; Mualo and Lungu 1985; Kiros 1990). The low numbers of middle- and high-level personnel explains the rapid expansion of secondary education in the region. The trend was most spectacular in Kenya, with a sixfold expansion in enrollment during the first 10 years of independence, followed by Zambia, fivefold; Botswana, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda, fourfold; while Lesotho and Swaziland, threefold (Tuqan 1976; Sifuna 1990). Secondary school expansions continued in the 1970s, with some stabilisation in the 1980s and 1990s. The increase in secondary school enrollment was not the result of government effort alone, but a partnership between the public and private effort, although government was responsible for curricula and examinations. Private effort input included voluntary nongovernmental agencies, notably religious organizations and local communities in the form of parents' associations, cooperative unions and community development associations.

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STRUCTURES AND TYPES OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS The structures of secondary school systems vary considerably among the countries. The period may be as short as two years or as long as seven or eight years. In either event, it is a time when profound changes take place in the students’ interests and attitudes and when academic knowledge is greatly extended and deepened. Most structures embrace two stages, the first a lower stage concerned with the subjects in which all students need to be schooled, and the second, a higher one in which the range of subjects may be reduced, so as to permit some degree of specialization in place of the more general character of earlier studies. Such a distinction has the notion of the “lower” and “upper” school. However, this is not generally the case with most of the Francophone countries. In Cote d’Ivoire for example, secondary education lasts for seven years and is divided into two cycles. The first cycle is four years of study that ends with the brevet d’etudes de premier cycle examination, which can lead to professional or technical courses. Entry into the second cycle is based on satisfactory completion of the last of the four years, and success in the brevet is based on the assessment of past work by the National Guidance Commission. The second cycle consists of three years of coursework, leading to preparation of the baccalaureat, which is a very competitive nationwide examination. This examination is administered in two parts. The first is taken after the sixth year of secondary education. Upon successful completion, students are accepted into the last year of secondary school, which leads to the second part of the baccalaureat, which gives access to higher education (Michel and Cintron 1988). In the traditional secondary schools, generally known as grammar schools as adopted from Britain in the Anglophone countries, the most significant feature of teaching is usually the emphasis that is placed on the value of “general” or “liberal studies” rather than technical or vocational studies. It is characterized by a scholarly approach to knowledge and the

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development of a firm intellectual discipline. It demands high standards of application and attainment, which are of considerable benefit to able students wishing to enter certain professions after taking the School Certificate examinations. Grammar schools are, therefore, less appropriate for students who have developed a special interest in technical subjects and still less appropriate for students who do not develop either interest in technical or the intellectual discipline that such schools presuppose. In many Anglophone countries, some grammar secondary schools offer teaching beyond this level to students needing to stay in the secondary school for at least two years longer to take the more advanced examination, the Higher School Certificate. To provide for the needs of secondary students who do not show special aptitude for academic work has been the development of grammar schools with a “technical stream,” or the establishment of technical secondary schools. Such schools provide a four-year course leading to the School Certificate examinations with a curriculum that offers courses in languages, sciences as well as woodwork, metal work and technical drawing. Other secondary schools also provide for courses of a vocational character that include handicrafts, agriculture home economics and commercial subjects. Secondary schools with a commercial bias have been developed in a number of countries.

GOALS, OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTATIONS

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With regard to goals and objectives of secondary education, there seem to be a general agreement in most countries that it is expected to produce responsible individuals who are properly socialized and who possess the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to enable them participate positively in national development. In general, among the goals are as follows: •

•

• • • • • •

To continue the training in those disciplines to which the student has been introduced in the primary school and to develop them in such new ways as appear to correspond to the student’s growing range of interests; To provide a life that answers the special needs and brings out the special values of the adolescent years, just as the primary school is expected to respond to the needs of the pupils at an earlier stage; To make students conscious of the national traditions and heritage; To prepare students for entry into adult life by assuming the responsibilities of adulthood; To provide for an all-around mental, moral and spiritual development; To provide relevant skills towards positive contribution to the development of society; To lay a firm foundation for further education, training and work; and To lead to the acquisition of positive attitudes and values towards the well-being of society.

However, as compared to these broadly stated objectives, the expectations of the majority of parents and their children are much more focused around personal advancement, especially

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in material terms. For many of them, secondary education is a crucial step in the attempt to break away from the poverty level. Success in the secondary school is perceived as opening the doors for further education and training and a well paid job in the modern sector. The public in general does not believe that the stated objectives of education have been met until the school leaver goes for further education or enters training and obtains a salaried job. In their efforts to ensure maximum returns, parents will go out of the way for their children to join secondary schools that they believe will give their children a better chance of succeeding in the national examinations. Consequently, there is a lot of competition for places in the secondary schools that have a good record of performance in the national examinations. Increased cost-sharing means heightened parental and community pressure for effectiveness and efficiency and value for the money, including at times the use of unorthodox means to ensure success in the national examinations. There is very intense competition for places in a few secondary schools, especially the established boarding schools that are reputed for good performance in national examinations. As the public budget in many countries no longer meets many of the expenses of these schools, parental contributions tend to rise quite steeply. Hence, many households are unable to meet such expenses, thus are forced to choose between sending their children into low-quality public or private schools or to opt out of secondary education altogether. Given parental perceptions of many schools as being “façade institutions,” rising pressure on household incomes and a high unemployment of graduates of the education systems in many countries, it is apparent that growing numbers of households choose to opt out of secondary education (Cooksey et al 1994).

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THE CURRICULUM There seem to be different approaches in curricular designs between the Anglophone and Francophone African countries. The Anglophone countries, in principle, plan for curriculum within the requirements of the School Certificate examinations, which are administered by local examination syndicates. The schools also seek to assure the general education and needs and interests of their students in the planning of the curriculum. Many of the grammar, technical and vocational secondary schools are normally approved for the School Certificate examinations and prepare their students for such examinations. Therefore, the standards set by the School Certificate examinations represent the levels of attainment to which teaching in all the schools is directed during the secondary school years. In a more general way, the subjects that students prefer to take in the examinations influence very strongly what is taught throughout. As a result, the way in which schools interpret the regulations of the School Certificate examinations lead to a considerable degree of uniformity in the subjects offered in these examinations in both the lower and upper levels of secondary education. In the lower stages of the secondary school, among the key subjects offered include the following: •

Language studies, in which most time is generally given to a foreign language, although in some countries teaching in the mother tongue is also allowed. There is also the study of other foreign languages such as German and Japanese;

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•

Social sciences, which include history, geography, religious studies and the nature of civic responsibilities as well as cultural studies; Natural sciences, including mathematics, general science or the separate sciences (physics, chemistry and biology); Practical work involving the use of hands and tools in woodwork, metal work technical drawing, agriculture or home economics; Opportunities for creative expression, whether in music, singing, modelling, painting or creative arts; and The development and care of the body, which include health science and physical education.

In the upper stages of the secondary school, the curriculum is determined by (i) the specialized studies, which every student is expected to undertake at this stage; (ii) by those areas of study that are of common interest to all the students, namely, language, art and music, some form of social studies and (in the academic stream); a course in wood or metal work; and (iii) by the need of students who expect to take a technical or professional training later to begin an intensive study of the sciences and mathematics on which success in these professional studies will depend. Many Anglophone countries have shifted away from allowing secondary school students to specialise in either social or pure sciences in the upper stages as was the practice during the colonial period and provide opportunities for combining subjects from the two areas. These courses lead to the School Certificate examinations. However, the specialization into the social studies/arts and natural sciences, features in schools that prepare students for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations. Programs and teaching conditions in secondary education in many of the Francophone countries have been adapted from the French system of education. During the first cycle of secondary education, students are offered traditional subjects, which include French, mathematics, history, geography, science and modern languages. After the fourth year of the secondary school, students in the academic track choose between humanities or sciences, while others enter the vocational/technical track, which also has two main divisions: industrial and commercial. The vocational branch offers 14 professional specialities, including studies in industry, commerce, agricultural science, nursing and secretarial work (Michel and Cintron 1988). Students in the academic sections continue to focus on the same subjects undertaken during the first cycle, but in greater depth. The reading materials are generally very sophisticated, especially in the humanities, where students of 16 to 18 years of age are expected to write what is known as a dissertation, which is a very demanding assignment both in length and quality. Generally, teachers hold high expectations of their students in a very strict system of examination. A passing grade is usually an “A” grade. Students receive a baccalaureat in the humanities, mathematics or science depending on the option they had chosen. Students in the professional track, on the other hand, continue to pursue academic subjects such as language and applied mathematics, but concentrate more on their own areas of specialization. These students, on completion of their courses, receive the technical baccalaureate.

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ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION IN SECONDARY EDUCATION While there is no Dakar goal pertaining to secondary and tertiary education per se, the expansion of educational opportunities beyond the primary school level does belong to the Dakar agenda. Moreover, the expansion of primary education creates demand for postprimary education as expansion is also dependent on secondary and tertiary education for an adequate supply of teachers and sufficient secondary school places to increase the incentive to complete the primary school. Hence, secondary and tertiary education are an explicit part of the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Secondary education has been the standard minimum level of education for many years in most high-income countries and is increasingly required in developing countries for access to most jobs. Developing good-quality secondary school systems is, thus, an important policy objective, especially for countries that by and large have achieved UPE. Demand for and participation in secondary education are growing as more countries progress towards UPE (UNESCO 2007). In terms of access, secondary school systems exclude most of the population of secondary age children in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, the region was estimated to have a total population of about 600 million. Of this population, about 86 million were of general secondary school age. The gross enrollment rates (GERs) at secondary school averaged 25 percent. On this crude basis, about 64 million, thus 75 percent, of secondary age pupils are not enrolled in the region. The proportion of those excluded was likely to be higher than this, since some places are filled by repeaters. In this regard, it was probable that the numbers of those who failed to enrol were in the tune of 70 and 75 million, or over 80 percent of the total of secondary school age children (Lewin 2005). In comparison with other regions, the Sub-Saharan Africa is among the regions with extreme diversity of a concentration of countries whose GER is below 40 percent. With the notable exception of South Africa, Sub-Saharan African countries with high GERs generally have small populations. The vast majority of the sub-continent’s youth, thus, have little access to secondary education (UNESCO 2004). The great majority of the countries have GERs at secondary school below 40 percent. Fifteen countries have a GER of less than 20 percent, and thirty seven of less than 20 percent. In the former, it is likely that no more than 10 percent complete secondary education successfully, while in the latter, no less than 5 percent (Lewin 2005). Among the factors contributing to low access to secondary education is the public subsidy to this level of education in comparison to others. For example, the typical national budgeting patterns in low enrollment countries in the region allocate relatively small amounts of public expenditure on education at the secondary school level. In Malawi, Tanzania and Ethiopia, for instance, secondary education absorbs less than 10 percent of the public budget, while primary education absorbs 65 percent or more. Public expenditure per pupil at the secondary school level across Sub-Saharan African countries averages about five times that at the primary school level and is as high as ten times or more in some of the lowest enrollment cases, especially where subsidized boarding is common. Access also remains highly unequal both in terms of the socio-economic backgrounds and geographical locations of those who participate. Access to secondary schooling is disproportionately skewed in favour of the rich households. In Tanzania, for example, it is likely that households outside the top two deciles of income are said to be simply unable to

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afford a single child in government secondary schools, while participation rates of the richest 20 percent of the households are more than 20 times of the poorest 40 percent of households (Lewin 2003). In Uganda, those from households below the second decile of household income are unlikely to be enrolled. In Zambia, the poorest 40 percent of the households are at least ten times less likely to have a child in lower secondary school than those from the richest 20 percent of households (Lewin 2002). It is also estimated that in Ghana, 40 percent of entrants to the University of Ghana, Legon originated from just 5 percent of the secondary schools, many of which were fee-paying private schools. The University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, admitted 46 percent of students from just 8 percent of relevant secondary schools. These heavily skewed patterns of access appear to be increasing over time (Addae-Mensah 2000). Private schools that are not subsidized have minimum operating costs that determine fee levels. The main costs, especially in low-price schools, lie in teachers’ salaries. When fee levies are related to households, many families are excluded by poverty from participation at the secondary school level in full cost private or community schools. In much of the SubSaharan African countries, the effect is so strong that few outside the richest 20 percent of the households can afford to participate. Private schools that access the poor can only do so if they are subsidized, even when they minimize overheads close to zero and pay teachers much less than in government schools, with unknown consequences for quality. Some do this through contributions from NGOs and from faith-based organizations and communities. The scope for substantially increasing these kinds of subsidies is not usually evident. The issue is that there are limits of affordability to participation determined by costs, which will limit effective demand for private providers of secondary education. For profit organizations will not operate at a loss. Private organizations are unlikely to offer schooling opportunities on a national level to large numbers without the national or international subsidy (Lewin 2005). In this context, the cost of secondary education, whether public or private, makes it beyond the reach of many poor households. As already discussed, in comparison to the primary sector, and even the university sector, due to the cost-sharing policies, households contribute a higher proportion of secondary expenses vis-à-vis the government. In many countries, school boards and Parents’ Teachers’ Associations have the responsibility for working out budgets based on each school’s priorities and market prices of materials and ensuring that the necessary revenue is collected. The school levies, which are many and varied, become unbearable for many households. Beyond financial contributions, parents are individually expected to purchase essential teaching and learning materials, and this has serious implications for both equity and quality in secondary education. Some governments, being aware of the equity implications of the situation, have attempted to ameliorate it through the introduction of bursary schemes in order to ensure that the interests of the poor households are taken into account. While the bursaries are welcomed as a much-needed relief for hard-pressed parents, some modalities of implementation in some countries make the fund ineffective in solving the problem. For a number of reasons, the amounts allocated are generally inadequate to reach many of the deserving cases, and the criteria of identifying needy students is fraught with problems and corruption to the extent that most needy students fail to receive the support that they require. With regard to gender disparities, there are higher disparities in secondary and tertiary education than in primary education. As in other less industrialized countries, girls’ enrollments at the secondary school level have been more dramatic since the early 1960s. It is

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estimated that the enrollment of girls from the 1960s to the 1980s rose faster than that of boys. Despite the apparently widespread participation of girls at the secondary school level, government policies in some countries have forced the majority of girls into the unaided secondary schools, where they are disadvantaged in terms of quality of education. Furthermore, in the first post-independence decade, priority was given to expanding secondary and tertiary opportunities for men so that they could take over positions of national leadership. For example, in Kenya in 1968, there were twice as many government secondary schools for boys than for girls (Chege and Sifuna 2006). Table 5.1. Gross enrollment ratio in secondary education (percentage)

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Country Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Cameroon Chad Democratic Republic of the Congo Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Malawi Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda Senegal Seychelles South Africa Swaziland Togo Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe

Gross enrollment ratio 1999 Total Male Female 19 26 12 71 69 74 10 13 8 27 29 24 10 16 4 18 23 12

Gross enrollment ratio 2005 Total Male Female 33 41 23 75 73 77 14 16 12 44 49 39 16 23 8 22 28 16

24 15 33 37 15 38 30 37 14 76 5 57 6 24 10 15 113 88 45 28 10 20 43

31 35 47 45 30 49 39 28 24 88 13 56 9 34 14 21 105 93 45 40 19 28 36

28 19 40 41 21 39 26 43 18 76 6 54 7 25 10 18 111 82 45 40 11 22 45

19 12 26 33 8 37 35 30 10 75 4 61 5 23 10 12 115 93 45 16 8 17 40

40 41 51 48 39 50 34 31 29 89 16 52 10 37 15 24 106 90 46 54 21 31 38

23 28 42 42 21 48 43 25 18 88 11 60 7 31 13 18 105 97 44 27 17 25 35

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

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It was also observed that it was not just the numerical strength of schools that determined enrollment by gender at the secondary school level. It was established that the enrollment capacity of particular secondary schools also depend to a great extent on the number of streams per class available. It is noted that boys’ schools have more streams than girls’ schools, sometimes even up to four as compared to one or two streams for girls’ schools. Thus, boys’ schools have greater capacity to admit more students than girls’ schools (Chege and Sifuna 2006). Regional disparities in participation rates at the secondary level are similar to those at the primary school level, although more pronounced. The structure of secondary school opportunities seriously disadvantages girls and other marginalized groups from less developed regions and less affluent families. As is the case with primary education, there are sharp regional and district disparities in enrollments. Regions of greatest economic development have the largest increases in the proportion of girls and marginalized groups enrolled. The enrollment of girls in such regions is almost equal to that of boys. Moreover, the districts with a higher percentage of girls in primary schools end up enrolling more or less the same proportion of girls in secondary schools (Chage and Sifuna).

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Table 5.2. Net enrollment ratio in secondary education (percentage), 2005 Country Botswana Burkina Faso Cape Verde Chad Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Malawi Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Swaziland Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe

60 11 58 11 25 32 45 38 24 42 25 24 82 7 39 6 27 32 17 33 15 26 34

Net enrollment ratio 2005 57 62 13 9 55 60 16 5 30 20 38 26 49 41 40 36 31 17 42 42 19 30 25 22 81 82 8 6 33 44 9 6 29 25 30 34 19 15 31 35 16 14 29 23 35 33

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

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Because of historical, environmental and socio-cultural factors, there is inequitable distribution of secondary education opportunities in many Sub-Saharan African countries. In particular, inequalities have taken the form of disparity in access, retention and achievement between the sexes, geographical areas and households. Table 5.1 shows the gross enrollment rate in secondary education between 1999 and 2005, while Table 5.2 shows net enrollment rate in 2005.

QUALITY OF EDUCATION

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Physical Facilities and Teaching and Learning Materials Classrooms in the secondary schools are generally large, bright rectangular rooms with windows running the full length of both sides of the classroom. Some have wall displays, timetables and class rotas. In some of the older schools, many classrooms contain old, and, at times, damaged desks and chairs, and it is not uncommon to see children sharing chairs throughout a lesson. The classrooms vary in tidiness. Each classroom has a cleaning rota of students, but the care and energy that they put into this very dusty activity depends on the enthusiasm of the class teacher or duty master in maintaining a clean school. The practical subjects are normally expected to be accommodated in specialized units, in the form of workshops for technical subjects and home science, and laboratories for sciences. The latter are also expected to be furnished with bench-tables and stools. For most established secondary schools, utilities and services such as gas, water and electricity are provided. Most governments in the Sub-Saharan African region recognize that facilities and teaching-learning materials, particularly in science and practical subjects, lead to the stated secondary school objectives. However, in many countries, there are large backlogs of workshops, science laboratories and home science rooms. While in some countries the provision of these facilities has improved through donor assistance, due to the cost-sharing policies, the construction and equipping of facilities is currently the responsibility of parents and communities. Considering the continued downward trend in the economies and rising costs of education, which parents are required to meet, the provision of facilities and teaching-learning materials has seriously deteriorated. What seems to exacerbate the issue of facilities and learning materials is that the expansion in the number of science streams in secondary schools was not supported by adequate teaching and learning facilities. Consequently, teachers resorted to theoretical teaching with disastrous results (Ndirangu 2000). Funds intended for the improvement of physical, acquisition of laboratory equipment, textbooks and other supplementary teaching resources were totally neglected. For effective mastery of skills and concepts in science and related subjects, practical experience is essential. Instructional settings, which emphasise practical work, enable learners to do science rather than learn about it. For this reason, the application of instructional aids is important if effective learning is to take place. This calls upon science teachers to utilize firsthand learning materials in their teaching. UNESCO urges science teachers for the utilization of the “inexhaustible supply of phenomena within the schools environs, which can be used as the subject matter of science teaching and materials which can be used to construct scientific equipment and teaching aids” (UNESCO, 1979).

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The shortage of science instructional materials and equipment that assist in the delivery of the curriculum has resulted in exhortations from designers of curricula and other agencies through INSET programmes to improvise (Sifuna et al. 2007). More specifically, teachers have been urged to utilize what is available locally to enable their students to influence their local environment for their own and community good. This perhaps reflects the weakness in the science curricula design, which does little in contextualising local learning and instead perpetuates a more puristic approach, which seems to suggest that science is learned in a social vacuum (Ndirangu et al. 2003). Learners need to be made to appreciate the local relevance of what they learn in school. Improvisation involves making instructional materials by teachers and students using locally available resources. Through such an approach, science teachers should be able to conduct experiments and demonstrations at a low cost (Orwa and Underwood 1986; Tsuma 1998). However, while improvisation serves to minimize educational costs, some studies show that many science teachers are either unwilling or unable to improvise teaching materials for lack of skills or appreciation of the need to do so (Tsuma 1998). Nonetheless, such behaviour on the part of teachers is generally understandable, as they feel there is a need to be compensated for the extra time they require to spend in order to motivate them to produce the necessary teaching and learning materials (Ndirangu et al. 2005). The lack of improvisation seems to be a more fundamental problem than the unwillingness of teachers to carry it out. It largely stems from the fact that with no locally developed textbooks appropriate for secondary school examinations, imported science textbooks are widely used in schools. The textbooks are deceptively relevant for use in the local syllabuses, as they attempt to present science in the contexts that might be familiar to students. This anomalous situation is best understood in the context of curriculum development in most of the countries. As former colonies, African countries for some time, following the achievement of independence, used the imported examination syndicates of the metropolitan countries until they developed their own syndicates under the tutelage of the former syndicates, which were of adoptions of the former examination structures for universal recognition and acceptability throughout the world (Koosimile 2005). The reliance on foreign curricula models in their curriculum and examination reform is a common practice throughout Africa, and the strategy is best understood within the context of both the dependency and centre-to-periphery paradigms in educational reform (Crossley 1990; Kahn 1989; MacLean 1983, MacDonald and Walker 1976; Owen 1973). Here curriculum packages from developed metropolitan nations, typically without questioning very deeply their aims and philosophical and pedagogical assumptions, they are adopted wholesome. The exercise is frequently indicative and symptomatic of paucity of appropriate research and alternative definitions necessary to guide the curriculum localization efforts. The basic assumptions and beliefs in the universality, cultural and ideological neutrality of formal scientific knowledge has encouraged and supported various curricula reforms in developing countries. The resultant first-world hegemony arising from the reforms often culminates not only in the decline in the quality of science education in most developing countries of the world, but it has also constrained and limited the autonomy of critical persons who should be contextually grounded in their thinking (Ingle and Turner 1981; Lillis and Lowe 1982; Kahn 1989; Gray 1999; Koosimile 2005). As a result of lack of teaching and learning materials and equipment, in one study of secondary school students in Kenya, they did not like most of the teaching of science subjects

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for similar reasons. They added, however, that the teaching, and hence understanding, of sciences became difficult because many practicals were skipped due to the lack of necessary apparatus, and their teachers made little or no effort to improvise for them. Many of the secondary schools not only lacked science laboratories for specific science subjects, but also had no laboratories and science apparatus of any kind, and yet a number of science subjects were compulsory in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination. In one focus group discussion, students mentioned some cases when their colleagues for the KCSE examination happened not to have seen or used certain scientific instruments before they sat for the examination. They cited a case in which candidates in their school were asked to use a microscope for the first time during the final practical biology examination paper. In many cases during science lessons, teachers normally carried out the experiments, denying students a “hands-on experience.” Due to the lack of apparatus, many science topics were taught “theoretically.” Students also mentioned that their teachers normally dictated long and incomprehensible notes. This was made even more difficult as a result of lack of textbooks. In one particular secondary school in Nairobi, there were 3 textbooks in chemistry, 9 in biology and none at all for physics in a class of 43 students. Some primary school science teachers who were not conversant with their subject content tended to resort to the use of vernacular in trying to explain difficult scientific concepts. In this regard, the lack of interest in the learning of sciences would begin right from the primary school, where the subject was not taught practically, and the main source of information, the textbook, was unavailable (Sifuna et al. 2007). In some countries, private secondary schools, especially the entrepreneurial organizations, operate under challenging conditions with critical liabilities such as newness and or smallness (Baum 1996). As a result, they often operate with very limited resources, particularly given the difficulty of increasing the supply of actual resources, specifically financial resources (UNESCO 1998; UNICEF 1999). In contrast, government schools are generally older and larger having a broader and deeper resource base, including well established political resources in terms of reputation and legitimacy (Hite et al. 2006). The diversity of resource assets between secondary school types in particular countries suggests that because many private secondary schools are resource poor, the quality of education they provide is a very genuine concern (Bennell and Sayed 2002; Liang 2002). Limited resources hamper these private schools in their efforts to maintain and exceed national education standards. As a result, private schools have a need to strategically maximize their limited organizational resources as well as locate and access a variety of additional resources (Hite et al. 2006).

Teachers and Teaching Processes The training and deployment of teachers is key to the promotion of quality education. Most governments’ policies aim at staffing all public secondary schools with professionally qualified teachers, preferably university graduates. Considerable progress has been made in many countries towards achieving this particular goal, as the proportion of graduate teachers is estimated to be close to 50 percent and the bulk of the non-graduate teachers are professionally trained (UNESCO 2007). However, women teachers constitute about 30 percent of the teaching force.

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The deployment of secondary school teachers in public schools is generally guided by a curriculum-based establishment formula, according to which, the number of periods per week in each subject in a school’s curriculum is calculated and teachers provided on that basis. The curriculum-based establishment has, however, a number of inherent problems. First, depending on teachers’ subject combinations and students’ choice of optional subjects, the curriculum-based establishment could lead to low teaching loads for some teachers. This is particularly the case with schools with low enrollments, for example, single-stream and double-stream schools. Secondly, the success of the curriculum-based establishment is heavily dependent on accurate and regular returns from schools, which is not normally the case. Thirdly, the curriculum-based establishment works best if deployment is devoid of extraneous issues such as insistence by married teachers that they are posted to schools close to their spouses, a factor that contributes to overstaffing in the urban areas, especially the capital cities. Distortions in the deployment of teachers are also brought about by regional disparities in the distribution of schools. We now turn to some dominant teaching classroom strategies and focus mainly on presenting information through the lecture method, question-and-answer approach and written exercises. The main teaching strategy that characterizes secondary school teaching is the large amount of teachers’ talk, which involves mainly the teacher presenting information or lecturing to the students, interspersed with questions, generally asked to the whole class, with predetermined answers. A minimal amount of time is spent by teachers talking to students on an individual basis, and throughout most of the lessons, the students play a passive role. A considerable amount of teaching-learning time is also spent with pupils silently working on teacher-assigned tasks. These tasks are generally “whole class” assignments, at which the pupils are expected to work independently at the same rate (Sifuna et al. 2007). Moving from this individual lesson to the wider school day, one is immediately and forcefully struck by the sameness of the lessons. Allowing for the individual teacher differences in style, it seems that irrespective of the subject under consideration or whether the pupils were in primary or secondary school level, all lessons are characterized by this same routine, namely the teacher presenting information/lecturing to pupils or asking wholeclass directed questions and pupils working silently at the teacher-assigned tasks. In both of these routines, the pupils play an almost totally passive role in terms of verbal and hands-on involvement (Sifuna et al. 2007). The question-and-answer exchange method is another dominant strategy. This is the principal form of oral exchange in the classroom. Students are required to provide very brief answers to the teachers’ questions, based on the recall of topics encountered in the previous lesson. The teacher rarely probes for the students’ thinking following an incomplete or incorrect response. The approach being more usual to pass on from one pupil to other until the correct response, as designed by the teacher, is provided. A common technique is for the teacher to ask a question and then to select a volunteer from those pupils who have raised their hands. Another frequently used technique is for the teacher to ask a question and then direct it to a specific pupil by name (Sifuna, et al. 2007). In the question–and-answer routines during lessons, the rapidity with which the teacher fires the questions and the fractional time allowed for a response are deterrents to pupil participation. Students need time to organize their thoughts, and even more so if these are to be presented in a second language. The “wait time” in the order of several seconds not only

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provides little thinking “space” for the pupils, but also raises the chances of the pupils constructing unacceptable responses (Sifuna et al. 2007). One important feature of the classroom exchanges is usually the questions asked by the teacher about some “known information.” The teacher knows the answer to the question, and the teacher’s reaction to the pupil’s response tells the pupil how well he/she has met the teacher’s expectations. This kind of classroom talk is entirely teacher-directed and gives virtually no recognition to the ideas that pupils bring with them to the lessons. The questionand-answer exchanges are generally routine at the beginning of lessons, but can also occur at the conclusion of a lesson, when the teacher is led to suspect or think he/she has completed the topic more rapidly than anticipated and is left with five or ten minutes to fill. Associated with the question–and-answer exchange is the common practice of students completing the teacher’s sentences in a chorus form (Sifuna et al. 2007). Another important activity is written exercises. This involves working of examples by secondary school learners to provide practice in writing and computing skills and are quite common in mathematics and science subjects observed. On the whole, textbooks provide a sequential series of exercises through which each class progresses. It is routine that after a review of the previous lesson and an introduction of the new topic, the lessons proceed with the teacher working through one or two examples on the board, after which a series of questions are assigned to the pupils/students for working in their exercise books. While the students are working out the assignment, the teacher walks round the classroom, checking and marking individual work. As the students complete the questions, the teacher, if there is still enough time, intervenes to work through the same questions on the board. The written exercises are often continued as homework, which could be taken by the teacher for marking and for reviewing during the next lesson. As a variation of the written exercises, the teacher invites student volunteers to work out examples on the board, while the rest of the class watches (Sifuna, et al. 2007).

Assessment and Efficiency An important prerequisite of a successful education system is the existence of a regular provision of formative feedback to the teaching and learning process. A continuous evaluation of student learning is expected to be central to successful teaching. During the teaching, teachers are expected to encourage teacher-to-student and student-to-student interaction and provide immediate feedback that encourages and guides them to better learning approaches. Equally important, teachers should evaluate students’ learning through written tests and end-of-term examinations or yearly examinations. While some kind of testing is normally carried out in secondary schools in the region, in practice what is observed in many schools falls short of the ideal of teacher-to-student and student-to-student interaction that would promote meaningful learning processes. As already discussed above, in many schools most lesson time is taken up by the teacher-dominated lectures, dictating information and students passively listening or writing notes. The causes for these kinds of practices include pressure to cover lengthy syllabuses for purposes of the national examinations, constraints in school resources, inappropriate teacher professional development and poor teacher motivation and low morale.

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Students’ performances in the national examinations would enable schools to evaluate the extent to which they are succeeding in meeting the national objectives. However, many of the national examinations’ potential as a formative feedback to teaching and learning is quite limited. This is because, first and foremost, many of the examinations measure the cumulative outcome of students’ academic progress over the secondary school period, and thus hardly indicate candidates’ progress over the period. Second, in grading candidates’ performances in the examinations, the emphasis is on ranking candidates, that is, in a given subject, the grade awarded to a candidate indicates how she/he performed in comparison with the peers rather than how much of the syllabus she/he has actually mastered. Third, in the award, cognizance is not made of the varying factors and conditions such as the student’s personal characteristics and home background, teacher characteristics, school quality and other factors which actually influence performance. Fourth, the examinations are predominantly a measure of cognitive outcomes of schooling and thus ignore growth in values and attitudes even though their nurture is stated as an important objective of the secondary school systems. The grading of the national examinations differs from one country to another. In some countries, candidates are awarded grades ranging from “A” being the best, to “E” being the poorest. Each letter grade represents a range of scores within the ranking of all candidates who sat for the subject. As the ranges of scores representing grades fluctuate from year to year, the letter grades are not a constant portrayal of performance. Other systems award points from 1 being the best and 9 being the poorest in a given subject. The candidate’s overall performance in the examination is arrived by averaging the points obtained in each subject in accordance with the grouping of the subjects. The national secondary education examinations are regarded as important measures of the quality and effectiveness of the secondary school systems. Among other things, students who are deemed to have performed well stand a chance of continuing education or being selected for entry into university according to different education systems or entry into tertiary training. On the whole, these examinations are also used to assess the efficiency of the secondary schools. For example, in most Francophone countries, many secondary school students in the academic cycles are said to score very poorly on the baccalaureat mainly because of deficiencies in the French language. They have to focus on rote memorization in many subjects to have a chance of succeeding in the examination. Mathematics is also said to be not particularly well done from the primary school grades, and many students fail in this examination. A great number of students are eliminated after the twelfth grade (Michel and Cintron 1988). The situation is no different in the Anglophone countries. In Kenya, for example, an analysis of performance in science subjects at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary education (KCSE) for the period between 1995-1999 showed a below-average performance with a mean of 43.4 percent in 1995, declining to 37.9 percent in 1999 (Ndirangu et al. 2005). Another analysis also showed that apart from a few subjects of the same examination, a majority of the candidates scored below 50 percent. This is an indication that most students fail to master less that 50 percent of the prescribed secondary school curriculum, with the worst performance being in English, mathematics and sciences (Makau 1994).

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SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY It has been shown that most governments in the Sub-Saharan African region recognize that facilities and teaching-learning materials, particularly in science and practical subjects, lead to attainment of the stated secondary school objectives. In many countries, there are, however, large backlogs of workshops, science laboratories and home science rooms. While in some countries, the provision of these facilities has improved through donor assistance, due to the cost-sharing policies, the construction and equipping of facilities is currently the responsibility of parents and communities, which has exacerbated the provision of these facilities. Funds for the improvement of physical, acquisition of laboratory/workshop equipment, textbooks and other supplementary teaching resources, especially in science and vocational subjects need to be provided. In particular, there is an urgent need for locally developed textbooks appropriate for secondary school examinations, instead of reliance on imported science textbooks that are widely used in schools. This should include the use curriculum packages from developed metropolitan nations, typically without questioning very deeply their aims and philosophical and pedagogical assumptions, which are adopted wholesome. Another important aspect in the improvement of quality in secondary education is the deployment and distribution of teachers. The distribution of teachers generally, and especially women teachers, exhibits considerable disparity across regions, with a higher concentration in the urban areas. This is an area that seriously needs to be addressed, particularly in marginalized regions with the provision of some incentives that could attract best qualified teachers. There is also the problem of harmonization, which is crucial in proper planning and deployment of teachers. With the uncontrolled expansion of both public and private universities in many countries, most of these institutions are training more teachers in the liberal arts who cannot be absorbed in secondary schools because of overstaffing. Students’ performance in the national examinations would enable schools to evaluate the extent to which they are succeeding in meeting the national objectives. However, many of the national examinations’ potential as a formative feedback to teaching and learning is quite limited. The examinations are predominantly a measure of cognitive outcomes of schooling and, thus, ignore growth in values and attitudes even though their nurture is stated as an important objective of the secondary school systems.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Secondary education in the Sub-Saharan African countries is education at a higher and more advanced level than in the primary school, and pupils seeking to enter secondary schools are normally required to show that they have successfully completed a primary school course. The secondary school sector, like primary education, is among the oldest education sectors introduced during colonialism in Africa, but unlike the primary education sector, secondary education tends to retain certain Western traditional features and values that seem to be distinctly identified with it. Although, since the achievement of independence, secondary education expanded dramatically in scale in the context of human resource development and modernization theories, it has changed little in its philosophy and character.

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While expansion has been welcomed, the continued use of the colonial-style curricula and focus on public examinations do little to meet the needs of most students. With regard to goals and objectives of secondary education, there seems to be a general agreement in most countries that it is expected to produce responsible individuals who are properly socialized and who possess the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to enable them participate positively in national development. However, as compared to these broadly stated objectives, the expectations of the majority of parents and their children are much more focused around personal advancement, especially in material terms. For many of them, secondary education is a crucial step in the attempt to break away from the poverty level. Success in the secondary school is perceived as opening the doors for further education and training and a well paid job in the modern sector. The public in general does not believe that the stated objectives of education have been met until the school leaver goes for further education or enters training and obtains a salaried job. There seem to be different approaches in curricular designs between the Anglophone and Francophone African countries. The Anglophone countries, in principle, plan their curriculum with the requirements of the School Certificate examinations, which are administered by local examination syndicates. The school also seeks to assure the general education and needs and interests of their students in the planning of the curriculum. Programs and teaching conditions in secondary education in many of the Francophone countries have, however, been adapted from the French system of education. In terms of access, secondary school systems exclude most of the population of secondary age children in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, the region was estimated to have a total population of about 600 million. Of this population, about 86 million were of general secondary school age. The gross enrollment rates (GERs) at secondary school averaged 25 percent. On this crude basis, about 64 million, thus 75 percent, of secondary age pupils are not enrolled in the region. The proportion of those excluded was likely to be higher than this, since some places are filled by repeaters. In this regard, it was probable that the numbers of those who failed to enrol were in the tune of 70 and 75 million, or over 80 percent of the total of secondary school-age children. With regard to quality, most governments in the Sub-Saharan African region recognize that facilities and teaching-learning materials, particularly in science and practical subjects, do lead to attaining the stated secondary school objectives. However, in many countries, there are large backlogs of workshops, science laboratories and home science rooms. While in some countries the provision of these facilities has improved through donor assistance, due to the cost-sharing policies, the construction and equipping of facilities is currently the responsibility of parents and communities. Considering the continued downward trend in the economies and rising costs of education that parents are required to meet, the provision of facilities and teaching-learning materials has seriously deteriorated. The main teaching strategy that characterizes secondary school teaching is the large amount of teachers’ talk, which involves mainly the teacher presenting information or lecturing to the students, interspersed with questions, generally asked to the whole class, with predetermined answers. A minimal amount of time is spent by teachers talking to students on an individual basis, and throughout most of the lessons, the students play a passive role. A considerable amount of teaching-learning time is also spent with pupils silently working on teacher-assigned tasks.

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By use of the national examinations to assess the efficiency of the secondary schools, it is clear that in most countries, many students score very poorly mainly because of deficiencies in the use of foreign languages, lack of teaching and learning resources and the use of rote memorization in many subjects of the curriculum. To improve quality, funds for the improvement of physical, acquisition of laboratory/workshop equipment, textbooks and other supplementary teaching resources, especially in science and vocational subjects, need to be provided. In particular, there is an urgent need for locally developed textbooks appropriate for secondary school examinations, instead of reliance on imported science textbooks which are widely used in schools.

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Chapter 6

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

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INTRODUCTION This chapter briefly discusses the establishment and growth of university education, the role of university education and course programmes, access and participation and challenges of university education. The colonial university in Africa was established not out of the goodwill of the colonial administration, but it was first demanded by Africans themselves, and second the fear of the same administration to let Africans study abroad. With increasing African contacts with Europe and the United States of America, it became inevitable that they could begin aspiring for higher education overseas, as they realized that the education they received locally fell short of that of the colonial officials who ruled them. It was only by obtaining similar qualifications, it was felt, could the African stand up to the European domination politically and socially. At first, they went to institutions that extended some encouragement to African pioneers. In America, Booker T. Washington had founded a college for American blacks, which attracted a good number of Africans to the institution and others in the Southern States of the USA for higher education. There, they came into contact with the whole ideology surrounding Black American education and self-improvement as symbolized through these institutions as well as much more militant Black American movements outside these institutions. The value of higher education was reinforced more by the American educated West African (Ghana) J. E. K. Aggrey, who toured Africa as a commissioner with the famous Phelps-Stokes Commission. What impressed Africans most in his meetings was not so much in the manner he extolled virtues of industrial training, but chiefly his fluency in English and knowledge of the world. His presence on the commission was the most vivid single advertisement for the advantages of higher literary education and strongly stimulated African interest in American education (Watson and Furley 1978) It was not long before the colonial authorities, especially in the British colonies, became aware that certain Africans were returning from America with “dangerous ideas” in their heads. This was disapproved by many colonial administrators. America as well as Europe was frowned on as students could encounter politicians and political movements considerably more militant, which could make them realize that educational standards in their own countries were very low in comparison. This realization prompted the colonial officials to admit that there ought to be higher education in Africa, and deliberate efforts had to be made

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to achieve this end. When some of the colleges were established, they were strictly supervised with the intention of insulating students from any ideas condoned by the colonial rulers. Makerere was a classic case of this situation:

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One of the reasons (only one for the establishment of Makerere as the University College of East Africa) was that the political environment in which students studied for degrees could be more closely controlled, there being a widely fear in European circles that students who attended a university away from their natural background were likely to be manipulated by subversive elements, and on their return home would present a dangerous order. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that there was considerable feeling that autonomy at Makerere should be limited in the interests of stability, and although this was not officially expressed, political activity by students was looked upon with considerable disfavour, and the College authorities minimized governmental influence in practice by exercising a fairly strict internal discipline (Southall 1974).

However, the establishment of a colonial university for Africans was not given serious consideration by the British administration until around the middle of the twentieth century, when the policy towards the colonies had changed and self-government was seen as a likelihood. This was also when financial provision was potentially available under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of the forties, was there any realistic prospect for the development of a system of higher education (Girdwood 1997). After much consideration of which type of higher education to introduce, the model selected was that of the high-cost, internationally recognized institution. The Asquith Report, entitled, The Report of the Commission on Higher Education in the Colonies of 1943, was to be of great significance for African universities in the British colonies. The Report became an important milestone in the development of universities, well into the 1960s, when most African countries had achieved their independence. It stated as a fundamental principle that “An institution with the status of a university which does not command the respect of other universities brings no credit to the community which it serves” (Asquith 1943). Consequently, the so-called the “Asquith Colleges” were therefore linked in a formal relationship with the University of London to ensure that their standards were equivalent to those in the British universities. Interestingly, these developments in British colonies were similar to those in the French colonies. Although in higher education the French tended to concentrate their efforts on the University Institute in Dakar, Senegal, created in 1950, it was placed under the supervision of the Universities of Paris and Bordeaux and served as an academic centre for students from all over French West Africa as well as France itself (Sifuna 1990). The early African universities in both the Anglophone and Francophone Africa were designed to train the elite for leadership and to provide breadth and depth, rather than narrow professional training. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the purpose of these universities was essentially that of universities the world over: to teach and advance knowledge by disinterested research and to maintain standards of teaching at a level which could be clearly related to those established in other countries (Burns 1965). Many of the institutions were therefore established as small elite institutions, built on a model selected in the 1940s- basically high-cost, residential institution, established out of town and thus having a separate infrastructure of roads, housing, sanitation system and others. Established on the principles of the famous Asquith Commission of 1943, for the English speaking countries, the costs of the colonial universities were inevitably high; with residence

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halls built on a fairly lavish pattern, with single rooms, dining halls with full service, and large common rooms; the professional faculties, such as medicine, were expensive in cost per student in the early days of small numbers; all the laboratories and technical equipment, senior and junior staff housing, had to be maintained and the all-expatriate staff had to be provided with appointment and leave passages, car loans and others, which meant the colonial university was comparatively as expensive if not more expensive than a European university (Watson and Furley 1978). Another important influence on the development of higher education, especially towards the achievement of independence, was the Report of the Ashby Commission on postsecondary education, which emphasized that higher education was a national investment and established links between high education and economic development. The report recommended substantial expansion of higher education systems and the specific introduction of manpower planning as the rationale behind African educational planning (Ashby 1966). This was in tandem with the national aspirations of newly independent nations, and the process of expansion was taken up on a large scale. The model, which was, however, perpetuated, was that of the high-cost “gold standard” institution recommended by the Asquith Commission. There was also the issue of “curricula and research relevance” and the role of the African university, factors that in part gave rise to the notion of the “Development University,” in which universities were expected to undertake research and participate in development projects in the rural areas. The development university was widely held by a set of expectations concerning the distinctive and practical role of the university in the task of national development. These expectations stressed the singular responsibility of the university for serving its society in direct, immediate and practical ways that could lead to the improved well-being of the national populace. Universities were to improve the relevance of teaching and research and contribute to human resource development. Their role was, however, to go beyond the traditional functions to incorporate an expanded sense of social responsibility and policy relevance and to adopt new forms and purposes for their realization (Coleman 1984; Court 1989). Universities were to take responsibility for such things as increasing food production, addressing the poverty of rural populations, advising governments on house construction, as well as social engineering to improve ethnic balance and national integration. The new touchstones of university quality were its vocational and service contribution and its social commitment. To demonstrate the intricate relationship between the state and universities and the implications for national development, several governments attached the name of the nation-state to their universities, for example, the University of Malawi, University of Zambia, University of Sierra Leone and others (Puplampu 2005). The exhortation that universities in Third World countries in general and Africa in particular were to be demonstrably relevant for and totally committed to national development became so incessant and all-engulfing that it saturated all speeches, studies, debates, and discussion about these institutions. One of the most eloquent exhorters of the nature of the African university was the former President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. In one of his speeches, it was noted: The University in a developing society must put the emphasis of its work on subjects of immediate environment to the nation in which it exists, and must be committed to the people of that nation and their humanistic goals… . We in poor societies can only justify expenditure

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on a University- of any type-if it promotes real development of our people… . The role of a University in a developing nation is to contribute; to give ideas, manpower, and service for the furthering of human equality, human dignity and human development (Nyerere 1966).

The development university was driven by a number of factors, among the key ones were; first was that the university was inspired to take on a developmental posture because of its vulnerability in the allocation of resources by the government. Logically and morally, it was difficult to challenge the proposition that such an extraordinarily high-cost structure, embracing and concentrating most of the scientific and intellectual resources of a country, should be made relevant to the practical problems of development. This was made all the more necessary because with a few exceptions, universities were public institutions supported entirely by public funds. Hence, the high-cost and the monopoly of the nation’s scientific talent by the universities made them obviously vulnerable to declare their commitment to the developmental role. The second factor towards university developmentalism, adding weight to the national governments and the universities themselves, was the international donor agencies. The idea of the service function of the university had featured prominently in the aid programmes of such organizations as the USAID from the early 1950s onwards, and during the following two decades, their grants for university development were quite high (Coleman and Court 1993). Many of the universities in Africa tried a variety of ways to further the idea of the development university. In varying degrees of imagination and conviction, they embarked on efforts to enhance the social relevance of what they were doing in areas such as an expanded role in extension work and community service, a considerable contribution to national policy, an effective fulfillment to human resource and development, especially with regard to scientific and vocational careers, and enhancing of national integration. In the furtherance of the developmental goal, universities, however, experienced many obstacles that tended to hinder their effectiveness, these included the uneasy relationships with their governments, which perceived universities as centres of criticism and opposition to autocracy and kleptocracy, lack of training among the bulk of the teaching force to teach developmentalism, inherent conservatism regarding structural change and the functional overload because most of the new developmental functions had to be performed by the same academic staff as the traditional functions of teaching and research (Coleman and Court 1993). However, due to the perceived failure by the universities to fulfil their development function, especially by the donor agencies, and the economic crisis of the early seventies experienced by many of the African countries, universities started facing serious problems of funding. First, as the 1960s, which had been designated as the decade of high level manpower, came to a close, there was disenchantment with universities within the donor community. The political function of replacing expatriates in the former colonies was approaching completion. The first development decade, namely the sixties, which had heavily banked upon the human-capital theory and high-level manpower as the critical variables in modernization, was increasingly judged to have been a failure. In certain fields, there was a perception of an overproduction of university-trained manpower. This factor, coupled with the worldwide sweep of university-student radicalism during the late 1960s everywhere, accelerated the retreat from and eroded the support for higher education. By the early 1970s, therefore, the older donor agencies were critically reviewing their policies regarding university development. A dominant concern in their reappraisal of the early 1970s was that

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universities and their products did not demonstrably relate to development and had not adapted themselves so as to realize their developmental potential. The USAID, for example, drastically reduced support and focused mainly on those elements of institutions that were highly significant to national development and took a problem-solving approach to both internal university problems and problems of their societies (Coleman and Court 1993). Most universities were, and still are, the only high-cost institutions completely dependent upon governments for budgetary support and, therefore, were among the most vulnerable to budget cuts during periods of economic crisis, financial stringency and budgetary retrenchments. They remain the most sensitive barometers of the state of national economies. The successive oil-price rises since 1973 had a very devastating impact on all the economies of African countries. When this is combined with the continued deterioration in the agricultural sector, with food imports competing with oil for the precious foreign exchange, education in general, and higher education in particular, has suffered. The funding allocated to universities declined or fluctuated in real terms. One study in the eighties showed that public expenditures for higher education over the period 1980-87, when adjusted for inflation, increased at less than half the rate of the increase in enrollment (Eisemon and Kourouma 1991). A study by Eisemon and Salmi (1993) showed that real per-student expenditures for Makerere had declined by 40 percent between 1987 and 1990, largely because of inflation and currency devaluations. It also showed that the 1988/89 education budget for the same institution was only 21 percent of the 1970/71, and that per capita expenditure had fallen to about 13 percent of its original value because of the large increase in the number of students (Eisemon and Salmi 1993). Mwiria, in 1992, also noted that in the 1990/91 academic session, the universities of Zambia, Ghana (Legon) and Makerere received, 79, 53 and 34 percent, respectively, of their requested budgets (Mwiria 1992). African governments’ cutbacks in universities’ funding due deteriorating economies seemed to be reinforced by their own perceptions of these institutions. Their vulnerability in the funding was enhanced by most of the regimes’ overriding concern for stability and their own survival, which heightened their inherent suspicions that universities were the main actual or potential sources of hostile criticism and serious opposition. Such suspicions seemed to be increasingly confirmed by events of the time. Among the consequences of the widespread student challenges to the regimes during the late 1960s and 1970s were stronger regimes’ mistrust of universities as bases of opposition and discontent, a greater questioning of the fundamental purposes of universities, and deeper penetration by the regimes into the vital areas of decision making previously within the sacrosanct realm of university autonomy. The prevailing climate of caution and fear—with the almost universal belief that there were regime informants in most classes—prevented the emergence or development of the universities’ critical function, thereby reinforcing their overwhelmingly technocratic character (Coleman 1977 and Coleman and Court 1993).

ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY The introduction has discussed trends in the development of university education in Africa and their perceived functions since the colonial period to independence. From their

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inception, the academic purpose of the university in Africa was essentially that of universities the world over: to teach and advance knowledge by disinterested research and to maintain standards of teaching at a level that could be clearly related to those established in other countries. In this regard, some of the laws establishing the early universities, for example, stated that their academic objectives were to hold forth to all classes and communities, without any distinction whatever, an encouragement for pursuing a regular and liberal course of education; to promote research and the advancement of science and learning; and to organize, improve and extend education of a university standard (Burns 1965). It is in that context that the early university colleges in the Anglophone countries, except for Fourah Bay College, which was already associated with the University of Durham, the level to be reached in degree examinations had to be explicitly related to international standards through the special relationship established with the University of London. That was similarly the case in universities in Francophone countries, which established a special relationship with key universities in France. This arrangement, which was based on collaboration between university colleges in Africa and foreign universities, in syllabuses and examinations ensured that examinations and standards set at the degree level were those set in the foreign universities and led to the award of degrees of those universities (Burns 1965). With time, however, it became increasingly evident that African universities had social purposes deriving from the influences to which they owed their own existence. This was reflected in the universities’ attitudes towards education as a public service and their readiness to undertake extra-mural responsibilities in subjects of study or those special aspects that seemed peculiarly relevant to an African context or even in the levels at which courses could be offered, such as lectures on African studies, which were attended by all undergraduate students in some universities. Furthermore, a majority of universities in Africa were essentially popular institutions, created and maintained by national governments and planned to serve the needs of the nation rather than those of particular groups in the society. Unlike Western and American universities, African universities were instruments for change of the existing order, and not to preserve it. They had also become the spearhead of nationalism and in some countries even of tribal regionalism. In some countries where they had been closely associated with the nation-building mission of the governments, universities were regarded with considerable affection as well as esteem (Burns 1965). For these reasons, the role of universities in Africa had to be significantly different from that of many universities in Europe and America. It is against this image that their development had to be judged, as opposed to universities whose history and relations with society they serve are very different. In that context, what appeared to be an excessive sense of nationalism could not be regrettable, if, for example, it led teachers to identify and teach the essential elements of the national culture, nor a willingness to make innovations, whether in the planning of courses, the subjects of study or standards of admission, necessarily implied any compromise with the scholarly tradition. Universities in Africa had the responsibilities that were in many ways different from those of the universities of Europe and North America on which they had been modelled, and an interpretation of these roles and related issues were expected to be characteristically different. On this basis, roles of African universities are perceived in the following terms:

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To develop, advance, preserve and disseminate knowledge and to stimulate intellectual life; To train and prepare high-level human resource needed for development; To promote cultural development and the highest ideals and values of society; and To provide, through research and consultancy, knowledge, skills and services to the community by helping solve problems facing the society.

Higher education, especially at the university level, is of paramount importance for Africa’s future. Africa requires both highly trained people and top-quality research in order to be able to formulate the policies, plan the programmes and implement the projects that are essential to economic growth and development. Preparing individuals for positions of responsibility in government, business, and in professions is a central role of the continent’s universities, and supporting these individuals in their work with research, advice and consultancy is another equally important role (World Bank 1988). The leadership of the region’s institutions of higher learning has indeed emphasized the urgent need for their institutions to produce graduates who can tackle the complex problems that confront the continent in many forums. Its sentiments are consistent with the aspirations and articulated policy framework enunciated by the African Union in documents such as the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa 1980-2000 and in Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic Recovery 1986-1990 and many others. University programmes of research and teaching that support the rehabilitation and further development of the agricultural sector are quite important and fall within the framework of the Lagos Plan of Action. These programmes include applied areas, such as soil and water conservation as well as drought and desertification control, which depend on applied disciplines of natural sciences and engineering for increased improvement. Equally important for Africa’s future development is the capacity for strategic planning and implementation. To achieve such capacity, institutions of higher learning will have to produce human resource trained in the disciplines of social sciences and management to conduct action research and provide advisory services in such fields such as economic planning, finance and public administration. While these tasks are essential to growth and development, they are unlikely to be accomplished without some fundamental changes in the current structures of higher education to dramatically improve its quality (World Bank 1988).

COURSE PROGRAMS The expected roles of the African universities significantly shaped the course programmes offered in the universities, especially the role of the university in the African societies. A major responsibility of every university in the continent was to lead Africans to a greater understanding and appreciation of their own societies and cultures. One main concern was for university students to graduate from universities, knowing practically nothing about the intricate political and social structures of their own communities. Quite often was the effect of Western education, which was to alienate Africans from their own traditions. One way of countering this ignorance of African customs was to offer an introductory course in African studies and institutions to all students during their first year. For example, all students

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at the University of Ghana attended lectures on African studies during their first year. This was also the case with the Universities of Lagos and Dar es Salaam, with the latter placing emphasis on a development course that stressed Tanzania’s policy of socialism (ujamaa) and self-reliance. In addition, a number of universities established institutes and departments of African studies that were encouraged within a general education framework (Sifuna 1990). The promotion of African culture and related activities was not confined to the student body within the universities, but included their responsibility for helping to promote a cultural awakening among the people or communities, a purpose that was served best by considerable expansion of the normal range of extension work. This was a function that lay outside universities’ customary responsibilities. Many universities embarked on extension or outreach programs with adult groups as a way of promoting a cultural awakening with communities and enhancing nation building as well as furthering their education through classes and study groups. In most countries, the target groups included an effort directed towards the vast majority who lived and worked on the land as well as the slum dwellers in the urban areas. In professional studies, the social purpose of the university as envisaged by the Asquith Commission was “to produce the elite which would ensure the viability of democratic institutions after independence and graduates who had the standards of public service and the capacity for leadership which self-government demanded.” Independence as opposed to the perception of Asquith had brought with it a massive development of the economy and social services that confronted universities with responsibilities of a different kind and wider in scope than envisaged by the commission in 1944. Universities in Africa had to prepare to offer a comprehensive range of professional training and, in addition, such new courses as local needs could suggest, whether or not these courses were accepted in the European patterns of university studies (Ashby 1961). For example, most accountants, bankers, company secretaries, insurance managers and transport executives in Britain were trained “on the job.” Their employers gave them a variety of experiences in the offices, and they worked for professional qualifications by private study or by part-time attendance at college. In America, professionals in these fields were collegetrained and had degrees. The general policy perception was that the best way to train Africans for these professionals was to offer them degrees in commerce and business administration by sandwich courses, and provision was to be made for students to study for these degrees by evening classes, correspondence and regular courses. In line with such policy thinking, new universities in Africa did not only embrace the proposed approaches, but adopted flexible course systems that would facilitate the launching of more course programs. For example, the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in Eastern Nigeria, did not only depart from the British university structure, but included accountancy, banking, commerce, insurance, journalism and secretarial studies among the subjects in which degrees or diplomas could be taken. This particular trend was adapted by faculties of many universities in Africa. Indeed, the development of courses in such a wide range of subjects and in ways that seemed to be especially appropriate to the needs of rapidly developing economies—as for example, the training offered in administration—was a widespread distinctive feature of universities in Africa and the needs of developing economies (Ashby 1961). Most African countries had a special interest in the courses that universities offered in medicine, veterinary science and agriculture and whether the purpose of the disciplines were evidently practical relating professional training to the needs of the communities. There was the perception that the needs of African countries for medical and veterinary services were

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totally different from the needs of Britain and that African universities should break away from a slavish adherence to the requirements for medical and veterinary practice in that country and with suitable advice from overseas countries, which have tackled similar problems and know how to improvise medical services, work out afresh what their needs were and what sort of training would meet these needs. In medicine in particular, there was a need to double the output of existing medical faculties by using more hospitals for teaching and doubling the use made of laboratory facilities and that locally recognized examinations should be instituted for those who failed to qualify for a medical degree and that the medical course needed to be oriented towards public health, preventive medicine and paediatrics (Ashby 1961). For veterinary science, with a shortage of veterinary doctors for livestock in many countries, they could not afford the niceties of veterinary education directed mainly to providing private practitioners whose major preoccupation was with pet dogs and cats. Veterinary education in Africa needed to emphasise animal husbandry, animal nutrition and preventive medicine. It was felt that while veterinary education was tied to the requirements of overseas professional organizations, it did not have the flexibility it needed. Africa, therefore, needed to firmly decide on a veterinary education relevant to its needs and not one that would allow Africans to practice in Britain (Ashby 1961). In the courses in agriculture, the perception was that the primary objectives should be to give students a sound basis of the physical, biological and social sciences that underlie agriculture, with the understanding for rural people, and an appreciation of their problems and a desire to work on these problems in different ways. Some of the jobs for which such graduates would be needed included agricultural officers, senior extension workers, research workers, teachers, farm workers, marketing specialists and farmers on their own account. Important courses required for this group of agriculturalists ranged from agronomy, animal husbandry, agricultural economists to horticulture, food technology and plant protection (Ashby 1961). One important program of special significance for African universities was that meant to ensure the supply of teachers to the secondary schools. The shortage of professionally qualified teachers in these schools for whom universities were mainly responsible had been one of the principal reasons why secondary education had been unable to expand rapidly enough to meet the targets set by the development plans, just as the expansion of the universities themselves depended on the number of qualified students they could recruit from the secondary schools. The tradition, then, was that students training to become teachers had to spend four years in the university, three of which had to be spent reading for a degree in the arts or sciences and the fourth in training as a teacher. Both as students and teacher trainees, it was usual for them to receive the kind of training that would fit them for teaching up to the sixth form level in the Anglophone countries. In most of these countries, it was perceived to be unnecessary for all graduates to receive such specialized and time-consuming training. There was a need to institute a special degree course for teachers lasting three years instead of four, in which students would only study those subjects they would be expected to teach at school as well as elements of pedagogy and periods of practical teaching. In this regard, a number of Anglophone universities inaugurated B.A. and B. Sc. (Education) programmes as well as a Bachelor of Education (B. Ed), which had strong studies of pedagogy and secondary school teaching subjects (Ashby 1961).

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In teacher development and education, universities were also concerned with the maintenance of high standards in the teaching profession, which presupposed the provision of opportunities for teachers to keep abreast with developments in the educational thought and practice. These were to be the only institutions from which training colleges would reasonably expect professional guidance of any kind. To coordinate these various responsibilities towards the teaching profession, a number of universities in Anglophone Africa established Institutes of Education to be responsible for promoting research in education, for professional courses of training within the university and for the organization of in-service courses for practicing teachers (Ashby 1961). The major course programmes launched with the establishment of universities in the colonial period and modified with the achievement of independence remained in vogue for a considerable length of time, until some few changes were made following serious public financial cutbacks from the late 1980s to attract self-sponsored students. Interestingly, with rapid expansion of university education with most governments opening up more universities, despite envisioned ideology for diversification, the general practice has been to reproduce programs of old and established universities. The tendency appears to be one of duplicating some courses across the university campuses. For instance, in Kenya, with seven public universities, the teacher education programme is offered in all the public university institutions, except one, let alone in most of the 22 private universities. Such duplication tends to over-stretch the already constrained human, financial and material resources for higher education. Furthermore, because the duplication is not based on a planned balance between demand and supply of graduates, for example, with regard to teachers, it constitutes an inefficient and ineffective investment of resources (Kilemi, et al. 2007). The duplication in the Kenya situation is a replica of what is happening in many other Sub-Saharan African countries, and it is happening even in more capital-intensive course programmes, such as medicine, with many universities establishing medical schools without basic medical facilities. The elimination of unnecessary duplication of courses is not an easy task. In Kenya, for example, under the law, each university has the autonomy to decide on its teaching programs. There has been a lot of resistance by individual universities to the idea of initiating curriculum restructuring. The Commission for Higher Education (CHE), a body that has the responsibility for coordinating university education in the country, seems incapable of guiding universities in such matters.

ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION IN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION Although there was a rapid expansion of university education in many countries of the Sub-Saharan African region, which increased access, demand for places still outstrips supply. In spite of the expansion, only a small proportion of the eligible age group has access, based on the assumption that the great majority of university students are aged between 19 and 24 years. In many countries, no more than 2 percent of the eligible age group attends public university education. With an addition of students in private and foreign universities, most countries would average 3 percent of the eligible students. Enrollments in tertiary education, especially at the university level, increased most in relative terms in comparison to other sectors, particularly between 1960 and 1970. This was

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so largely because most African countries were emphasizing higher education in an effort to alleviate human resource shortages and also because enrollments had started from a low base. In 1960, for example, there were only about 21,000 university students in Africa, which was estimated to be approximately one in 500 of the age group, and a few thousands studying in foreign universities. By 1983, approximately seven in 500, or 437,000, were enrolled in African institutions, and a further 100,000 Africans were studying abroad. The relative increase in tertiary enrollments was particularly dramatic in French-speaking countries. In the group of eighteen Francophone countries, for example, there were forty times more students enrolled in higher-level institutions in 1983 than in 1960. By way of contrast, in the sixteen Anglophone countries, where enrollments were much higher initially, enrollments had increased by a small fraction (World Bank 1988). Against the global context, higher education in Africa has had to deal with three major related features, namely, chronic funding problems, significant increase in student enrollment and declines in the quality of teaching and research. Even though funding for higher education, compared to other sectors in the African economy, has been relatively low, the situation has been worsened by the current neo-liberal argument for reduction (UNESCO 2003; Atteh 1996; Morna 1995; Saint 1992). Overall, the percentage of allocation of public expenditure on higher education has declined in many Sub-Saharan countries, as already discussed. According to the World Bank and UNESCO, the decreases have been $6,300, to $1,500 and $1,241 per student for 1980, 1988 and 1995, respectively (UNESCO 2003). At the time of reductions in state funding, enrollments in African universities have increased due, in part, to government pressure to admit more students and the growing demand for and realization by society at large about the importance of higher education. Enrollments in African universities as a whole increased from 417,000 in 1980 to 1.4 million in 1995 (UNESCO 1998). For example, the University of Yaunde in Cameroon had 500 in 1960, but by 1992, it had 45,000 students with facilities that were planned for 5,000 (Morna 1995). In Ghana, for example, university students were about 11,000 in the early 1990s, representing an increase from between 8,000 and 8,500 in the 1980s (Peil 1996). The ultimate impact of these features is the increasing exodus of academic staff, the trying conditions under which those who remain have to work and decline in the quality of teaching and research in many African universities (Tetty and Puplampu 2000; Land 1994; Eisemon and Davis 1991; Coombe 1991). Like other levels of the education systems, there are major regional imbalances in access to university education. Communities that made early and stable contacts with colonial institutions enjoy better access to university education than those who did not. This is particularly the case with students from the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regions, which are inhabited by the pastoralist groups. Massive neglect, coupled with insecurity, banditry and the nomadic nature of these communities appear to have prolonged underdevelopment, which limits the provision of education opportunities. Admission procedures by individual universities or centralized bodies tend to reproduce existing regional and gender disparities in access to university education as they are not quite sensitive to specific educational environments and their effects on examination performance. To compound the problem of equity is the increasing trend towards the privatization of higher education, which will exacerbate inequality by excluding those who are unable to pay. Disadvantaged communities and households are faced with disparities that are in some ways similar to those faced by females. Many universities do not keep readily available data on

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regional or class origins of their students. However, the fact that universities have a program for special consideration for marginalized districts during admission is an indication that there is a recognition that some groups and regions are under-represented at university level. Nonetheless, the introduction of cost-sharing at all levels of education means that unless poor communities and households are given special assistance, their participation is likely to decline and stagnate. In most countries, the proportion of female student enrollment declines as the student moves up the educational ladder. University education in particular is characterized by large gender disparities to the detriment of females. Gender disparities at the university are seen in relation to what happens in the earlier levels of the education system, especially at the secondary school. Due to a variety of demand and supply factors, including socio-economic and cultural influences and less favourable settings in girls’ secondary schools, female participation in terms of access, persistence and achievement is lower than that of males. These disadvantages translate to inequitable selection and participation at the university level. Therefore, while the overall enrollment figures appear spectacular, the low representation of women in university education has been the case in many countries. For most countries, the participation rate for women hardly exceeds 30 percent of the total enrollment (Mwiria et al. 2007). The under-representation of female students cuts across most public universities in many countries despite the application of affirmative action by some institutions. Their underrepresentation is more pronounced in programs such as medicine, pharmacy, engineering and technology-based courses. The degree programs that tend to attract most women students include education, humanities and social sciences. In some countries, private universities are ahead of their public counterparts with regard to the ratio of female students. Some private universities register as high as 45 to 50 percent female students. However, it could be argued that this situation, rather than being the result of forward-looking policies of the proprietors, reflects a combination of factors. The factors include, among others, (i) high levels of discipline and the good learning environments that reassure parents of their daughters’ safety; (ii) most private universities are not only cheaper than foreign universities, but are close enough to home for parents to monitor their daughters’ academic and social progress; (iii) most courses in the private universities are in the humanities and social sciences, which are more popular with women students due to their weak background in the sciences; and (iv) many female secondary school leavers with good grades in humanities and languages fail to get admission in public universities. These factors should also be seen in the broader choice of private universities, where affordability and fewer interruptions in teaching during an academic year following student riots play a very crucial role (Mwiria et al. 2007). In reference to the wider African perspective, accurate figures of students in tertiary education in general and university education in particular are difficult to come by, although a UNESCO (1998) survey indicated around 1.5 million students. Despite the existence of such overwhelming capacity, in the perceptions of the World Bank and related agencies, African countries lack the capacity to provide qualified personnel to carry out sector analysis and prepare key development documents, such as Master Plans, Education and Training Policies, Policy Framework Papers, Strategic Plans, and the like. Consequently, a substantial number of technical assistance staff are, therefore, recruited as consultants to perform this particular function (Kann 1999). It is, for example, estimated that between 1990 and 1994, well over 350 sector-funded studies by the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF were undertaken by expatriate

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led teams with only minimal representation or inclusion of local researchers who never served as senior consultants or document authors (Brock-Utne 2000).

Table 6.1. Enrollment in tertiary education Country Angola Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Congo Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Lesotho Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Nigeria South Africa Swaziland Uganda United Republic of Tanzania

Total 0.6 3 1 1 4 1.1 0.9 1.1 2 2 0.3 2 7 7 14 5 2 0.6

1999 Male 0.7 3 1.5 1 6 2 1.4 1.7 2 2 0.4 2 7 7 13 5 2 1

Female 0.5 3 0.5 1 1 0.3 0.3 0.5 3 2 0.2 1 6 6 15 4 1 0.3

Total 0.8 5 2 2 4 1 3 1 3 3 0.4 3 17 10 15 4 3 1

2005 Male 1 5 3 3 6 2 4 2 3 3 0.5 3 15 13 14 4 4 2

Female 0.7 5 1 1 1 1.4 1 0.6 4 2 0.3 2 19 7 17 5 3 1

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Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

In the general perceptions of the donor community and researchers from the North, institutional capacity in the south in general and Africa in particular to develop sound projects, assess and evaluate as well as disseminate them is quite weak. The following assertions, among others, perhaps succinctly capture the nature of the argument: In many of the poor countries of the world, the local capacity to confidently analyse their own educational priorities, and to pursue coherent programmes of research is not stronger than it was in the 1970s. This local analytical capacity is inseparable from the existence of strong research centres based in universities (or in private institutions) and from strong education planning cells in central and local government. There is unfortunately little evidence for many of the poorer countries of the world that essential skills for the evaluation and management of increasingly complex education systems is in place. Indeed for many countries it could be maintained that with instability at the national level, and low morale and flight of talent in many centres of higher education, this critical capacity is actually less apparent now than before. Very few developing countries have the critical mass of expertise available to pursue the range of research tasks necessary in education (King 1991).

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Be that as it may, if human resource development and modernisation theories were the focus of educational strategies in many African countries at the achievement of independence in the 1960s and indeed skills development in tertiary institutions has considerably increased over the years, how come after the turn of the century, we are still raising similar, if not identical issues and worries on capacity development, which has been our main area of concentration since the 1960s (Habte 1999)? There must, therefore, be something terribly wrong with Africa’s human resource development, or there is indeed a conspiracy somewhere! It is true that there has been a state of instability in capacity building in some African countries coupled with serious economic recession and structural adjustment problems that have undermined some support to institutions of higher learning. But these problems do not fully explain the poor participation by African expertise in policy formulation, wherever it exists. It is common knowledge that thousands of African professionals from the civil service, technical institutions and institutions of higher learning have been retired or dismissed, quite often using the World Bank/IMF structural adjustments, and in some cases voluntarily left their institutions due to the same conditionalities (Habte 1999). What is also evident from some of the available studies is that most African countries are rarely given the opportunity to recruit their own technical assistance staff or choose between candidates. A World Bank study indicates that technical assistance, particularly in terms of personnel, constitutes between one-quarter and one-third of all economic assistance to African countries and absorbs a large chunk of the resources available for development (World Bank 1996). It also needs to be pointed out that the recruitment of expatriate staff in technical assistance, apart from the well known fact that a club/syndicate of consultants exists in most donor agencies, the group of consultants comes as a package, and the recipient country can accept or reject the package, but not replace any one of the proposed members. One major concern is that they are “fly in” and “fly out” consultants with little time and/or little interest in developing the local capacity in research and general analysis (Kann 1999).

QUALITY OF EDUCATION It has been noted that the notion of quality is hard to define precisely, especially in the context of tertiary education where institutions have broad autonomy to decide on their own visions and missions. Any statement about quality implies a certain relative measure against a common standard in tertiary education, which generally does not exist. Various concepts have evolved to suit different contexts ranging from quality as a measure for excellence to quality as perfection, quality as value for money, quality as customer satisfaction, quality as fitness for purpose, and quality as a transformation of the learner (SAUVCA 2002). Some institutions have gone to the extent of adopting the International Standards Office (ISO) approach in some of their activities, which in many cases hardly addresses the deterioration of their learning environments. However, depending on the definition or criteria selected, quality implies a relative measure of inputs, processes, outputs or learning outcomes. This is because many institutions, donors and the public need some method for obtaining assurance that the institution is keeping its promises to the stakeholders (Materu 2007).

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Therefore, the quality of university education, like other levels of education, can be measured through an analysis of (a) inputs such as teaching and non-teaching staff, curricula, facilities and technologies for teaching and learning arrangements for students’ catering and institutional management; and (b) outputs such as tests and examinations. However, the ultimate validation of educational quality is relevance, namely the positive impact of learning on the society. Relevance can be only measured in relation to its objectives. If the program achieves its objectives then it can be said to be relevant.

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Facilities and Teaching-Learning Technologies Physical planning in the public universities in many countries is not commensurate with their rate of growth and expansion; as more students are enrolled, the managers of universities continue to accommodate them in the existing facilities. This has often led to an overstretching of such facilities. As a consequence, there is congestion in lecture theatres, workshops, laboratories, libraries and boarding facilities. Research in many of the public universities reveals that in faculties with high enrollments due to the inadequate lecture theatres, lecturers are forced to repeat the same lecture several times to different groups of students. There are also situations in which students listen to their lecturers through the windows. With as many as 2,000 students registered in one faculty, public address systems are often mounted to enable students take their notes outside the lecture theatre. In addition to inadequate physical facilities, teaching materials and technologies are woefully in short supply and often archaic in public universities as a result of budgetary constraints (Hughes and Mwiria 1990). Further, congestion is in halls of residence where rooms designed for 2 students accommodate as many 6 students or more. There is also inadequate space in the dining halls, which helps to raise tension between students and authorities, a situation that is not conducive to orderly study. The situation is most deplorable in the sciences and technologies. The required inputs, which include adequate laboratory space and workshops as well as spare parts for equipment maintenance and repair, routine replacement and upgrading of equipment, reagents and other consumable supplies is not normally carried out. The situation at Nigeria’s University of Ibadan illustrates this problem: For several months now we have been expected to run a physics laboratory without electricity, perform biology and zoology experiments without water and get accurate readings from microscopes blinded by use and age. Chemicals are unimaginably short. The result of all this is a chemistry laboratory that cannot produce distilled water and hundreds of “science graduates” lacking the benefits of practical demonstrations (Osundare 1983).

Ghana also provided other examples. At the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, no equipment for the electrical engineering had been purchased since 1962, and most equipment in the civil engineering department dated from the 1950s. Such old equipment, including the university’s computer, was rarely in working order as it required regular routine maintenance, including replacement of parts, for which funds were not available. The same university was characterised as “grossly short of … books, paper and food” (Tipple and Tipple 1983). Similarly, in reports from the University of Ghana, Legon, the faculty of

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science told of shortages of chemicals and other consumables necessary for laboratory classes. Lack of funds also meant that some universities operated without vehicles necessary for field trips and data collection (World Bank 1988). Libraries are among the worst hit facilities in public universities in most countries. Despite increased enrollments, universities do not invest much in the acquisition of books. Libraries hold less capacity of the required books, most of which are too old. Some libraries that were designed to accommodate 600 students now serve as many as 10,000 students. Apart from inadequate space, most libraries cannot afford to contribute to current journals and other scholarly publications from outside Africa, which have greatly declined. There is also a scarcity of reference materials. Donor agencies have occasionally donated books to universities, but most donations are of very limited value as they are not informed by the recipients’ needs. The pathetic situation of study materials has had two consequences. First, students are increasingly relying on lectures as their main source of knowledge, and second, in the absence of the latest scholarly publications, in many departments, the quality of postgraduate study and research, through which universities develop staff has seriously declined.

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Staffing and Instruction The massive expansion of enrollments without a corresponding increase in the number of teaching staff has meant that staff to student ratio has risen. The staffing of each public university is the mandate of the relevant university board or council. The right to determine who should teach in universities is considered to be an integral part of the academic freedom, which universities tend to guard jealously, and hence there is no central coordinating authority on the staffing of most universities. There are usually no fixed staff-to-student ratios. However, based on full-time staff equivalents, programs in medicine, engineering and related courses should have the lowest ratio followed by science-based courses. Due to very high enrollments, however, staff-to-student ratios tend to mask unbearably higher ratios in some departments. Normally each university has its own staff development scheme. However, there are many indications that due to financial constraints, post-graduate study, which is the basis of staff development, does not meet the demands in the university faculties (Cooksey et al. 1994). Furthermore, the rapid expansion coupled with growing enrollments have had a farreaching effect on the quality of the teaching staff. To recruit academic staff for the public universities, the tendency has been towards relaxing the recruitment and promotion criteria. In many universities, a Ph.D degree is no longer a requirement for tenure and publications are less important criteria for judging who should be promoted. Consequently, many of the academic staff who in the past would not have qualified for university teaching are now doing so. Moreover, due to very low salaries, it is no longer possible to attract competent staff from abroad to teach in the public universities (Sifuna 1997). The following is a succinct description of the quality of academic staff in many public universities in Africa: The vast majority of our academics in the universities have no business there. They neither teach nor do any research worth the name. Some of them stay up to a decade without publishing a paper or attending any professional meeting. But get promoted by playing ethnic and religious politics, obtaining political interference, boot-licking and politics of opportunism

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and gift-giving. Many continue to misdirect students by recycling old and outdated ideas, and others simply allocate grades without reading examination scripts because they do not have the time as they need more time to farm, run their food stalls, sit and drink at the staff clubs or engage in local politics. Unfortunately, it is this reactionary, unproductive and corrupt segment of the academic community that controls political power and make critical decisions. Given their tenuous relations to teaching and research as well as their general insecurity because of their low intellectual capacities, they are in the fore front of seeking reasons why student unions should be banned, why certain academics should not be promoted, why persons from certain ethnic group should be sacked or not allowed to hold certain offices (Ibonvbere 1993).

Among the major concerns with academic staff is in the area of remuneration and conditions and terms of service. With the downturn of the economies characterised by inflation since the 1980s, the purchasing power of university salaries has declined drastically. Many academics have tried to survive by engaging in consultancies or carrying out activities totally unrelated to their profession. This situation has a demoralising effect on the academic staff. As a result of poor remuneration packages, which could insulate them from the ravages of inflation, there has been an exodus of some leading academics to other countries that offer better salaries or to the private sector. Generally, public universities compare very poorly with private universities in some countries. Although some universities have made efforts to raise salaries in order to attract, motivate and retain highly qualified staff, such changes have been miniscule to meet the magnitude of the problem (Kilemi et al. 2007). From the poor situation of the teaching and learning environment and the quality and morale of the academic staff, not much is expected in the way of quality of instruction. Many lecturers in public universities use old material (yellow notes), which means that the courses they teach are also out of date (Rosenberg 1997). Coupled with the flight of the best lecturers from the public universities, the situation has more adversely affected the quality of instruction in the public universities. With lack of reading materials, students prefer the familiar expository method of teaching, as they perceive university education to consist primarily of the reproduction of assimilated lecture materials for purposes of passing examinations. This attitude is reinforced by the fact that resources are so scarce that “talk and chalk” methodology is the only viable option. Tutorial/seminar discussions, which have characterised university teaching approach since their founding in the medieval period, are not practical due to student numbers and a shortage of rooms and lecturers. There is also the problem of inefficient utilisation of time, especially with Anglophone universities, which adopted the semester system. An academic year in such a system consists of two semesters of 14 weeks each. Before the semester system, the university session in one academic year consisted of three terms, each of which lasted 11 weeks. Considering that two weeks are spent on examinations, one week is spent on revision and one week is normally lost at the beginning of every semester due to registration and a slow take-off of the teachinglearning process, the effective teaching time per semester is reduced to less than 10 weeks. This translates into a 20 weeks per year or less compared with the calendar time of 29 weeks. A loss of 4 weeks in a semester means 12 weeks, which is equivalent to a whole semester in an academic year. This situation is exacerbated by lateness of most lecturers in commencing their lectures, partly because a substantial number of them spend a lot of time shuttling between campuses of the same institution doing extra teaching for extra money.

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Consequently, lecturers often resort to poor methods of content coverage, such as focusing only on areas that they intend to examine at the end of the semester (Kilemi, et al. 2007). The quality of teaching is also exacerbated by the language of instruction, which is normally one of the foreign languages, English, French and Portuguese, which are generally on the decline in quality. These languages are poorly taught from primary through secondary education, such that universities have to spent considerable time re-teaching these languages through some introductory or induction courses. Thus, even in language or literature, students lack basic knowledge not only in syntax, but basic rules governing the use of capital letters and are unable to analyse grammatical structures of simple sentences. Furthermore, there is weak knowledge in the use of various punctuation marks and paragraphing, all of which signal a low mastery of the foreign languages (Kilemi et al, 2007). Equally, another problematic trend in the general expansion of universities is the tendency on the part of some universities to offer duplicate courses to both regular and selfsponsored students, which they are arguably not fully qualified to offer. In Kenya, for example, for a long time, it was the University of Nairobi that had a full-fledged medical school of a high repute. The decision by Moi, Kenyatta, Egerton and Maseno to launch medical programmes without requisite resources and facilities has cast serious doubt on the quality of their medical graduates. The proliferation of professional programs of dubious quality in many countries is a vindication of the quality assurance institutions in most countries. Due to low funding that most governments provide to their public institutions of higher learning, their own quality assurance departments are totally incapable of reigning in on the unprofessional behaviour of such institutions. One of the ways in which extra funding has been raised locally to meet the cutbacks in public funds has been through securing increased student enrollment at relatively lower costs and changes from grants to student loans. These developments have led to competition for students as well as revenue. However, many of the ways to generate more funds have been clearly market-like behaviours, some of which are for profit and others not for profit. But the manner in which many universities have implemented these programs has raised serious doubts on their impact and sustainability if they have to wrest African universities out of the current crisis and “regain their lost glory.” Major areas of concern have centred on the competition-driven higher education, resulting in the lack of institutional focus and mission coherence and even destructive competition in which many institutions exclusively focus on fee paying programs, excessive marketisation and commodification with little attention paid to social and educational goals and insufficient attention to quality. Most of the concerns relate to the quality of programmes provided, lack of legal protection for students who register at satellite campuses and lack of basic resources. Concerns have also been raised about the academic staff in the public universities who spend the bulk of their time teaching at private institutions and thus, prejudice their main function in the public institutions that employ them. Another concern has been some cases of open fraud in which students are registered and issued with certificates after a very scanty academic exposure (Kendo 2007; Abagi 2007; Maxwell et al. 2003). Abagi (2007), a leading educational researcher, in reference to the quality of education in public Kenyan universities captures the current situation as follows: In a country like ours where industrialization and use of ICT are key development goals, higher education is critical. University education is expected to provide not only high-level

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professional skills for the labour market, but also training for doctors, engineers, educationists, accountants, social workers, lawyers and entrepreneurs, among other personnel. But what is happening at universities makes the achievement of these expectations questionable. Institutions of higher learning are in a “massification race” and compete to acquire middle level colleges in the pretext of meeting higher education demand. Universities have abandoned their core responsibilities and have become “money machines.” Each university is doing all it can to acquire a college. They do not discriminate who the partners are and where they are located. Any institution—a secondary, youth polytechnic, institute of technology, teachers’ college—qualifies… . The academic programmes on offer range from certificate to degree courses in arts, sciences, engineering, ICT, nursing, management and entrepreneurship. The duration for study varies. For example, some colleges offer a diploma course in management or entrepreneurship for two years, while at others it takes six months… . But why the rush for affiliation on a massive scale? The answer is not to satisfy demand for higher education—it is a desperate strategy to raise additional income… . Where does the additional income go? Little is ploughed back to fund the core business of universities— research, creation and dissemination of knowledge and buying new books and journals… . The bulk of the money is directed to goods and services, including construction of more hostels, painting buildings, renovating managers’ offices, buying luxury vehicles and funding trips abroad… . The regulation and control of university expansion is wanting… (Abagi 2007).

The efforts to generate funds through self-sponsored academic programs have in particular raised serious concerns about issues of quality education in public universities in some countries. Critics have questioned the standards of new programs, especially those mounted in centres outside the universities. Many public universities have mounted courses in satellite centres, including commercial colleges. Since the main objective of these centres is to generate funds and make profit, there are clear indications that quality has been compromised. Furthermore, the entry criteria to the self-sponsored programs are less competitive than those for the regular programs, which have also raised doubts with regard to the quality of some of the graduates. The decision of some public universities to mount medical courses for both regular and self-sponsored students with very limited capacity to teach effectively, for example, is an issue of major public concern (Mwiria, et al. 2007). A close examination of other proxy indicators of quality point to a very discouraging trend. The high population of students sitting for supplementary examinations or retakes, the poor quality of examination answers and the poor remuneration for lecturers all imply low quality of education. There are also indications of a decline not only in the level of participation in class, but also in the quality of verbal and written communication. This has been the reason for mounting of common foundation courses such as development studies and communication skills. Such courses, however, have not had much impact as students do not take them seriously as compared with what they consider to be their core courses. Furthermore, students in the overcrowded classes have limited meaningful interaction with their lecturers. External examinations, which are meant to maintain some semblance of quality, have not helped much as some of the external examiners tend to pay more attention on minor issues such marking and the distribution of marks instead of the quality of students’ answers and end up writing superficial and unhelpful reports. Among the factors that led most African countries to embark on higher education was to generate the knowledge and innovation needed for development through indigenous scientific

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research and as agents for the acquisition, adaptation and dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge developed elsewhere. However, African university staff uniformly report that research in their institutions has declined since in the 1980s. As the financial crisis of tertiary education deepened, research budgets were typically subject to early and severe cuts. The feasibility of offering good postgraduate education also declined, since a significant part of postgraduate, especially doctoral, training involves student participation as apprentices in faculty research and ultimately the solo undertaking of a dissertation project. Stagnation or outright decline in research output and in the capacity to produce future researchers jeopardized Africa’s long-run ability to take advantage of the worldwide advance in science and technology (World Bank 1988).

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SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY Measures to improve the quality of higher education through teaching and research remains the principal objective and not to abolish universities, as at one time proposed by some leading researchers at the World Bank. Long-term development goals cannot be met without developments in university education. It is, however, appreciated that improvements in quality are unavoidably expensive. To a great extent, the low provision of resources to public universities stems from weaknesses in planning and management. For some time, long-term planning for the university sub-sector has received little attention, with governments allocating small grants in relation to increased enrollments. Ad hoc decisions affecting university budgets, often reflecting undue response to social demand, led to the erosion of standards as well as uncoordinated expansion. Equally important has been the management within universities that has generally been inefficient. There have been many cases of misuse of funds and a neglect of facilities and equipment, over-establishment of nonteaching staff and erratic audits of accounts. The improvement of quality can be achieved through a variety of measures. Urgent attention should be paid to the establishment and gradual implementation of standards of provision for the full range of inputs to teaching and research. The provision of libraries with the necessary books and periodicals should be the highest priority, closely followed by supplying laboratories and workshops with consumables and materials needed for equipment maintenance and repair. The revival of long-term efforts to upgrade the academic qualifications of staff is also quite essential through postgraduate training in masters and doctoral programs. There is also a need to offer postdoctoral fellowships, faculty exchanges, collaborative research and other professional linkages with foreign and African universities through which academics are exposed to new developments in research and curricula in their fields. Staff exchange between universities could also provide opportunities for staff development. Equally important is the strengthening of national quality assurance institutions to monitor public universities’ academic programmes and ensure an upgrading of delivery systems. The tendency towards the expansion of public universities through absorptions of middlelevel institutions needs to be halted. Some tertiary institutions, individual campuses, academic departments, and some teaching programmes need to be amalgamated into larger units of economically viable and efficient units. Personnel reductions, especially of non-teaching

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staff, needs to be further downsized as a way of reducing costs and increasing the average level of relevant training and experience of those who remain, especially those in the academic positions. The tendency to poach academic staff into mainstream university administration should also be halted. The number of students at most institutions needs to be stabilised, by tightening admission and performance standards. Such consolidation in public universities will help in re-establishing an economically and pedagogically viable base from which to expand the number of graduates and the scope of research for intellectual enhancement. There is also the need to recruit and train competent management personnel (World Bank 1988). At the national level, attention should be paid to realistic and effective long-term planning and strengthening partnerships of key stakeholders, including university authorities, students, governments, community and the private sector.

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS The colonial university in Africa was established not out of the goodwill of the colonial administration, but it was first demanded by Africans themselves, and second the fear of the same administration to let Africans study abroad. However, the establishment of a colonial university for Africans was not given serious consideration by the British and French administrations until around the middle of the twentieth century, when the policy towards the colonies had changed and self-government was seen as a likelihood. After much consideration of which type of higher education to introduce, the model selected was that of the high-cost, internationally recognized institution. The purpose of African universities was essentially that of universities the world over: to teach and advance knowledge by disinterested research and to maintain standards of teaching at a level that could be clearly related to those established in other countries. There was also the issue of “curricula and research relevance” and the role of the African university, factors that in part gave rise to the notion of the “Development University,” especially after independence in which universities were expected to undertake research and participate in development projects in the rural areas. The development university was widely held by a set of expectations concerning the distinctive and practical role of the university in the task of national development. These expectations stressed the singular responsibility of the university for serving its society in direct, immediate and practical ways that could lead to the improved well-being of the national populace. Universities were to improve the relevance of teaching and research and contribute to human resource development. Universities in Africa, therefore, had responsibilities that were in many ways different from those of the universities of Europe and North America on which they had been modelled. Higher education, especially at the university level, is of paramount importance for Africa’s future. Africa requires both highly trained people and top-quality research in order to be able to formulate policies, plan programs and implement the projects that are essential to economic growth and development. Preparing individuals for positions of responsibility in government, business, and in professions is a central role of the continent’s universities, and supporting these individuals in their work with research, advice and consultancy is another equally important role.

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Although there was a rapid expansion of university education in many countries of the Sub-Saharan African region after independence in the 1960s, which increased access, demand for places still outstrips supply. In spite of the expansion, only a small proportion of the eligible age group has access, based on the assumption that that the great majority of university students are aged between 19 and 24 years. In many countries, no more than 2 percent of the eligible age group attends public university education. With the addition of students in private and foreign universities, most countries would average 3 percent of the eligible students. Like other levels of the education systems, there are major regional imbalances in access to university education. Communities that made early and stable contacts with colonial institutions enjoy better access to university education than those who did not. This is particularly the case with students from the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regions, which are inhabited by the pastoralist groups. Admission procedures by individual universities or centralized bodies tend to reproduce existing regional and gender disparities in access to university education, as they are not quite sensitive to specific educational environments and their effects on examination performance. In most countries, the proportion of female student enrollment declines as they move up the educational ladder. University education in particular is characterized by large gender disparities to the detriment of females. Gender disparities at the university are seen in relation to what happens in the earlier levels of the education system, especially at the secondary school level. Due to a variety of demand and supply factors, including socio-economic and cultural influences and less favourable settings in girls’ secondary schools, female participation in terms of access, persistence and achievement is lower than that of males. These disadvantages translate to inequitable selection and participation at the university level. The quality of university education, like other levels of education can be measured through an analysis of (a) inputs, such as teaching and non-teaching staff, curricula, facilities and technologies for teaching and learning arrangements for students’ catering and institutional management; and (b) outputs such as tests and examinations. Physical planning in the public universities in many countries is not commensurate with their rate of growth and expansion; as more students are enrolled, the managers of universities continue to accommodate them in the existing facilities. This has often led to an over-stretching of such facilities. As a consequence, there is congestion in lecture theatres, workshops, laboratories, libraries and boarding facilities. The situation is most deplorable in the sciences and technologies. The required inputs, which include adequate laboratory space and workshops as well as spare parts for equipment maintenance and repair, routine replacement and upgrading of equipment, reagents and other consumable supplies, are seriously lacking. Libraries are among the worst hit facilities in public universities in most countries. Despite increased enrollments, universities do not invest much in the acquisition of books. Libraries hold less capacity of the required books, most of which are too old. Some libraries that were designed to accommodate 600 students now serve as many as 10,000 students. Apart from inadequate space, most libraries cannot afford to contribute to current journals and other scholarly publications from outside Africa, which have greatly declined. There is also a scarcity of reference materials. The massive expansion of enrollments without a corresponding increase in the number of teaching staff has meant that staff-to-student ratio has risen. Normally, each university has its own staff development scheme. However, there are many indications that due to financial

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constraints, post-graduate study, which is the basis of staff development, does not meet the demands in the university faculties. To recruit academic staff for the public universities, the tendency has been towards relaxing the recruitment and promotion criteria. In many universities, a Ph.D degree is no longer a requirement for tenure and publications are less important criteria for judging who should be promoted. Consequently, many of the academic staff who in the past would not have qualified for university teaching are now doing so. Moreover, due to very low salaries, it is no longer possible to attract competent staff from abroad to teach in the public universities. From the poor situation of the teaching and learning environment and the quality and morale of the academic staff, not much is expected in the quality of instruction. Many lecturers in public universities use old material (yellow notes), which means that the courses they teach are also out of date. Coupled with the flight of the best lecturers from the public universities, the situation has adversely affected the quality of instruction in the public universities. With lack of reading materials, students prefer the familiar expository method of teaching, as they perceive university education to consist primarily of the reproduction of assimilated lecture materials for purposes of passing examinations. Measures to improve the quality of higher education through teaching and research remains the principal objective and not to abolish universities as at one time proposed by some leading researchers at the World Bank. Long-term development goals cannot be met without developments in university education. It is, however, appreciated that improvements in quality are unavoidably expensive. The improvement of quality can be achieved through a variety of measures. Urgent attention should be paid to the establishment and gradual implementation of standards of provision for the full range of inputs to teaching and research. The provision of libraries with the necessary books and periodicals should be the highest priority, closely followed by supplying laboratories and workshops with consumables and materials needed for equipment maintenance and repair. The revival of long-term efforts to upgrade the academic qualifications of staff is also quite essential through postgraduate training in masters and doctoral programs.

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Chapter 7

TEACHER EDUCATION AND THE TEACHING PROFESSION INTRODUCTION

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In this chapter, we focus on the general low priority placed on teacher education by development agencies, evolution of poor quality teacher education, objectives of teacher education and teacher qualifications, quality, relevance and efficiency of teacher education and issues in the teaching profession It is now nearly over 40 years since Beeby pointed out, in the context of planning education for development, that if attempts to change the quality of learning in schools were to be effective, they had to be linked to improvements in the education of teachers (Beeby 1966). Yet since, then this area has received relatively little attention from policymakers, donors and researchers. Though development agencies have supported a range of teacher education projects, few have contained support for research on process and practice. As a result, the evidence base is weak, and much policy on teacher education has not been grounded in the realities that shape teacher education systems and their clients. Perhaps most surprisingly, the World Declaration on Education for All (EFA), which emerged from the conference at Jomtien in 1990, devoted scant attention to the problems of teachers and teacher education, despite their centrality to the achievement of better learning outcomes. It was not until ten years later, at the Global Forum on EFA in Dakar, Senegal, during which it became clear that in many of the countries that had fallen well short of the goals set at Jomtien, that teacher supply and teacher quality were amongst the most important constraints. In the Dakar Forum, therefore, teacher education moved up the agenda of the EFA forum to the extent that the Sub-Saharan Regional Action Plan included it as one of its ten targets, namely: Ensuring that by the year 2015, all teachers have received initial training, and that in-service training programmes are operational. Training should emphasise child-centred approaches and rights and gender-based teaching (UNESCO 2000).

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But the extensive implications of this target for teacher training systems were not elaborated; nor was the evidence base for the advocacy revealed. This has tended to be reflected in some of the on-going developments. For example, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) has ten thematic international Working Groups, one of which is focused on the teaching profession. However, the objectives of this group are primarily concerned with improvements in the management, employment benefits and professional support for teachers. Initial training and in-service do not feature as primary concerns, nor does research on practice. There is little information or development activities that could guide policy and practice in low-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (Stuart and Lewin 2002). And yet, in many of the less industrialized countries, especially in Africa, teacher education is in a crisis. Inherited systems of teacher education have proved increasingly unable to satisfy the dual demands for higher quality training and substantially increased output called for by commitments to universalize primary schooling (Ncube 1982; UNESCO 1997). Many education systems still contain high proportions of untrained teachers; at the primary level, most who enter teacher training will only have completed secondary school. The quality of primary schools is such that many are unable to provide a supportive professional environment for trainees of the kind; where staff are fully trained and often graduates. Donor enthusiasm for new pedagogy, which frequently advocates learner-centred approaches, group work, attention to special needs, and a panoply of methods of training associated with best practice in rich countries, has sometimes sat uneasily with the realities of the training environment, the teacher education infrastructure, and different cultural and professional expectations of the role of the teacher. Much of the rhetoric of reform has been difficult to translate into real changes in practice (Kunje 2002).

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THE EVOLUTION OF LOW-QUALITY TEACHER EDUCATION Teacher education, like other sectors of African education, was not given much prominence by the colonial administration. It that regard, the shortage of teachers became among the greatest obstacles to the expansion of education and was closely associated with the declining standards of education in most countries following the achievement of independence in the sixties. In most of the Anglophone countries, many of the teacher training colleges were originally established by bodies responsible for the majority of the schools, which were religious organizations or voluntary agencies. Teachers’ colleges, which were set up by governments, were either established at a later date to provide training where no provision existed or to increase the number of trained teachers where agencies’ colleges were unable to do so. Colleges established by voluntary organizations varied quite considerably in size and in the numbers of students. In many colleges, there were fewer than a hundred students in all, and it was often difficult to provide specialist training; it was also manifestly impossible to do so in the very small colleges with around thirty students and two or three tutors. For professional reasons, therefore, there was good ground for some reorganization of the work of the smaller colleges into fewer, but larger colleges, although voluntary agencies, often found such reasons difficult to accept (Burns 1965).

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The size of the budget precluded the purchase of a wide range of books and of investments in additional equipment such as projectors. The geographic isolation of many colleges militated against their providing a generally conducive teacher education environment. Such colleges lacked the basic variety of resources and amenities that should exist in these institutions. The students had little opportunity to interact with people who were better educated, however slightly than themselves. In other words, many of the colleges were generally too small, too isolated and, in consequence, too limited in outlook. Furthermore, many training courses for teachers for primary schools had a dual function, being intended to further the college students’ education as well as to prepare them for their work as teachers. The extent to which they achieved the first task was necessarily one of the conditions for achieving the second one. However, teachers’ colleges could hardly be expected to advance their students’ academic knowledge any further in a two-year course of training than a secondary school could do in the same period, and most colleges were less well provided for both in staff and equipment than the normal secondary schools. It was also clear that the academic standard achieved by a majority of students after two years training in a college following eight or so years in a primary school was seldom as high as that of students who had spent time in a secondary school and was appreciably below the standard set in the “O” level examination of the General Certificate of Education or School Certificate. In this regard, it was one of the reasons why training courses often seemed more concerned with placing emphasis on giving students exact instructions on how to teach the syllabuses of primary education than with giving them opportunities to exercise their judgement and thinking imaginatively and creatively. Low educational standards were undoubtedly among the principal reasons for the low status that some Anglophone countries accorded to teacher education; and such attitudes were often reflected in the standards of those appointed to train teachers. Many members of staff in training centres and colleges were inadequately qualified for teaching in such institutions. Many would not qualify for headship of grammar schools, although teacher colleges were expected to be post-secondary institutions. One consequence of this outlook was that better qualified staff tended to be posted to grammar schools rather than teachers’ colleges. In a number of colleges, staff members had been recruited as members of the mission staff and were expectedly subject to mission control and direction, while buildings and property were vested in mission ownership, and the colleges were run as an integral part of the mission’s general activities (Burns 1965). The conditions under which some colleges operated also contributed to the depressed standards of work. The atmosphere of instructional conditions in many colleges was affected by their close association with primary schools; and indeed, the practice in some colleges of requiring students to share dining halls and related facilities with primary school pupils and to wear the same uniforms tended to suggest that colleges were hardly any more than an extension of schools. Many college buildings had been adapted from buildings originally intended for other purposes and were quite unsuited to the needs of students who were expected to develop as responsible persons. Furthermore, some colleges placed insufficient attention to practical ability and the making of apparatus by students and lacked well staffed demonstration schools where practical teaching could be displayed. There was also a lack of informal student activities such as students’ unions or student societies, which were an essential part of successful teacher education programs. Many lacked specialist tutors for certain subjects as well as properly stocked libraries. Students were also not afforded personal

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responsibilities and were not trusted to run their own affairs through an elected students’ council. In some countries there was concern about the apparent tendency to regard the qualifying tests as competitive examinations rather than acceptable measures of professional competence (Burns 1965). The working conditions forced many colleges to interpret the period of professional training in ways that were narrow and unimaginative. These pressures were felt more acutely in the smaller colleges, where among the principal reasons, the size of the colleges was quite critical. The size inevitably influenced the character of the training, with small staff who could not cover a wide range of subjects effectively, however well qualified they could be. Much of the value of specialist tutors, whenever they were available, could be lost in the small college because of the need for them to work outside their own particular fields; and it was not possible for the small colleges to employ sufficient staff to provide a tutorial system that secured individual supervision of each student’s work. Among the key criticisms of the training that many colleges offered, was being out of touch with the needs of the students in a modern society and their view of the aims of education in development. The educational programmes that newly independent countries envisaged could not be carried out successfully unless teachers assumed a much wider and more responsible role than the preparation that was being provided. There was increasing emphasis on the importance of the teacher as a leader of society. Such a demand on the teacher called for a new approach to teacher education rather than the narrower sense. This could be achieved through a kind of preparation that enabled students to be versed in the general principles on which their work was based. This implied some knowledge of the way children grew up and the general nature of the child’s psychological development and especially of the way children’s growth and character are affected by the environment. It called for an extension of the students’ own education, preferably in an environment that offered a scope for developing a sense of responsibility and maturity of purpose. The period of professional preparation also required courses that focused on the wider aims of the community, especially in the area of community development. To improve the quality of teacher education, there was an increasing need for reform; and this became more urgent as some countries moved towards the achievement of their independence. Among the major reforms was the amalgamation of small teacher colleges to make them more economical and effective. This was initially difficult to achieve, as most colleges belonged to different religious agencies. Another important reform was the need to coordinate the work of different colleges through some central institution, which could play a leading role in the study of modern pedagogy, experiment and research. Different Anglophone countries approached the coordination process by the establishment of National Teacher Training Councils, while others set up Institutes of Education. Such bodies dealt with functions that included organizing the selection of students for admission into teachers’ colleges, designing course programmes, examinations and recommendations for the award of certificates, the in-service training of qualified teachers and programmes of research in education (Burns 1965).

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OBJECTIVE OF TEACHER EDUCATION AND TEACHING QUALIFICATIONS The goals and teaching qualifications of teacher education vary considerably from one country to another, but academically and professionally qualified teachers are regarded as prerequisite for the provision of high quality and relevant education at all levels. Towards the attainment of this goal, the objectives of teacher education include the following, among others: • • • •

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•

Develop communication skills; Develop professional attitudes and values; Equip the teacher with knowledge and ability to identify and develop the educational needs of the child; Create initiative, a sense of professional commitment and excellence in education; and Enable the teacher to adapt to the environment.

In many countries, when comparing teachers for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) to other sectors, the largest proportion of them is untrained. The high proportion of untrained teachers is to a considerable extent explained by relatively recent and partial inclusion of the sub-sector into the public education systems. Teachers in preschool generally lack same incentives as their counterparts in public education. They have to meet most of the costs of their training. Furthermore, the uncertainty with regard to continued employment by the variety of preschool providers, especially the financially constrained communities and local government authorities, dampen their motivation to train. However, in many countries, there are private and public preschool institutions for training of teachers. In most countries, the selection of candidates for primary teacher education is carried out centrally by the ministries of education, and candidates are selected by order of merit. Such a system is expected to ensure that regional and gender considerations are taken into account. For instance, areas with large proportions of untrained teachers are expected to receive priority. Some preference is also given to female applicants, where the proportion of women teachers is far below that of men teachers. In many countries, the placement of trainees in primary teachers colleges has a national outlook and enrollments are representative of provinces and districts. Due to high unemployment, the selection systems are sometimes subject to irregularities and abuses. In many of the Anglophone countries, primary teacher training takes two to three years. Since the colonial period, qualifications awarded to non-graduate teachers on completing their training often varied according to the level of education reached at the school level before training. Qualifications exist in most countries for the ones who have completed a full length of primary education, two to three or four years in the secondary school without taking the School Certificate and a secondary course leading to the award of a School Certificate. Despite this variety of qualifications, significant steps have been taken in a number of countries towards a single professional qualification for primary school teachers. With the achievement of independence in many countries, the expansion of secondary education was given higher priority than most sectors, and it was at that level that the scarcity

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of teachers was most acute. Most secondary school teachers in the Anglophone countries were graduate expatriates supplied through bilateral technical assistance. Such teachers had received a one-year course of professional training either in a university’s Department of Education or Institute of Education. These courses lasted one academic year and normally included lectures on the principles of education, educational psychology, the determinants of education and methods of teaching subjects of the school curriculum. Students were required to spend a prescribed period of teaching in schools during the training year, usually about twelve weeks, and had to pass a written examination at the end of the year. The award of the professional certificate, the Post-Graduate Certificate or Diploma in Education, was based on the candidate’s performance in the written and practical examinations and on his/her working during the year. Although many African universities were producing substantial numbers of graduates, a majority of them were drawn into the civil service, other forms of administration and professions, with the result that programmes of expansion in secondary schools were still largely dependent on expatriate staff and large numbers of graduate teachers with no professional training. One way of mitigating the problem was to employ non-graduate teachers to teach the lower forms of secondary schools. Many countries very heavily depended on this means of supplementing their fully qualified teachers. Special courses of training were developed, which gave such teachers the academic and professional preparation required for teaching in the lower forms of secondary schools after obtaining a good School Certificate. A Secondary Teaching Certificate or Diploma in Education was awarded on successful completion of the course. In addition, degree programmes that included an element of education as well as a Bachelor of Education (B. Ed) were initiated in many universities, as discussed in the previous chapter.

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QUALITY, RELEVANCE AND EFFICIENCY OF TEACHER EDUCATION The quality of teacher education is dependent on the availability of qualified and motivated teacher trainers, a curriculum that is both relevant and manageable and adequate physical facilities and instructional materials in teacher education institutions. For public teacher training colleges, grants from the public budget are the main source of resources for teacher education. As is the case in other sub-sectors, due to constraints in the state budget and rising cost of living, allocations for teacher education are inadequate. Due to shrinking public capitation, teacher colleges have been forced to introduce user fees. Some institutions have also developed income generating activities through which some revenue is being realized.

Facilities, Instructional Materials and Equipment Following over-enrollment of student teachers, classrooms in many countries are reported to be congested because they had been built to cater for smaller groups of student teachers. Other physical facilities such as laboratories, workshops, special rooms, resource centres that include libraries and catering facilities are also grossly inadequate and poorly maintained.

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Equally important, because over-enrollment was not systematically accompanied by commensurate increase in the government grant, inadequacies in instructional materials, such as textbooks, library books and stationery and equipment are rampant. Of special importance is the lack or inadequacy of facilities for training teachers in practical subjects of the school curriculum and inadequate and poorly maintained transport, making the organization of teaching practice difficult. The situation in universities that prepare graduate teachers is no better. Rapid increase in enrollments unaccompanied by extension of facilities and resources for teaching and learning facilities and technologies has led to a replication of the problems in teacher education colleges.

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Staffing and Teacher Incentives In many countries, tutors in teacher colleges are trained and experienced, with the majority being professionally qualified university graduate teachers. They generally have a clear scheme of service that allows them to move up the ladder from tutor grades or assistant lecturers upwards. Appointment to tutorship or assistant lecturer is normally made from among graduate teachers who have taught in a secondary school and, in some cases, at the primary school level. The posts to senior levels are promotional and based on serving in a particular position for a number of years before consideration for promotion to the next grade. Unlike teachers’ colleges, there are major problems with teaching staff in the public universities that prepare graduate and diploma teachers. The rapid growth in university enrollments has not been matched by a commensurate increase in teaching staff. Most departments are understaffed and individual staff have large classes, often as many 500 to 1,000 students or more. Staff development programmes are generally inadequate and in many departments of education, young academics who are still studying are asked to teach university classes as lecturers and tutorial fellows. This has adversely affected the quality of secondary education and other tertiary education institutions where teachers trained at the universities are deployed. Staff development after initial appointment is an important part of both the motivation and quality of education. In some countries, college tutors and lecturers have benefited from in-service courses conducted by national institutions and overseas scholarships offered through bilateral and multilateral agencies. Some staff have also successfully undertaken postgraduate studies in local universities. However, the problems associated with the rapid expansion of public universities, such as staff shortages, tend to frustrate postgraduate studies, especially with regard to the time taken to complete such programmes. The workload in teachers’ colleges is generally manageable with an average of 15 lessons a week, and class sizes are around to 25 to 30 students. However, like in the rest of the public service, there is general dissatisfaction with teachers’ material incentives. Although many governments have constantly tried to revise teachers’ salaries upwards, because of budgetary constraints and rising inflation, salaries fall short of meeting the living expenses of teachers. Allowances for housing, medical care and others are far below the market rates. As a result, many are forced to live below the status that befits their professional level.

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Curriculum In teacher education curricula, there seems to be some considerable discrepancy between theory and practice in some countries, especially at the preschool level, and the preparation of primary school teachers. At the preschool level, as per theory, the curriculum aims at catering for the total development of the child’s personality, including the cognitive, social, physical, linguistic, moral and spiritual aspects. Among others, subject areas include child development; a preschool curriculum covering language, number work, environment, music and movement, art and craft, outdoor and physical activities and religious education; health and nutrition; community involvement and school administration, history, development and status of preschool education; and general knowledge. In practice, preschool teachers are under a lot of pressure to focus exclusively on providing an academic head-start to preprimary children at the expense of their balanced development. Such a situation tends to cast serious doubt among the trainees about the efficacy of their training, as contrasted to the reality of what is expected of them in the preschools. At the level of primary teacher preparation, there is also some discrepancy between theory and practice in the development of teachers. Because of the requirement in many countries that the a primary school teacher should be assigned to teach all the subjects of the primary school curriculum, the pre-service student teacher is expected to master the content of the primary school subjects and acquire the appropriate pedagogy including teaching methods, psychology and sociology, elements of management, history and philosophy of education—all in a period of two to three years. In reality, this is quite difficult as the duration of training is too short for the task, especially as the pre-training academic knowledge background in key subjects such as mathematics, science and language is too weak in many countries. In recognition of this difficulty, some teachers’ colleges arrange for teachers to specialize in teaching the subjects they feel comfortable with, especially in the upper classes of the primary school. There is, therefore, the need for ministries of education and teachers’ colleges to take cognizance of this reality. Alternatively, while the raising of the academic level at which primary school teachers are recruited has a financial implication, the quality primary education could be raised through giving priority to secondary school leavers with good School Certificate grades. At the post-primary levels, a mismatch has developed between what is covered in the teacher education curricula and the demand for teachers in secondary schools. The expansion of teacher training opportunities has generally led to over-production of teachers in some subject areas. In the universities and diploma colleges, there is an overproduction of teachers in such subjects as history, geography and religious education. In contrast, there is unmet supply of teachers of mathematics, sciences and languages. The mismatch between demand and supply of teachers in secondary schools is also exacerbated by universities’ offerings, which restrict student teachers to subjects with few periods in the secondary schools curriculum, such as physical education and home science. This seems to be a general trend in many countries. A survey of teacher education in Swaziland in the late 1990s, for example, revealed a similar trend. It was noted that there was an overproduction of primary and secondary school teachers, particularly in the humanities. There was a shortage of teachers in the sciences because teachers often leave teaching and pursue other more financially attractive professions. The training institutions did not meet the demands of the schools for science teachers, basically because there were few school leavers who qualified for admission

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in the tertiary institutions to pursue science courses. Except for science teachers, graduates from the colleges and university had found it increasingly difficult to get teaching posts. It was quite common for graduates to wait for a considerable time after graduation before getting their first appointment (Mazibuko 1999).

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Assessment In most countries, there is an assessment of teacher education at all levels that includes grading written assignments and tests and practicals. Continuous assessment marks are normally combined with marks obtained from the end of course examinations to arrive at a ranking of student teachers, which forms an important part of certification. In written assignments and the final examination, both content and pedagogy are examined. Satisfactory performance in practical teaching is a necessary condition for certification. For primary teacher students, continuous assessment grades awarded by colleges are submitted to the respective national examining bodies responsible for the administration of examinations and are integrated with the grades obtained in the final examination conducted by the examining bodies. In some countries, external examiners are used in grading the final practical teaching exercise. With regard to diploma colleges, an individual institution collaborates with other tertiary institutions in the final grading of student teachers. At the university level, the assessment of candidates is the responsibility of the teaching faculties and schools of education, and the final awards are vested in the senates of the universities. In some countries, the pass rate for student teachers, especially of primary college students, is extremely high. This raises some fundamental issues. First and foremost, given the many weaknesses with the selection system, the low pre-training academic achievement of many entrants, and the congested nature of the training curriculum, there is a possibility that the examination system is not rigorous enough, and thus allows some undeserving student teachers to qualify as teachers. Furthermore, no attempt is made to formally translate the passing grade into an order of merit; student teachers obtaining excellent grades are not tangibly recognized above those who scrape through the final examination. The motivation to excel during training is, therefore, not rekindled. In many countries, at all levels, practical teaching is under threat. Given budgetary constraints, training institutions are increasingly coming under pressure with regard to meeting travelling and subsistence expenses of both student teachers and supervisors during the teaching practice. There are situations in which teacher education institutions, including public universities, have found it necessary to curtail the usual durations of teaching practice. This has a far-reaching effect on the quality of teacher education provided by these institutions.

STUDENT TEACHERS EVALUATION OF THEIR COLLEGE COURSE While there are scanty studies on teacher education in Sub-Saharan African countries, a leading research carried out in Swaziland, most student teachers highlighted that the course was generally good, but felt that there was so much taught that in the end, they did not have

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time to reflect on the issues discussed during their lectures. Some of them felt that there was a need for more practice in the courses instead of theory, as was currently the case in a number of courses. Beginning teachers were also of the view that there was a need for more school exposure and experience during the course. It was also noted that most beginning teachers felt that learning to teach occurred in two distinct contexts, namely; the university lecture and the classroom, and they identified elements of conflict between the two contexts that need to be addressed as they make their teaching preparation highly theoretical (Mazibuko 1999). The beginning teachers strongly felt that some time needed to be spent on practical issues like how to mark a register, manage school finances, and the development of skills related to the extracurricular offerings in schools. A number of them mentioned that some courses need to be dropped to pave way for a course in physical education and music education. Some noted that they were often asked to be sports masters and mistresses and lead school choirs; areas in which they had not received the necessary preparation and training (Mazibuko 1999).

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The study further noted that as a result of the weaknesses in their preparation, most beginning teachers found their task of teaching daunting. There were a number of differences in the approaches followed by the schools. Teachers found daily lesson planning demanding, particularly in cases where they taught different levels of the schools. They made reference to the fact that their subject matter knowledge needed a lot of improvement. Most beginning teachers were of the view that the university course should concentrate more on giving students a deeper knowledge of the subject matter relevant to the schools. Some students even suggested that there should be more handling of the content, particularly in the postgraduate certificate of education, although some were mindful of the fact that the program is already overcrowded. With reference to the pedagogical knowledge, a number of students pointed out that they were well equipped with useful skills, though they highlighted that the theory they got from the university was not applicable. There are occasions when they felt the need to revise a lesson because students had forgotten a lot of what had been taught. Others felt that it was difficult to teach without a detailed knowledge of the children (Mazibuko 1999).

TEACHING PROFESSION In any system of education, teachers play a highly significant role. Not only are they agents of state responsible for the inculcation of vital skills and knowledge as well as moral values, they are also agents of change functioning as community leaders, especially in the remote settlements and urban slums. They have the capacity to build critical awareness by reflecting, reading and sharing their work with others, thereby improving the lives of communities (Connell 1985; Bourdieu and Passeron 1990). Furthermore, teachers may redefine their roles as proactive educational leaders who, with their students, create programmes that allow social commentaries, moral courage and open discussions of pressing local and national problems. In all these ways, teachers can operate as agents of change, providing informed intellectual input not only to pupils, but also to their families and communities (Aronowitz and Giroux 1991). However, for this potential to be realized, teachers need support for full professional development.

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In most Sub-Saharan African countries, through the centrally controlled work of teachers, national core curricula are presented in all regions of the countries, and it is through teachers that pupils from varied backgrounds ideally learn how to behave in standardized, formal institutional settings. Not only should teachers prepare pupils for the world of work, they should also attempt to form particular kinds of citizens who are loyal and obedient to state agendas (Ayittey 1991). African governments, therefore, expect a great deal from their teachers as their agents. However, most states do not reward them well. As public servants, teachers’ salaries and status are relatively low as compared with their counterparts in other systems. The work of African teachers is handicapped by very large class sizes, a dearth of teaching support resources, long working hours and low pay (Peil 1995; Osei 2006). The deterioration of teachers’ working conditions and status has a long history, stretching into the colonial period in Africa. Career opportunities for school leavers in the 1950s and 1960s were restricted, with a majority of available occupations in low or unskilled areas of agriculture and manufacturing. Professional opportunities were limited to teaching and clerical work. During this period, teachers were highly respected. People virtually revered teachers because they were people who were community leaders. The teacher’s word was law inside, and very often outside, of the classroom, reflecting their wide community leadership role and the social function that enabled them by the social capital of their position. The roots of this respect lay in the social and institutional capital of being educated, and being a teacher was one of the top positions. Even employees of the private sectors earning much higher salaries did not enjoy the clout of teachers. Teachers were considered the “crown jewels” of the society (Hammett 2008). The artificial scarcity of professional occupations further enhanced this prestige, and teachers were very conscious of their professional status because the African population had no other substantial professional class. Teachers had high prestige because they were literate, relatively learned and eloquent. This prestige, linked to a stable salary and wide job scarcity, encouraged many youth to join the profession (Hammett 2008). However, towards the achievement of independence in most Sub-Saharan African countries, teachers’ respect began to decline. This was marked with a removal of employment restrictions, which opened the labour market to all populations. Many experienced teachers chose to leave the profession, leaving a dearth of leadership skills and experience in the education sector. As a result, workloads increased and relatively inexperienced staff were promoted into leadership positions. Consequently, some of the artificially enhanced prestige of teaching was considerably reduced. It reduced the institutional capital associated with education and undermined the relatively good financial standing of teachers. Changes in the political economy and shifts in social attitudes have demoralized the profession and undermined their status. The decline in teachers’ capacity for social control was accompanied with the intrusion of wider social problems into the school environment, which further undermined the respect in which teachers felt they were held. Instead of joining teaching, many students started to be drawn towards careers in business and commerce, the civil service, private sector, which offered better salaries and career opportunities. Underlying many students’ antipathy towards teaching was recognition that the general attitude within schools was not respectful towards teachers (Hammett 2008). However, it is generally accepted that the competence and commitment of teachers are the two of the most important determinants of learning outcomes. A major conclusion of the extensive literature survey on school effectiveness in developed countries is that achieving better learning outcomes depends fundamentally on improvements in teaching. Although

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there are many other factors that affect learning outcomes, teaching in the main school-level is a determinant of school performance. Thus, ways to increase teacher motivation and capabilities are central to any systematic attempt to improve learning outcomes. A considerable amount of research has been conducted on what makes the “effective” teacher. And yet, the policy focus to date of reform in most countries has been on improving learning outcomes through a better allocation of resources, more accountability, curriculum reforms and refined assessment systems, and better pre-service and in-service teacher training. However, the limited impact of many of these interventions has forced politicians and policymakers to focus increasingly on the needs of teachers (Bennell and Akyeampong 2007).

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TEACHING ENVIRONMENT Although teaching was traditionally among the most respected professions in the colonial era, as already discussed in the previous section, it faced some serious erosion towards the achievement of independence in most African countries. Among the key factors contributing to its decline related to the teaching environment. A dramatic increase in enrollment on the one hand and the low governments’ priority to the educational systems on the other hand, dramatically shifted the status of the teaching profession since the 1970s and 1980s (Lewin 2002). The expansion of student enrollments, for example, demanded the employment of more teachers who not only had a lower level of training, but also saw teaching as the last resort the job market could offer. The introduction of free primary education in some countries, however, exacerbated serious understaffing at that level. There are multiple shifts in many countries, especially in the urban areas. For example, one third of primary teachers in Rwanda teach two shifts, with an average class size of 61 pupils (Bennell and Akyeampong 2007). The introduction of free primary education seriously raised student pupil ratios. Although official data in many countries is scarce, national average student teacher ratios are estimated at 40 to 50 for primary and 35 to 45 at the secondary school level, respectively. These figures do not however, represent high potential and metropolitan areas in which the ratios are close to 90 to 100 pupils and above. Concurrent to these figures are the typical school sizes. Many urban schools are generally very large, with a student population that falls between 2,000 and 3,000. In sub-urban and high-potential districts, the school sizes range between 1,000 and 2,000, while at the secondary school level enrollments range from 800 to 1,500 students. It is noted that these are schools in which facilities were meant for no more 200 to 500 students. The large class sizes are the result of insufficient positions in public schools. Research in many countries shows that the quality of teaching and learning diminishes once class size rises above 30 students, especially at the secondary school level, where the level of syllabus complexity increases. It is considered much harder for teachers to undertake projects that give students a voice and that build their critical awareness in overcrowded classrooms (Nye and Hedges 2001). Furthermore, not only are classes large, they are often characterized by pupil discipline problems and disruptive behaviour. Table 7.1 shows pupil teacherratios in a number of the African countries.

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Table 7. 1. Pupil teacher ratio

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Country Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Congo Cote d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Madagascar Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Nigeria Rwanda Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles South Africa Swaziland Togo Uganda United Republic of Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe

Pre-primary education 1999 2005 28 43 28 41 23 31 23 38 10 22 22 23 23 36 37 33 36 38 25 25 31 27 23 19 21 16 15 27 29 19 36 15 16 36 34 32 20 18 22 25 46 23

Primary education 1999 2005 53 47 27 25 49 47 57 49 52 48 29 25 68 63 61 83 43 42 26 34 47 48 64 72 44 36 33 35 30 35 47 45 32 40 44 42 47 54 62 54 26 22 61 66 32 31 41 37 54 62 36 31 49 42 15 14 35 36 33 32 41 34 52 40 52 47 51 41 39

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 289-290.

Closely linked to high student enrollments are teachers’ responsibilities and workloads. With some variations across subjects and geographical locations, most teachers on the average handle 25-40 hours a week. At the primary schools levels, teachers are supposed to teach all grade levels, as long as the load does not exceed 30 hours a week. Secondary school

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teachers, despite their specialty in one or two subjects, are expected to be assigned to different grade levels, or even to a subject for which they have not trained, if the school administration deems necessary (Hedges 2002). The rule of the thumb is that teachers should fill the gap if the school experiences a shortage of teachers. Under such circumstances, it is also common for teachers to handle classes over their loads and their maximum teaching loads for no extra pay (Osei 2006). Teachers in most Sub-Saharan African countries work for long hours in unpaid positions related to the school and pupil interests, especially organizing extracurricular activities and undertaking clerical and secretarial activities. Most in-school roles performed by teachers, with exception of the school head teacher or principal, are unpaid. These voluntary commitments shorten the amount of the time teachers have to prepare lesson plans and to do other paid work, especially if they are working in the double shift. Nonetheless, teachers in most countries remain dedicated to these tasks, since this is what is expected of them as professional teachers and members of the society. In many countries, teachers are still respected members of the local community groups and religious organizations. In this regard, teachers find themselves with added responsibilities given their status in the community and as persons responsible for spiritual guidance of the school and students. The average working day for teachers is further extended because there are no available resources in schools. Teachers in many countries have to locate and purchase their own resources for teaching and learning, and pocket money for related professional activities from their personal expenses. As much as pupils through their parents are charged for the materials, many do not pay, in which case teachers have to meet the cost. Such costs effectively reduce the low salaries of teachers much further. In this regard, the necessity to supplement the basic teaching salary with other incomes is more intensified (Osei 2006).

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TEACHER MOTIVATION Many agencies tend to ignore the critical role of teachers in educational reform. For example, discussions about education for all (EFA) and improving the quality of education have generally failed to recognize the important role of teachers. In particular, the key issues in teacher motivation and pay are skimmed over and, at times, ignored altogether. It is not only governments that place less priority on teachers in their reform programs. For instance, the World Bank’s consideration of “effective schools and teachers,” identifies eight improvement domains, but none of them relate centrally to teacher satisfaction and motivation. Similarly, the Bank’s Action Plan to Accelerate Progress towards Education for All fails to address the very low motivation of teachers in most countries (Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007). It is, however, true that many national education strategies and reforms generally focus on improving teacher competence through in-service programs, the working environment, and the promotion of greater school autonomy, all of which lead to the improving motivation. But many other reform programs also seek to fundamentally change teaching practices and increase teachers’ workloads, while at the same time ignoring or giving insufficient attention to the very low motivation and other conditions of service. Teachers in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are being asked to radically change their teaching practices at a time

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when the majority of them are increasingly de-motivated. Top-down policy formulation and implementation with limited participation by teachers exacerbates the already very limited degree of self-determination that can be exercised by teachers, and the end result is that many teachers feel that they are being coerced. Therefore, not surprisingly, teachers resist both actively and passively to these reforms (Bennell and Akyeampong 2007). This is largely because teacher management tends to be authoritarian, based on rigid hierarchical structures, which results in limited participation, delegation, and communication by teachers with respect to major school management. Teachers subjected to these types of management regimes have little sense of self-determination, which seriously undermines their job satisfaction and motivation. The extent to which teacher grievances are addressed in most countries is also a key issue. This, on the whole, has to do with relationships between teachers and governments, which in many countries have been quite strained and, therefore, affect teacher morale. Teachers, as a group, have been targeted by governments and ruling party officials in some countries. The leaders of teachers’ unions have been imprisoned and even tortured in a number of the African countries. Some studies have identified that there are important teacher de-motivating factors in less industrialized countries. These generally relate to the school environment and terms and conditions of service. The working and living environment for many teachers is poor, which tends to lower self-esteem and is generally de-motivating. Schools in many countries do not only lack basic teaching and learning facilities, but also lack basic amenities such as piped water, electricity, staff rooms and toilets. Housing is a major problem for nearly all primary school teachers. As a result of inflation, teachers’ salaries in most Sub-Saharan African countries are still low, which is one of the main reasons contributing to less attraction or keeping the best candidates in teaching. In many countries, due to inadequate salaries, many highly experienced and qualified teachers leave the profession to find better employment elsewhere. Many countries face much of this type of wastage in the form of those who attend several years of teacher training college through government funding, but do not end up teaching for more than a couple of years. This is especially at diploma and degree levels, thus using teacher training as a stepping stone to other more lucrative employment (Peil 1995). In most of the countries, teachers’ real wages have never been high, but have dropped even further as economic crises have worsened. In one survey in Ghana, for example, it was estimated that the annual salary of a public primary or lower secondary school teacher, including bonuses, was equivalent to US$2,400, while senior secondary school teachers on the average received $3,600 annually, respectively (Osei 2006). The general consensus is that teachers’ remuneration in most African countries is very inadequate. This is because the total pay does not cover basic household survival needs, let alone enable teachers to enjoy a reasonable standard of living. A number of studies on teacher conditions of service show that there has been a dramatic erosion of teacher working conditions and “brain-drain” of qualified and experienced teachers to other professionals. The minimum household survival incomes for teachers are typically two to three times lower than the basic government salary. Salary administration is also poor in many countries. In particular, late payment of salary is quite common. Rural or remote area allowances are paid in many countries, but in general, they are too small to have any impact on teacher deployment. The consequence of low salaries in many countries is that teachers are likely to be engaged in some form of paid employment beyond their normal workload as public teachers.

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The low salaries, therefore, encourage teachers to seek extra income, and some would earn much more in the private or even in the informal sector. Many are also engaged in private coaching in their special subjects. Generally, teachers prefer to keep their guaranteed teaching jobs and pensions, while trying to make as much as possible on the sides. Teachers’ performance and professional growth are undoubtedly compromised by hours of extra paid work. However, there is a general widespread acceptance that “you get what you pay for,” which is not very much when pay does not meet minimum livelihood needs. Secondary employment activities both directly and indirectly lower the motivation of teachers in their main jobs. In some countries, there are high proportions of untrained teachers who are often thrown into their jobs with little or no induction. Multi-grade teaching is quite common, but most teachers are not adequately prepared for the special demands of this type of teaching. Poor quality in-service training compounds poor pre-service training and induction in many countries. Teachers need continuous professional development as well as support from peers and supervisors. However, such support is usually scarce, top-down, unrelated to a broad strategy and not targeted at teachers who need it most. In the absence of appropriate support, many teachers become de-motivated. It is estimated that teachers living below or near national poverty levels are likely to suffer from high levels of illnesses. Teachers are also believed to be a “high-risk” occupational group with respect to HIV and AIDS infection. This has a major impact on teacher motivation in high prevalence areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Apart from the obvious impact of teachers who are living with HIV and AIDS, working with colleagues who are sick and who may eventually die is also demoralizing. The extra workload of covering for sick teachers is also a key factor. HIV and AIDS is now said to be a major cause of absenteeism among teachers, as well as other educational personnel, even if they have not reached the terminal stage of the disease. The disease affects teachers’ absenteeism in two ways, namely, teachers themselves become infected and are unable to travel to school to carry out their teaching duties; and teachers become caregivers to members of their families who become infected (Benavot and Gad 2004). Teachers, who usually represent a younger and more mobile workforce, are said to be more likely to be infected by the pandemic than other workers (Bennell et al. 2002). An estimated 860,000 children in Sub-Saharan Africa lost their teachers to HIV and AIDS. The high level of infection and death rates among school teachers undercut the ability of schools to find suitable replacement teachers. In Congo, for example, the lack of teachers due to the pandemic resulted in many school closings (Kelly 2000; UNESCO 2000). Evidence from several African countries suggests that the number of newly trained teachers graduating from teacher training colleges does not approximate the quantity of teachers no longer working in the profession due to death, morbidity or new conflicting responsibilities within the family. This also reflects the escalation of death rates among teacher trainees. Despite this critical situation, few responsible ministries of education have adequately addressed the problem, and even fewer have developed feasible intervention strategies (Kelly 2000; Benavot and Gad 2004). The issue of HIV and AIDS is also said to be altering pupil learning opportunities and classroom climates in many African schools. In some cases, teacher/pupil relations are subtly transformed since teachers must now devote class time to sensitive, HIV- and AIDS-related subjects such as sexual behaviour and health education, which may adversely affect teacher

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esteem and status and which may also arouse feelings of awkwardness or shyness on the part of all participants. Moreover, pupil-to-pupil relations, especially in mixed classrooms, show signs of increased tension and unease both inside and outside the context of the school. Consequently, following such tension, it is likely that the pandemic will negatively affect girls’ enrollment and attendance rates, and thereby reinforce gender-based educational inequalities (Benavot and Gad 2004). It is also noted that teachers who have suffered family losses due to HIV and AIDS are traumatized and often do not receive psychological assistance. Furthermore, as more children are themselves affected by the HIV and AIDS virus, the classroom environment is profoundly impacted. Many infected children need medical attention while attending school that obviously reduces their learning opportunities and academic experience (Kelly 2000; Benavot and Gad 2004). Individual teacher characteristics do also adversely impact on their motivation levels. In terms of the age profile, teachers have become younger in many countries due to the rapid expansion of primary education, and more recently, secondary school enrollments as well as higher rates of attrition. This means that there are relatively few experienced teachers who can serve as mentors and provide professional support and leadership. Primary school teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa are usually considerably younger than secondary school teachers (Bennell and Akyeampong 2007). These young teachers are sometimes portrayed as both the causalities and causes of poor quality in education. It is argued that their own education and training has inadequately prepared them to be imaginative and child-centred in their classroom practice. Under-resourcing also results in difficult working conditions and low salaries, which cause demoralization, apathy and misconduct among teachers (Hurst and Rust 1990; Alphonce 1993; Harber and Davies 1997; Kironde 2000). Anecdotal evidence of teacher misconduct is widespread in many African countries. The demoralized teachers generally tend to neglect their teaching duties to spend more time on their informal incomegenerating activities. This is regarded as understandable, although unethical. More sensational forms of misconduct also occur, such as regularly reporting for work when drunk and inappropriate sexual relations between teachers or more worryingly, between male teachers and female pupils (Alphonce 1993; Rajani and Robinson 1999; Barrett 2005). This is particularly serious when such teachers cannot be effectively disciplined for these and other unacceptable behaviours, which include absenteeism, poor teaching, and abusive behaviour towards pupils by the school managements, because it is very difficult to dismiss them; and pay and promotion are largely unrelated to actual performance. An area of much concern that also adversely impacts on teacher motivation relates to teacher deployment in less attractive or hard-to-reach locations. On the whole, teacher deployment even in countries with small national education systems is quite complex. As a result, teaching positions are not filled in an effective and efficient manner in most countries. The major issue is the unattractiveness of rural schools in remote locations. Teacher resistance to working in the hard-to-reach schools tends to reinforce urban biases in resource allocation. The low proportion of qualified and experienced teachers working in rural schools is one of the key challenges in the attainment of education for all (EFA) goals. Rural-urban differences in the qualification profiles of teachers are generally large in a majority of the Sub-Saharan African countries; and in most countries, close to two-thirds of the teachers in the urban centres are highly qualified as compared to a quarter in the rural areas. The situation is even more critical in the arid and semi arid regions (ASAL) of the countries (Bennell 2004).

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Younger and inexperienced teachers are generally posted to rural schools in many countries, leading to serious stress and de-motivation. In some countries, a high proportion of the teachers who are recruited are not competent. In many cases, teachers posted to hard-to reach areas end up buying their way out of such areas. Most teachers tend to cherish posting to urban schools for professional and personal reasons. Teachers prefer to remain in urban areas for a variety of reasons, which include the availability of good schooling for their own children, employment opportunities for spouses and other household members, opportunities for further study and poor working and living conditions in the rural schools. In many countries, teachers like seizing on the opportunities for further studies for promotion through university programs, most of which are to be found in the urban centres. They well know that a posting to a rural school can be a one-way ticket that stifles their professional growth. The much greater opportunity for earning an extra income in the urban centres is also a major attraction. Being posted to a rural primary school has, therefore, a severe effect on personal and professional career. Where the deployment process is manifestly corrupt, it merely heightens the sense of injustice emitted to the young teachers who are forced to work in the rural schools. Although there is a widespread recognition of the serious problem of teacher deployment in many countries, the measures to tackle it have generally been inadequate and unsuccessful. Forcing teachers to work in the rural areas seriously lowers their morale and results in high levels of staff turnover. In some countries, government directives have instructed teachers to unconditionally take up appointments in any part of the country. Such directives have turned out to be unpopular and have often precipitated crises in relations between the governments and teachers’ unions, leading to their withdrawals. Similar policy directives in other countries have contributed to some teachers quitting the profession altogether. The lack of incentives to work in hard-to-reach schools has remained a major problem as their provisions have awfully been inadequate to attract most teachers to accept their postings (Bennell and Akyeampong 2007). It is generally believed that poor job satisfaction among teachers in developing countries results in high attrition rates. Although hard evidence is still scanty, teacher attrition rates are a major problem in some countries. However, increasing unemployment has tended to keep it low in many countries. Teacher retention at the school level is a combination of attrition through long-term illness and death, resignation, retirement, dismissal and transfers. The main issue in many countries is the high transfers of teachers between schools, rather than attrition per se. A “culture of discontinuity” often characterizes teacher staffing in more remote rural schools. The compulsory posting of teachers to hard-to-reach, remote rural schools is unlikely to foster a sense of belonging. Disgruntled teachers are most likely to feel particularly trapped in their jobs, which will have a negative impact on teacher morale in their schools.

SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY From the foregoing discussions, there is a need for some measures to improve the quality of teacher education and the teaching profession. Ideally, in many countries, teacher education should be guided by demand for teachers in educational institutions from preprimary to tertiary institutions. As it has been discussed, teacher education and the

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deployment of teachers are not strictly based on demand in schools. The selection of teacher trainees and teacher recruitment and deployment are subject to social considerations that are not based on the needs of schools. Beginning with the preschool level, most of the teachers are untrained, and this has negative implications for quality. In most countries, there is a need for flexibility in the calibre of candidates recruited for training; and the training programs need to cater for a wide range of basic requirements. At most levels of teacher education institutions, they are faced with many problems with regard to their financing, staffing management and teaching and learning technologies. There is, therefore, the need to provide adequate facilities such as lecture rooms, laboratories and other specialized facilities in the light of increased intakes. With regard to primary teacher education in particular, the expectation that one primary school teacher has the capacity to handle many subjects of the primary school curriculum is not realistic and gives the rise to poor implementation of the school curricula. Serious consideration should be given to the structure and content of the training programs in terms of their adequacy in preparing teachers for the primary school curriculum as well as how they fit in with available facilities and equipment. It was established that there is an overproduction of secondary school teachers for humanities, particularly history, geography and religious education. In contrast, the demand for teachers of mathematics, science and languages still remains great. Policies for selection of teacher trainees, recruitment and deployment of teachers at secondary school level should be reviewed. The objective should be to promote more efficient staffing ratios, while at the same time ensuring effective implementation of the school curricula. As for the teaching profession in general, from the review, it was established that many countries are faced with a serious challenge in the motivation of their teachers. What seems to be generally lacking in most national and donor education agencies is the development of strategies with a clear focus on the very serious problem of low teacher job satisfaction and motivation. Considering the enormous challenge that this problem poses for most countries in terms of required resources, it is not surprising that governments and international partners have been reluctant to tackle it. However, until the problem is tackled, the efforts to improve educational provision and quality will continue to be stifled. Large numbers of teachers are poorly motivated because their basic needs for food, housing and security are not met. There is the need for better incentives, especially for rural teachers, improved conditions of service, attractive career structures and increased school accountability. As a major priority in most countries, there is a need for improvement in the incentives of teachers, especially in the rural areas. Unless this is done, the large majority of children living in rural areas will continue to receive poor quality education. Among the measures should include the provision of good quality housing with running water and electricity for teachers as a way of attracting and retaining teachers in hard-to-reach schools. At the core of teacher motivation crisis in most Sub-Saharan African countries is that their salaries are seriously inadequate. Despite some improvement in pay in many countries, most teachers, particularly in relatively high-cost urban centres, are unable to meet their basic needs. As a result, many of them are forced to find other sources of income. Therefore, many teachers’ salaries need to be doubled with possible support from donor agencies. The persistent late payment of salaries and allowances in most countries is also a major demotivator, which needs to be addressed urgently. Salary increases need to be addressed in tandem with attractive career structures with regular promotions based on clearly specified

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and transparent performance criteria. Teachers working in hard-to-reach schools need also to be given accelerated promotions and or preferential access to qualification upgrading opportunities. There should also be regular professional mechanisms with good quality inservicing training during their careers.

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS The poor quality of teacher education, especially in the Anglophone countries, has its genesis in the colonial era. Colleges established by voluntary organizations varied quite considerably in size and in the numbers of students. In many colleges, there were fewer than a hundred students in all, and it was often difficult to provide specialist training and was also manifestly impossible to do so in the very small colleges with around thirty students and two or three tutors. The size of the budget precluded the purchase of a wide range of books and of investment in additional equipment such as projectors. The geographic isolation of many colleges militated against them providing a generally conducive teacher education environment. Such colleges lacked the basic variety of resources and amenities that should exist in these institutions. The students had little opportunity of interacting with people who were better educated, however slightly, than themselves. Furthermore, many training courses for teachers for primary schools had a dual function; being intended to further the college students’ education as well as to prepare them for their work as teachers. The extent to which they achieved the first task was necessarily one of the conditions for achieving the second one. However, teachers’ colleges could hardly be expected to advance their students’ academic knowledge any further in a two-year course of training than a secondary school could do in the same period, and most colleges were less well provided both in staff and equipment than the normal secondary schools. As a major goal of teacher education, academically and professionally qualified teachers are regarded as prerequisite for the provision of high-quality and relevant education at all levels. The quality of teacher education is dependent on the availability of qualified and motivated teacher trainers, a curriculum that is both relevant and manageable and adequate physical facilities and instructional materials in teacher education institutions. For public teacher training colleges, grants from the public budget are the main source of resources for teacher education. As is the case in other sub-sectors, due to constraints in the state budget and rising cost of living, allocations for teacher education are inadequate. Due to shrinking public capitation, teacher colleges have been forced to introduce user fees. Following over-enrollment of student teachers, classrooms in many countries are reported to be congested because they had been built to cater for smaller groups of student teachers. Other physical facilities such as laboratories, workshops, special rooms, resource centres— which include libraries and catering facilities—are also grossly inadequate and poorly maintained. Equally important, because over-enrollment was not systematically accompanied by commensurate increase in the government grant, inadequacies in instructional materials, such as textbooks, library books and stationery and equipment are rampant. Unlike teachers’ colleges, there are major problems with teaching staff in the public universities that prepare graduate and diploma teachers. The rapid growth in university

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enrollments has not been matched by a commensurate increase in teaching staff. Most departments are understaffed, and individual staff have large classes, often as many 500 to 1,000 students or more. In teacher education curricula, there seems to be some considerable discrepancy between theory and practice in some countries, especially at the preschool level and the preparation of primary school teachers as well as secondary education. In some countries, the pass rate for student teachers, especially of primary college students is extremely high. This raises some fundamental issues. First and foremost, given many weaknesses with the selection system, low pre-training academic achievement of many entrants, and the congested nature of the training curriculum, there is a possibility that the examination system is not rigorous enough, and thus allows some undeserving student teachers to qualify as teachers. Furthermore, no attempt is made to formally translate the passing grade into an order of merit as student teachers who obtain excellent grades are not tangibly recognized above those who scrape through the final examination. The motivation to excel during training is, therefore, not rekindled. With regard to the teaching profession, while African governments expect a great deal from their teachers as their agents, most of countries do not reward them well. As public servants, teachers’ salaries and status are relatively low as compared with their counterparts in other systems. The work of African teachers is handicapped by very large class sizes, a dearth of teaching support resources, long working hours and low pay. Teachers in most Sub-Saharan African countries work for long hours in unpaid positions related to the school and pupil interests, especially organizing extracurricular activities and undertaking clerical and secretarial activities. Most in-school roles performed by teachers, with exception of the school head teacher or principal, are unpaid. These voluntary commitments shorten the amount of the time teachers have to prepare lesson plans and to do other paid work, especially if they are working in the double shift. The working and living environment for many teachers is poor, which tends to lower self-esteem and is generally de-motivating. Schools in many countries do not only lack basic teaching and learning facilities, but also lack basic amenities such as piped water, electricity, staff rooms and toilets. Housing is a major problem for nearly all primary school teachers. As a result of inflation, teachers’ salaries in most Sub-Saharan African countries are still low, which is one of the main reasons contributing to less attraction or keeping the best candidates in teaching. In many countries, due to inadequate salaries, many highly experienced and qualified teachers leave the profession to find better employment elsewhere. There is the need for better incentives, especially for rural teachers, improved conditions of service, attractive career structures and increased school accountability. As a major priority in most countries, there is a need for improvement in the incentives of teachers in the rural areas. Unless this is done, the large majority of children living in rural areas will continue to receive poor quality education. Among the measures should include the provision of good quality housing with running water and electricity for teachers as a way of attracting and retaining teachers in hard-to-reach schools. At the core of teacher motivation crisis in most Sub-Saharan African countries is that their salaries are seriously inadequate. Despite some improvement in pay in many countries, most teachers, particularly in relatively high-cost urban centres, are unable to meet their basic needs. As a result, many of them are forced to find other sources of income. Therefore, many teachers’ salaries need to be doubled with possible support from donor agencies. The

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persistent late payment of salaries and allowances in most countries is also a major demotivator, which needs to be addressed urgently. Salary increases need to be addressed in tandem with attractive career structures, with regular promotions based on clearly specified and transparent performance criteria. Teachers working in hard-to-reach schools need also to be given accelerated promotions and/or preferential access to qualification upgrading opportunities. There should also be regular professional mechanisms with good quality inservicing training during their careers.

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Chapter 8

ADULT LITERACY

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INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we grapple with the concepts of adult education and adult literacy, literacy and development, goals and expectations of literacy programmes, some examples of national adult literacy programmes, access and participation, and quality and relevance. Adult Education is generally a very vague concept. To some people, adult education is concerned with making adults literate, and it is discussed as though its concern is adult literacy. For others, it is the provision of evening classes and nothing else, while others are not clear whether continuing education is properly part of adult education or not. Therefore, adult education is an array of things: literacy classes, field days for farmers, correspondence courses, day release classes for administrative workers, leadership courses, study vocations, public lectures, evening courses for scientists, better housekeeping courses for women. Folk high schools, extramural centres, evening institutes, community development centres, farmers training centres and this list of activities and institutions may be increased – all of these can sit comfortably under the umbrella of adult education (Posser 1966). In more general terms, adult education can be defined as an organised education process, whether formal of informal, undertaken by adults. Adult learners can be individuals who have not gone through the formal learning process or those who have not completed the existing formal learning package. They may also include those who have attained high levels education, but wish to continue to pursue further education - hence the concept of “lifelong education” also applies (Meena 1991). Unlike formal primary or secondary school students, the adult learner is a purposeful and voluntary learner. There are four main objectives generally noted for adult education: realisation of social integration (acculturation), bringing about social change (transformation), acquisition of technical competence (skills), and building up social responsibility (citizenship). Within the contest of these objectives, adult education can be considered as a means through which adult populations are incorporated into the socio-economic and political system of the state. This can be a double-edged process because while the state uses it to socialise the adult populations on the one hand, the adult learners can use it to achieve their own ends on the other hand. In either case, therefore, adult education has the potential to bring about change in the existing oppressive relations, including gender relations (Weiler 1988).

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The meaning of adult education has changed from literacy and remedial education in the 1930s and 1940s, to life-wide and lifelong education in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1930s, adult education was said to offer some who were not privileged a last chance to learn. Some felt a need for training in basic skills of learning, so they enrolled for work in reading, writing and arithmetic (Okedara 1981). In accordance with this perception, the focus of adult education, at that time, was to give second chances for those who, for some reason, had very little or no formal schooling at all. The literacy and remedial view of adult education has long been abandoned. In the 1952, the International Directory of Adult Education, UNESCO wrote that Adult education has been associated with teaching literacy and with such remedial measures as the night school for adults who have missed opportunity for formal schooling. The concept of adult education has been broadened considerably so as to cover the activities of a wide range of institutions or agencies and to include a content as wide as life itself… . Although this was still a narrow description of the term adult education, it acknowledged its life-wide nature. The lifelong dimension of adult education did not come into being until the late 1960s. During this period, the term “lifelong education” became an increasing feature of literature on adult education (Mpofu and Amin 2004). It was during this time that adult education was transformed from its association with certain learning opportunities to mean all responsibly organized learning opportunities that enable people who are considered to be adults in their communities to enlarge and interpret their own living experience. It is in this context that UNESCO proceeded to provide the following definition, Adult education denotes the entire body of organized educational processes, whatever the content, level and method, whether formal or otherwise, whether they prolong or replace initial education in schools, colleges and universities as well as in apprenticeship, whereby persons regarded as adult by the society to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction and bring about changes in their attitudes or behaviour in the twofold perspective of full personal development and participation in balanced and independent social, economic and cultural development (Titmus et al. 1979). The adult education discourse continued into the 1990s, and to the turn of the twenty-first century (Jarvis 1990; Walters and Watters 2000). A notable discourse was from Merriam and Brocket (1997), who defined adult education as Any organized learning or educational activity outside the structure of the formal education system that is consciously aimed at meeting the specific learning needs of people who are considered (regarded) to be adults in (the community) their society. The 1990s, however, witnessed an increase in the use of the term “adult learning” in adult education literature. As a concept, adult learning includes adult education. It refers to all learning activities undertaken by adults throughout life. It includes non-formal learning through which adults acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge, through non-formally organized education. It also includes informal learning by adults from their day-to-day experiences through interaction with family, neighbours, colleagues at work, or through the mass media. Despite divergent explanations of adult education, they seem to have one thing in common, namely, that the purpose of adult education is to address the adult learners’ educational needs outside the constraining, and often discriminatory, formal education system. However, both adult education and adult learning denote any learning or educational activity that takes place outside the formal education system (Indabawa and Mpofu 2006). It is, however, acknowledged that perceptions of adult education vary quite considerably, both regionally and internationally. For example, in the Western World and in most parts of Asia,

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the concept of adult education has been expanded to include community education as well as continuing education aimed at facilitating modernization and development in general. In Africa, while societies have generally remained behind the adoption of the broader and more encompassing view of adult education, there are many adult education and adult learning activities that have received little or no acknowledgement of their roles in the development of societies. While such resistance to the broader perception of adult education is not necessarily confined to Africa, the fiercest opposition to the broad concept seems to be occurring in the continent. Consequently, adult education has generally been marginalized. In most African countries, adult education activities lack direction and focus, and are characterized by an absence of clarity and holism (Mpofu and Amin 2004). In many parts of Africa, adult education is perceived in a very narrow sense. It is largely viewed as nothing more than literacy and remedial education. It is generally perceived with little commitment on the part of administrative organs that are responsible with its promotion. The low focus on adult education to some extent has its origin in the historical development of education on the continent. The colonial education systems generally did not make provision for the development of institutionalized forms of adult education. This was partly due to the fear by the colonial regimes of a literate and numerate indigenous population who would become a political threat to the establishment. Educational provision for Africans was quite disjointed and lacking a clear purpose. Isolated activities by voluntary agencies, especially religious organizations, could not bridge the gap. With the achievement of independence, the new governments were obliged to make some concerted efforts to increase educational opportunities of their populations. Almost without exception, the governments launched national literacy programs, examples of which will be discussed later in this chapter. The fanfare that often accompanied the launch of the national literacy programs gave them considerable prominence in the provision of adult education, and as the custodians of these programs, became synonymous with adult learning. Given such names as the “Division of Non-Formal Education,”, the “Department of Adult and Non-Formal Education,”, the “Department of Adult and Basic Education” and others, these government agencies became symbols of adult learning in their respective countries. Meanwhile, adult learning activities of the many other government departments and ministries, non-governmental organizations and private correspondence colleges were not recognized or incorporated in adult education. Compounding this problem has been the lack of clearly defined policies of adult learning (Mpofu and Amin 2004). However, since the UNESCO’s Fifth International Conference on Adult Education of 1997, an increasing acceptance and commitment to lifelong learning and the promotion of a learning society seems to have taken place in a number of the African countries. The Pietermaritzburg Declaration of 2002, which was signed by several African countries among others, was yet another indication of the renewed commitment to lifelong education and the creation of learning societies in Africa. Such renewed commitment has been reinforced by some new initiatives to kick-start the continent’s economic development. A notable initiative in this regard is the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), whose stated objective is “to promote accelerated growth and sustainable development” (Diescho, 2002). The role of adult education in NEPAD’s development initiatives will be quite critical.

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LITERACY AND DEVELOPMENT In any modern and civilised society, reading and writing are taken for granted, as they are seen as indispensable elements in a person’s equipment for living. Children are taught to read and write at the earliest possible age, for the rest of their education depends on their possession of literacy skills. The whole social, political and economic structure of the modern society rests on the assumption that every citizen can communicate and be communicated with by means of the written or printed word (Jeffries 1967). Literacy is a fundamental human right, a basic learning need and the key to learning to learn. In this regard, literacy is understood as the process of learning to read and write text and numbers, reading and writing to learn, developing these skills and using them in a meaningful way in different contexts. Literacy learning takes place in school and involves children, youth and adults. Literacy is related to a written language, which includes script, print and digital, but also oral communication, namely listening and speaking. For literacy to be such, it must be useful, or functional, and suitable. “Functional literacy” is not just workoriented literacy skills, as it was translated in the 1960s. Literacy can be functional for economic, political, social, cultural, family and personal purposes. Literacy is a sociolinguistic communication tool that has the potential to empower, women in particular, but does not in itself empower or reduce poverty positively. The role of literacy depends on how it is used and in what context. For example, if literacy is promoted, both in schools for children and for adults, as part of social development or social movements for change, it may contribute to a transformative process. But if literacy is learned in a non-literate, stagnant and oppressive context, it may not make much difference in learners’ lives (Lind 2006). The illiterate person is a man or woman, who is condemned to a status, which, in the circumstances of today, is less than human. The illiterate person, who having scraped together ten shillings to meet the tax collector's demand, cheerfully walks away with a receipt showing that he has paid five shillings. The illiterate is also a person who has to trust someone else to read his/her letter from his/her absent son [or daughter] and send him/her replies. The illiterate is a farmer who cannot decipher the simple instructions, which could save his crop from disaster. The illiterate is a woman whose baby is dying of some malady, which the poster on the wall tells how to prevent or cure. The illiterate is a man or woman who goes on a train journey not knowing whether he/she has been charged the proper fare, or not able to read the destination named on his ticket or the names of the stations through which he passes and many other examples (Jeffries 1967). Education is, by all accounts, the only ethical means at humanity’s disposal for imparting knowledge and changing attitudes and thus ensuring durability and sustainability of development. Some proposals have made for education’s role in development, among the following: • • •

In the British Committee on Literacy, education was said to be an essential factor in development in African countries; In several of the Conferences of African Ministers of Education, it was resolved that basic education is indispensable to development, peace and stability in Africa; and Education is believed to be the most basic personal skill that underlies the whole modernizing sequence (Mpofu 2000).

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The drawbacks of a low-level of education have also been identified as follows: • •

As a real counter-development factor in an emerging nation; and As a handicap to work performance by hampering a citizen’s chances of contributing to nation-building, the family, community productivity and civic matters, and consequently slowing progress in society (Mpofu 2000).

One study illustrates, with literacy figures, the close relationship between human resources development and economic development. It studied literacy rates in 1950 and 1955, and per capita income and per capita measured in US dollars, and found that those countries could be classified in three ways:

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1. Thirty poor countries with adult literacy rates below 40 percent, which in 1955 per capita income never exceeded $ 300; 2. Twenty-seven countries in which literacy rates ranged from 30-70 percent and in which incomes were virtually uncorrelated with literacy; and 3. Twenty-four rich countries with literacy rates above 70 percent, including twentyone very rich countries with literacy rates of 90 percent, where in 1955, per capita income always exceeded $ 5,000. On the basis of this analysis, the study concluded that a literacy rate of about 40 percent was necessary to raise the per capita incomes to over $500. There has been empirical support to these findings by a number of related studies (Mpofu 2000). In this regard, for African countries to attain the world mean per capita, income must be accompanied by efforts to raise the average literacy rates. Anecdotal evidence seems to link literacy rates with indicators of development such as instability arising from wars and coups and socio-economic development. There appears a parallel relationship between literacy and major indicators of development and a converse parallel in relationship between illiteracy and some indicators of underdevelopment such as poverty. Development agencies such as UNESCO have pointed out the problem of not recognizing that the map of world illiteracy coincides with that of poverty and a study by Lind and Johnson (1990), which observes that while “the causal link between literacy and development remains ambiguous or unproved, there are however, numerous examples of coincidence between advances in literacy and advances in economic and social development.” While there is no empirical evidence to directly link literacy to development, educationists have accepted what is generally considered as the “dialectical view” of the relationship between literacy and development. This perception posits the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the two, in which each affects and is affected by the other. In this regard, literacy is an indispensable condition for sustainable development in any society. On the overall, therefore, the development process is considered as an educational process and an educational process is conversely a development process. In the above context, therefore, in the process of empowering people, literacy is a viable instrument that is used in most cases. In fact, there is a growing worldwide consensus that “literacy and adult education are a means for people to overcome poverty and exclusion, establish and reinforce democracy, achieve justice and comprehensive peace, enhance economic and social well-being and improve health and ensure food security. Adult education

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helps to prevent and eliminate gender and racial disparity, and other social problems such as violence against women, drugs addiction, environmental destruction and HIV and AIDS” (ICAE 2000). As a result, development partners have considerable faith in the role of literacy in development. For example, UNESCO’s (1997) Hamburg Declaration noted that “Literacy should be a gateway to a fuller participation in social, cultural and economic life and in this regard, it should be relevant to such contexts. It is indicated that conventional literacy contributes to personal improvement and mobility, social progress, better health and cognitive development. Beyond conventional approaches, there is the critical adult literacy perspective. Critical literacy is viewed as intended for the empowerment of participants to enable them to become agents of social transformation. The process gives the subjectivities and experiences of the oppressed a central place in articulating their realities and aims to enable them to take control of their destinies” (Freire 1990). Critical literacy is transformative if it uses participatory approaches that allow for learner participation in the development of materials and teaching. Currently, some adult literacy planners in developing countries use the Regenerated Freirean Literacy Empowering Community Techniques (REFLECT). This approach combines the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) technique and the Freirean approach to generate literacy curricula jointly with the learners to transform their worldviews and enable them to challenge an oppressive status quo. It combines literacy and development issues in order to engage facilitators and learners in dialogue leading to empowerment (Archer 2000). The faith development partners have in the role of literacy in development has made the attainment of universal literacy one of the greatest challenges currently facing policymakers in developing countries. While in developed Western countries the problem of illiteracy is related to difficulties in understanding complex reading information, in developing countries, even the most rudimentary reading tasks are often beyond the reach of large numbers of the populations (Mullis and Jenkins 1990). The urgency for adult literacy programmes in developing countries is demonstrated by its potential outcomes. For example, parental literacy is linked to caretaking behaviours, which directly promote child survival and welfare. Associations have been established between maternal literacy and the use of effective, modern treatment of measles and diarrhea (Maina-Ahleberg 1984; El Samanie et al. 1989). Literate mothers have also protected infants in unsanitary environments by using piped water more effectively and practicing better hygiene than non-literate mothers (Esrey and Habicht 1988). Furthermore, literacy skills of parents are associated with cognitive abilities and educational attainment of their offspring (Jamison and Lockheed 1987).

GOALS, OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTATIONS The goal of adult education and literacy in most Sub-Saharan African countries is to enable adults to acquire knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to help them cope with a rapidly changing world. Among others, the specific objectives include the following: To eradicate illiteracy by providing basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy; • To sustain literacy through continuing education;

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To provide relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes for work; To create self-confidence, positive attitudes and behaviour towards life and society; and To promote nationalism, patriotism and awareness of the role of the individual in national development.

Some success has been made in many countries towards the achievement of these objectives. Extension education has enhanced the productivity of the clienteles by facilitating the adoption of new production techniques, and non-formal initiatives in health, nutrition, family life, agriculture, the environment and general information are making an impact in many communities. As a result of the national literacy programs in particular, high proportions of adults can read and write and have acquired the basics of numeracy. However, there are numerous problems. First and foremost is the general lack of financial resources, which have greatly constrained many adult education and literacy initiatives. Secondly, among the literacy education programs for most of the clienteles, there continues to be a strong preoccupation with the pursuit of nationally recognized certificates as opposed to the acquisition of knowledge and skills that are relevant to their lives as adults. Furthermore, a lack of comprehensive post-literacy programs hinders the reinforcement of literacy.

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SOME EXAMPLES NATIONAL LITERACY PROGRAMS To combat illiteracy and promote development, many countries have embarked on what is commonly referred to as functional literacy programs. Although the definition of functional literacy is not all that universal, a person is said to be functionally literate when he/she has acquired the knowledge and skills in reading and writing that will enable him/her to engage effectively in all those activities in which literacy is normally assumed in his/her culture or group. He/she should at least be able to read a simple instruction leaflet in his/her own or some other familiar language, to write a legible letter, and to keep a record of his/her money transactions or the produce of his/her farm (Jeffries 1967).

Kenya Before independence, no large scale efforts were undertaken to eradicate illiteracy, although several non-governmental organisations were running literacy projects in different parts of the country. Among them, special reference should be made to the National Christian Council of Kenya (NCCK), which has been, and is still, active in social and economic development programs, including literacy work. Prior to the 1979 national literacy campaign, NCCK had played a leading role in training literacy teachers and writing literacy materials. In 1964, the Kenya Government established the Department of Community Development, which, among other tasks, was responsible for promoting literacy activities on a self-help basis. However, due to the lack of appropriate material and human support, the Department's efforts did not show significant results.

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An overall review of the illiteracy situation resulted in the establishment of the Board of Adult Education by an Act of Parliament in February 1966. The Board, which was comprised of representatives of government and non-governmental organisations involved in adult education, was given the responsibilities of advising the Ministry of Cooperatives and Social Services on matters relating to adult education, of co-ordinating the activities of government services and non-governmental agencies and of identifying and assessing needs for new developments in adult education. Consequently, a national literacy campaign was launched in 1967. A special Division of Adult Education was created within the Ministry of Cooperative and Social Services and was put in charge of mounting the campaign. The same year, activities were started in a few pilot districts. The objective was to cover all the districts (41) in the country by 1970. But even in 1969, it had been realised that, due to financial constraints, the Division could not respond to the rapidly spreading demand to open literacy classes. As a result, it was decided to limit the number of classes that would receive government aid in each district where classes had been started. This move created some negative effects: the morale of the field officers and the teachers fell, the enrollment figures dropped sharply and most of the classes had to close. By 1971, about 1,000 centres were still functioning and providing literacy instructions to some 30,000 adults. In the same year, a survey of the programme took place, revealing some of its weaknesses, which included the following: the teaching methods used were those originally designed for children; instructors were primary school teachers who lacked motivation for doing additional work without attractive remuneration; the policy on the language of instruction was not clear; and no suitable teaching materials had been produced, so the learners had sometimes to use primary school primers. Already in 1969, the Kenyan Government had requested UNESCO to explore the possibility of using a new, functional and literacy approach. In line with this approach, a work-oriented literacy project was launched in 1972, as an integral part of the Special Rural Development Programme (SRDP). This program had been started in 1971, with a view to stimulating integrated development in rural areas. Six districts were selected to experiment with the new programme. Instead of the traditional method of alphabet learning, a global learning strategy was proposed and income-generating projects become an essential component of literacy classes. Village youngsters who had completed at least primary education were used as instructors; Kiswahili was the only language of instruction and special common primers were being prepared at the central level. The programme was supposed to last 900 hours, with a follow-up course of six to twelve months. It was expected that the completion of two courses would take two years, after which the adults would have reached a literacy level equivalent to that of Standard Seven of formal primary education. At the end of this experimental project, an evaluation took place, which provided several useful conclusions for future action on literacy. It became clear, for instance, that it was difficult to teach literacy in Kiswahili. Although Kiswahili is a national language, most people in rural areas do not use it for daily communication and, therefore, do not master it well. Teaching adults to read and write first in their local languages was then considered a better approach. The use of the same common textbooks in different locations was also seen as a handicap for making the programme truly functional and relevant to the local living conditions. Therefore, it was felt that emphasis should be given to local textbook production. On the contrary, the recruitment of local village youth as literacy teachers seemed to be a promising strategy if minimum appropriate financial incentives were used to sustain their

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motivation. It also became evident that appropriate training and supervision of the instructors was a key factor for making a literacy programme successful. Finally, the functional approach, combining literacy learning and acquisition of other practical skills, had proven to be the most suitable for the design of an overall national literacy strategy. On 12 December 1978, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Kenya's independence, President Daniel arap Moi addressed the nation and officially ordered a massive literacy program to be launched to eliminate illiteracy within five years. The President stressed the socio-economic relevance of the program. Illiteracy was described as a major obstacle for economic development and social participation. As the President put it: "We now clearly see that the individual Kenyan cannot become effective enough in promoting development, or participating fully in our social and political system if he is illiterate." Consequently, the literacy program was presented as the only component of a more global development strategy, which had to form the basis for the Fourth Development Plan (1979-1983). This strategy aimed at alleviating poverty mainly in the rural areas through the provision of basic needs. In addition to adult literacy, the basic needs package included free primary education, free milk distribution to school children, increased employment for school leavers, the provision of water schemes, better healthcare and family planning programs. At the beginning of 1979, a national seminar was organised to discuss ways and means of implementing the presidential directive and a full-fledged Department of Adult Education was established within the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. At that time, the total number of illiterate adults was considered to be about five million. It was estimated afterwards, on the basis of the 1979 census, that the number of illiterates in 1980/81 was 4.4 million, which correspond to an illiteracy rate of 51.7 percent. Although some initial plans with specific national enrollment targets for each year were prepared, it should be clear that those plans were not compulsory. No precise quantitative objectives were imposed or even proposed to provincial or district levels. In line with the overall development strategy presented earlier, what happened was a massive mobilisation for literacy by the whole society, by political and social leaders and the mass media. The actual implementation of the presidential order was, therefore, a question of self-help and of local initiative. The roles of the Department of Adult Education involved stimulation, supervision and technical support provision. The major means by which the Department performed its roles were the following: • • • • •

Training of literacy personnel through short-term seminars and correspondence courses; Preparation of primers and other teaching materials according to a decentralised production scheme; Regular supervision of teaching staff; Collection of statistical data about enrollment centres and teachers; and Organisation of national literacy tests.

The Department promoted a functional approach, aiming at establishing systematic links between literacy teaching and the everyday activities of the participants. In concrete terms,

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the functionality of the program had the following implications as far as teaching methods and content were concerned: • •

•

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•

The medium of instruction used in the literacy centres was the local language, except at the Coast and urban centres, where learning took place in Kiswahili; The literacy materials were locally designed and produced so that their content reflected local socio-cultural conditions and economic activities. There were two literacy primers in 23 different languages, which aimed at the systematic transmission of knowledge and skills, directly relevant for improving the living conditions of the learners in terms of production, health and sanitation, family planning and others; Teachers were supposed to contact and invite local officers of the different development sectors to address their literacy learners on topics related to their respective fields of competence; and Each group of learners was also encouraged to undertake some form of collective project work as part of their participation in the literacy program. Such projects included those that generated income for the learners (like poultry raising); community improvement (like building a literacy centre); or just for entertainment (like folkloric dancing), among others.

The method of teaching was to be based on the learner's experiences. Through discussions of subjects of interest, learners were introduced to sounds and words that were most familiar to them. As they progressed from the first to the second primer, greater emphasis was to be placed on sentence construction based on topics related to their life and likely to sustain their interest. The teaching of numeracy was also to based on the learner's experience, with a view to stimulate and maintain interest. Initially, teaching was concentrated on the recognition of numbers and the ability to reproduce them in writing. The learners were then to be introduced to the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, leading to simple fractions and decimals, and then to the measurements of surface, space, weight, time and money. Learners were supposed to become functionally literate within nine months, which corresponded to some 300 to 400 hours of literacy class attendance (two hours a day for five days a week) (Carron et al.1989).

Achievements The launching of the 1979 adult literacy program was beneficial particularly to women in a number of ways. As shown in Table 8.1, the program was more popular with women than men. The female participation, especially in the initial years, was consistently more than 70 percent of the total number of enrolled learners. In 1979, for instance, 321,208 women were enrolled in the literacy classes as compared to 93,468 men respectively. In 1990, the respective enrollments for women and men were 105,458 and 32,696. Table 8. 1 also shows that the total enrollment figures had been gradually declining after the first year of initial enthusiasm and massive mobilisation (Carron et al. 1989). More recent enrollments as shown in that table continue to demonstrate an increasing decline, with marginal rises in a couple of years. A major problem that has faced the literacy campaign has been the difficulty in

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sustaining demand by the potential learners, especially women. The general decline in enrollments has mainly been the consequence of the fact that the literacy campaign relied more on individual motivation than on efforts of the government and NGOs to mobilise participation in the literacy program. A number of reasons can be advanced for the dominance of women in the literacy program. A combination of historical and socio-cultural factors explains the state of affairs. First and foremost, women have had less access to formal education than men since the colonial era. This, to a great extent, gives more impetus to women to want to learn than men. Second, on economic grounds, poor families tend to prefer educating sons to daughters because of perceived long-term economic security, which is believed to be more likely guaranteed by the sons. On religious rounds, in some communities, especially Muslims, many parents worry about the perceived effects of Western education on their daughters – it is said to make the girls discontented or immoral and, hence, affect their marriages. There are also some communities in which girls are forced to leave school to get married and bring dowry or because of fear of unwanted pregnancies if girls continue with their schooling. Such factors contributed to higher illiteracy levels among women. Another explanation for the dominance of women in the adult literacy programs relates to the demands of a changing economy, which force women to acquire extra responsibilities outside the home. Aware of the disadvantages they have to suffer in a demanding modern economy because of their limited formal education, more women, therefore, wish to acquire new skills whenever they get the opportunity. Acquisition of new skills enables them to be self-reliant and perform similar roles to men. The desire of such skills has been inevitable with the continued migration of men to towns and plantations estates in search of employment, which leaves many women as heads of households, taking care of their families, farms, enterprises and general domestic affairs. Therefore, they have a strong motivation and desire to master the basic communication skills, which would allow them to become part of the mainstream of society, especially the acquisition of literacy and numeracy as well as language skills (Carron et al. 1989). It should also be pointed out that due to socio-cultural reasons in some communities, men are reluctant to attend literacy classes together with women. The difficulty to motivate men to take part in the adult literacy program has been a major concern of the Department of Adult Education. Literacy classes have partly been popular among women because they provide much needed socialising opportunities. Such opportunities have been lacking in the current sociocultural setting. On the contrary, men have numerous such opportunities at public barazas, bars, towns and others. As a matter of fact, the availability of alternative socialising opportunities for men has been perceived as a real hindrance to their participation in the literacy classes (Mwiria, 1993). In fact one of the major positive results of the adult literacy programs launched by the government and NGOs has been, besides the literacy skills, the provision of opportunities for women to organise themselves. There has been a proliferation of women groups in villages, which conduct various activities: training in income-generating skills, setting up shops and co-operative farming ventures. Although there were mixed results in that many groups failed to earn income, the forms of female solidarity provided members the chance to meet others outside the home and the political leverage it could provide (Juma, 1991). Local women with slightly more education became leaders of the groups. Group meetings provided opportunities

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for women to meet other women, and develop organisational, leadership and political skills such public speaking and conducting meetings. They also learnt how to relate to the local government and seek support from government agencies. Women groups definitely provided an entry point into the public and political arena for many women. Another educational component of these groups was the informal sharing of vocational skills such as sewing, tailoring, embroidery, food processing and preparation. Some formal education in commercial skills such as book-keeping and accounting were also taught to members. Literacy and numeracy became more meaningful and valued in the context of these groups.

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Table 8.1. Adult Literacy Enrollment by Gender in Kenya 1976-1996 Year

Men

Women

Total

1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

93,866 89,053 76,351 74,481 74,276 57,188 38,497 51,367 38,602 52,744 33,543 37,093 30,123 25,425 26,027 26,554 27,572 26,612 28,139 26,180 30,200 25,802 26,479 41,341 31,305

321,208 309,824 295,651 273,319 269,612 205,244 132,550 174,866 105,880 105,490 100,383 110,487 97,984 84,049 81,271 87,648 88,479 89,029 73,215 74,081 71,061 68,101 66,573 73,524 77,126

415,079 398,877 372,800 347,800 343,888 262,432 171,047 226,173 144,482 158,238 133,926 147,940 129,107 109,474 107,298 114,278 116,051 115,641 101,354 100,261 101,261 93,903 93,052 114,865 108,431

Percentage of Women 77.4 77.7 79.5 78.6 78.4 78.2 77.3 77.3 73.2 66.7 75.0 74.7 75.9 76.8 75.7 76.7 76.2 77.0 72.2 73.9 70.2 72.5 72.0 64.0 71.1

Source: Economic Surveys 1998-2003.

In some areas, adult literacy teachers have undertaken most of their activities at the village level and worked within village administrative structures. Committed and enlightened, they have helped to galvanise local communities and supported women's efforts to literacy as avenues for their own activities. This has largely been through basic civic knowledge, awareness and sensitisation, which have been a potential transformative instrument. Although this transformation process may not eradicate poverty in the rural settings, it makes the

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women learners different from the bulk of the illiterates. This is because literacy has opened their eyes to their needs and rights, sharpened their economic appetites and made them a potential force for political and economic resistance (Nyerere 1988).

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Botswana Following independence, Botswana, like other African countries recognized the need for the provision of education if its development objectives were to be met. In 1975, the Government appointed a commission to assess the state of education in the country and to suggest ways to improve it. The National Commission on Education (1977) indicated that “A fully literate population is an important long-term objective if Botswana’s other national objectives are to be met… literacy should not be pursued in isolation from other development programs” (p. 67). The contention that adult literacy was crucial for national development was not made evident in official practice. The Report of the National Commission on Education did not have a specific recommendation on adult literacy. However, the accompanying White Paper promised that a paper would be published in which consideration would be given to literacy programs, although no such a paper was ever written (Ministry of Education 1977). In 1979, the Government, however, accepted a working document entitled the National Initiative Consultation Document, which laid the foundation for the Botswana National Literacy Program (BNLP). Its major objective was to enable 250,000 illiterate men, women and youths to become literate in Setswana, the widely spoken language, and numerate over six years from 1980 to 1985. It also stipulated that literacy was to be understood in the context of development issues relevant to the respective districts and nation. Lastly, it was decided that literacy was “to be interpreted to imply that a person can comprehend those written communications and simple computations which are part of their daily life” (Ministry of Education 1977). However, the Department of Non-Formal Education (DNFE), which was created following the launching of the program, was unable to eradicate illiteracy in six years as envisaged in the objectives because the program was insufficiently funded, and it largely depended on foreign donors with minimal state support (Maruatona 2004). In 1985, the government attempted to redefine the objectives of the program in an apparent effort to meet the learning needs of rural communities and remote areas, as well as adults who never had a chance to go to school and for children who were living in villages without schools. The program had to meet the needs of rural communities in terms of skills required for income generating activities, as this formed the basis for expansion. The redefined objectives stated that the Department of Non-Formal Education would expand its non-formal activities beyond reading, writing and numeracy (Maruatona 2004). In 1987, the Botswana National Literacy Program (BNLP) was evaluated mainly through the use of a test administered to a representative sample of learners, which revealed that about 81 percent of the respondents scored an equivalent of Grade Four in the formal primary school system. The test focused mainly on recording learners’ abilities to memorise items and not on establishing the use of literacy in their daily lives and, therefore, fell short of demonstrating how learners applied the skills in their districts and nation as stipulated in the program objectives. In 1993, the government conducted a national household survey, which revealed that the overall literacy rate was 68.9 percent, with 66.9 percent for men and 70.3

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percent for women. The survey, however, showed that only 12 percent of the participants reported acquiring literacy through the Botswana National Literacy Program. It also indicated that the program was not reaching 81 percent of the eligible population it was supposed to serve, indicating a very low level of achievement for a programme that had been in operation since the early 1980s (Maruatona 2004).

Namibia On the attainment of independence, the new Government of Namibia was confronted with a situation in which a majority of the population had been denied education during the apartheid system of government. According to a 1991 population census, 35 percent of the adult Namibians aged 15 years and above, 290,501 persons, had gone to school for less than four years, if at all. One-third of the population over 15 years could not read and write fluently. One way of helping adults to catch up with what they missed out in the past was establishing a National Literacy Program of Namibia (NLPN), which was officially launched in September 1992, with the support of the political leadership. The President, Sam Nujoma, described the significance of the program for the Namibian people as follows:

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The progress of a nation depends to a very large extent on the abilities and attitudes of its people. We hope that through participation in the National Literacy Program, our people will not just acquire new skills, but a new confidence in their own abilities and imagination, and better exercise their rights and responsibilities as Namibian citizens… . In short, one of the signs of the success of our Literacy Program will be when participation in the democratic process in quantity and quality (Hopfer 1997).

In each of the seven Namibian educational regions, one Regional Literacy Officer (RLO) was employed by the Government and launched a three-month training course for District Literacy Organisers (DLOs). The District Literacy Organisers trained and supervised literacy promoters/literacy teachers who set up literacy classes. The program consisted of three-course stages, which lasted a year each. In the first two years, literacy learners were introduced to reading writing and arithmetic in their mother tongues. In the third year, they learned basic English. The contents of the literacy primers were related to the life context of the participants in order to stimulate discussion and other activities in the literacy classes. The training at all levels of the program was of a participatory nature. Literacy classes normally met three times a week for two hours. The majority of the learners were women, who constituted 28,506 and 8,358 men in 1996 (Hopfer 1997). In 1994 and 1996, an overall evaluation of the National Literacy Program in Namibia was carried out in six different studies that examined its progress and effectiveness by program staff and internationally recognized literacy experts. One important finding of the evaluation was the degree of empowerment through literacy derived from taking part in the program. The empowerment process included the following, among others: The First Phase: prevailing attitude of personal inferiority and incapability: Some learners described their situations before taking part in the literacy classes as being

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“in darkness,” being dependent on others, feeling “stupid,” lacking status in the community due to not knowing how to read and write. Through their socialization within the Bantu Education System, many NLPN literacy teachers and organizers had internalized that they could only react to demands from higher authority, and that they could only give orders to persons lower to them in the social hierarchy, and that they were not capable of acting according to their personal creativity (Hopfer 1997). Second Phase: participation in non-formal education program: By taking part in the literacy program, literacy learners could catch up with what they had missed in the past through Bantu Education. They realized that they were still able to learn basic arithmetic and to read and write. Promoters learned to use a learner-centred approach in classes. This was an alternative to the authoritarian, teacher-centred way of teaching most of them were confronted with when they themselves went to school. Organizers at district, regional and national levels were responsible for the democratic implementation of the programme. Major decisions were made, for example, in “literacy committees” at different levels. Learners, promoters and District Literacy Officers participated in developing their own teaching and learning materials and others. In that structure, teachers and organizers could learn to live and work creatively with democratic principles (Hopfer 1997). Third Phase: Solving a contradiction-realising personal potentials: By taking part in the programme, some participants, teachers and organizers could experience their own potential of being able to think and act independently, regardless of their skin colour and background. They took their own decisions and realized their creative potential. A contradiction between their beliefs in their incapacity and their practical demonstration of personal capacity led them to expand their space for action and activities and to involve new participants in the empowerment process. On an individual level, learners experienced increased awareness, self-confidence and selfreliance. On a family level, they increased support for their children’s education and the education of their partners. On a community level, growing active participation by learners in community structures could be discerned (Hoppfer 1997).

ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION It is estimated that more than half of the world’s countries, over 40 percent of the population aged 15 or older, cannot read and write. With exception of literacy campaigns that focus on older individuals past school age, children primarily become literate through formal schooling, however, data on school enrollments, promotion and dropout illustrate the limitation of attaining this objective. Despite significant increases in school enrollments over the last two decades, large numbers of children still do not attend school, and those that do enrol often do not complete the primary school. In low and lower-middle income countries, between 25 and 85 percent of the 6- to 11-year-old children were not enrolled in school. On the average, only 60 percent of the school-aged population from these countries reaches the fifth grade (Gorman and Pollitt 1997).

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Daniel Namusonge Sifuna and Nobuhide Sawamura Table 8.2. Adult Literacy Rate in Africa, 15 Year and Over (Percentage)

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Country Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central Africa Republic Chad Congo Cote d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of Congo Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Liberia Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone South Africa Swaziland Togo Uganda United Republic of Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe

1995- 2004 Total 67 35 81 24 59 68 81 49 26 85 49 67 87 36 84 58 29 74 82 52 71 64 19 84 39 85 29 69 65 85 39 92 35 82 80 53 67 69 68 89

Male 83 48 80 31 67 77 88 65 41 91 61 81 93 50 88 66 43 78 74 58 77 75 27 88 55 87 43 78 71 92 51 91 47 84 81 69 77 78 76 93

Female 54 23 82 17 52 60 76 33 13 79 39 54 80 23 80 50 18 70 90 46 65 54 12 81 25 83 15 60 60 78 29 92 24 81 78 38 58 62 60 86

Source: UNESCO, Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? Paris, UNESCO Publishing and Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 256-258.

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Goal four of Education for All EFA sets achieving 50 percent in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults. Realizing this particular goal remained a major challenge as between 1995 and 2004, about 774 million adults worldwide (20 percent) were estimated to be illiterate. Although there were increased literacy rates within the same period, they did not reflect a decline in the number of illiterates. Severe illiteracy is said to be concentrated in the regions whose school systems are known to be weak, namely, Sub-Saharan African countries, Arab States and West Asia. As a matter of fact, illiteracy increased in these regions partly due to continuing high population growth. In the African region, adult literacy rate remained below the world average, posting about 60 percent (UNESCO 2007). In general, literacy rates tend to be higher among youth than adults, because of recent expansion to basic education. The latest available estimates indicate that there are nearly 137 million illiterate youths in the world, 17 percent adult illiterates, 85 million of them or 63 percent are female. Youth literacy rates are above 70 percent in all regions, though individual countries fall below. In developing regions, youth illiteracy ranges from 2 to 28 percent. Gender disparities are generally less pronounced in youth literacy than in adult literacy, but regional variations follow the same pattern as for adults, with gaps between men and women still notable among youth in the regions with high illiteracy rates (UNESCO 2004). Worldwide, women account for about 64 percent of the illiterate population, although the proportion varies widely by region, with the Sub-Saharan African being among the highest rate. Given the impact of literacy on female well-being, autonomy and empowerment, actions aimed at achieving gender parity are urgently needed. They would yield comprehensive benefits in the long run as well, given the relationship between women’s education, their fertility and the development of their children. Besides gender, key factors or correlates of illiteracy include poverty, place of residence and certain individual characteristics. On the overall, illiteracy rates are highest in the countries with greatest poverty. The link between poverty and illiteracy is also observed at the household level, with literacy rates of the poorest households substantially lower than those of the wealthiest. More generally, for various social, cultural or political reasons, certain population groups, such as migrants, indigenous people, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities, find themselves excluded from the mainstream society, which often results in reduced access to formal education and literacy programs (UNESCO 2005).

QUALITY AND RELEVANCE Generally it is difficult to assess in absolute terms outcomes and impact of adult literacy programs. This is because the sphere is a complex domain in which there are a variety of players with differentials in resources attempting to work towards change in the lives of individuals and communities in socio-economic development. There are also many factors that impact on socio-economic settings. There are, however, a number of challenges that seriously affect the quality and relevance of adult literacy programs. One of the most notable elements of the programs is the declining enrollments in the face of a continuing high proportion of illiterates in the population. This is a clear indication that all is not well with regard to the quality and relevance. Some surveys carried out on the

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factors influencing attendance of literacy classes have reasons given that include lack of interest, lack of time and mixing of sexes and others, which tend to indicate the low demand for the service offered through the programs (Central Bureau of Statistics 1988). Another evaluation of one of the literacy programs found that the crucial factor in the participation of learners is the aspiration to acquire literacy and thus enhance their status in society. This aspiration is similar, if not identical, to the widely held belief that formal school education is the gateway to a high socio-economic status. Adults see the literacy program as an opportunity for them to emulate the experiences of learners in general education, an experience whose overt symbol is the acquisition of nationally recognized certificates. The demobilization of demand characterized by declining enrollments and retention that set in after the launch of the programs is associated with the growing perceptions that the attainment of the principal aspiration has not been fully met. Growing doubts among the intended beneficiaries also tend to centre on the curriculum and materials, the teaching force, graduation rates, and the sustenance of literacy among neo-literates (Carron et al. 1989). In developing the adult literacy program curriculum, planners tend to assume that learners share common concerns, universal realities and are passive consumers. They ignore gender and ethnic differences among participants in generating literacy materials and develop a conventional literacy program. Senior departmental officers tend to control both processes and outcomes of the literacy program through the exclusion of learners from such crucial activities as the development of primers, post-literacy booklets, and through imposing materials for adult basic education course on them. They unilaterally develop materials based on their own expertise and experience without identifying the needs of learners. As a result, the literacy program does not provide learners with skills they can apply in their immediate contexts, as the materials are more preoccupied with national issues as opposed to local contexts. In some extreme cases, materials are even borrowed from foreign countries without any form adaptation. The course organization and the development of materials generally tend marginalize women who usually constitute a majority of the participants and what they are expected to learn from the primers that emphasise their domestic roles without questioning such practices that are normally quite oppressive. The programs generally do not critically address issues affecting women and some topics in the primers are not only offensive to them, but also demean their status in society (Maruatona 2004). Although women on the whole may benefit from the adult literacy program, the participation is constrained by a number of problems. The constraints generally centre on the unequal access to resources and the sexual division of labour. The acquired skills such as sewing or gardening, for example, are useful only in so far as the resources needed to use them are at the women's disposal. These resources include not only cash or credit but also land, technologies and labour time. Without mobilising time and resources for women, the knowledge they gain becomes underutilised. A major resource handicap in women’s participation in the adult literacy program is one of time. In many of the traditional African community settings, women are overburdened with many responsibilities, which range from childbearing to the management of family farms. For example, it has been estimated that on the average 67 percent of their day-to-day time is spent in cleaning, family care, wood and water procurement and subsistence agricultural work (Stromquist 1990). Most of the women in the literacy classes are engaged in occupations such as cash cropping, subsistence farming, wage employment and petty trade. This is in addition to their other roles as domestic workers and mothers, with many of them having no less than

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five children to take care of. This does not only leave women with little or no time for independent study, but also greatly affects their frequency and duration for literacy class attendance. Consequently, many of them tend to perform worse than their male counterparts in the proficiency tests (Carron et al. 1989). This has been supported by a similar study in Tanzania, where it was also found that women performed poorly on the proficiency tests because they did not have enough time and conducive environment to continue studying outside the literacy classes (Meena 1991). A Tanzanian study showed that the learning environment is also a major constraint to women participation in the literacy program. The home environment, in particular, poses heavy demands on the learners who have to fulfil their roles as mothers and domestic chores, hence allowing them little time for independent study. Furthermore, some learners are likely to encounter hostility from their husbands, who may feel threatened by the knowledge and skills their wives acquire from the literacy programs. In addition, facilities such as lighting, reading and writing facilities, radio, piped water and the general environment are not conducive to the adult learner in most homes of average Tanzanians (Meena 1991) The deplorable learning environment in the homes equally applies to most of the literacy centres. First and foremost, many centres are located far away from learner's homes, a factor that forces them to walk long distances. This discourages learners from attending classes more regularly (Mwiria 1990). Few of the centres were specifically constructed for adult learners, as many centres are either churches, primary schools or some other converted building. Some adult classes are conducted in the open or under-a-tree arrangements- these conditions are not conducive for effective learning. In such centres, learners sit on mats or logs of wood and use their knees for writing and lack some teaching materials as chalk boards (Department of Adult Education 1984). Although such conditions are undoubtedly difficult for all learners, they are particularly unbearable for women learners who often have to take their babies with them to the literacy classes. One of the key issues in the adult literacy programs is that for a long time, they have failed to include a functional component to enable adults to link what they learned directly with improvements in their own conditions, and this has contributed in a large measure to a loss of interest. For women, in particular, the content of the curriculum hardly addresses gender issues. The content continues to perpetuate gender stereotyping. To break this approach, some NGOs have recommended a new method - REFLECT - Regenerated Freirean Literacy and Community Empowering Techniques, in which the learners have to be left to decide where, when and what they need to learn. These have, however, not been operationalised because adult literacy teachers who are expected to use the Freirean Approach generally have low levels of education and have undergone a brief, formalised induction course in which such an approach has not been clearly demonstrated (Sifuna 1997). Hence, once enrolled in the literacy program, many professionally unqualified teachers teach women literacy learners, like their male counterparts. Only a minimum of a pass in the secondary school selection examination is required of prospective full-time literacy teachers. This particular condition is waived for teachers from the remote parts of the country. There are no specific educational qualifications required of prospective part-time or self-help teachers. Even primary school drop-outs and adult literacy programs graduates can become part time or self-help teachers (Carron et al.1989). The short induction course to which adult literacy teachers are exposed is not only inadequate, but does not also address gender issues. Consequently a majority of the teachers

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are not equipped with adequate adult methodology. They lack knowledge about adult psychology and, hence, they end up teaching adults as if they are teaching small children. They even use the same kind of ridicules used in primary schools, such as telling adults that they are stupid when they fail to understand a lesson. It is most embarrassing for an adult to be addressed in this manner by a young teacher, and many learners drop out as a result (Meena 1991). This approach tends to reinforce the culture of oppression rather than challenging it, and it is a great loss for a potentially transformative learning process. For women, this loss is even greater as it stifles self-confidence, knowledge and imaginative resistance to oppression. Another key factor centring on the nature of the curriculum is the question: after literacy classes, what next? Adult centres are expected to facilitate the literacy process and not to be an end in themselves. In other words, there is little or no consideration about the curriculum and primers for post-literacy learners to avoid a situation where they could relapse into illiteracy. Learning opportunities for post-literacy female learners are limited by the fact that women generally travel less, and they listen to radio, read newspapers or watch television and cinema less frequently than men. Learning materials for post-literacy female learners, therefore, should be designed based on the immediate expectations of the learners, including activities that not only deepen and sharpen their literacy levels, but also acquire new social skills relevant to their own life expectations. Another key constraint already alluded to above in male-dominated communities is that female literacy learners are not given the necessary encouragement to enable them take advantage of the literacy programs. It has been noted that husbands sometimes prevent their wives from taking part in literacy classes (Riria 1983). This is worse in conservative Muslim communities, where literacy is perceived to be a threat to the Islamic culture. In most communities, men equally feel threatened by the effects of literacy on women. For example, it has been observed that one of the reasons why few men participate in literacy classes is because when they fail to do well in class in the presence of their womenfolk, they tend to feel that their manhood is being undermined (Mwasi 1984). The male authority is further extended to the administration of the literacy programs. Men tend to dominate positions of authority in the literacy programs, where women constitute a majority of the participants. Although women form 70 percent of the participants, only a negligible proportion of women are involved in the administration. For example, by the early 1990s, out of the top 11 most senior administrators of the Department of Adult Education in Kenya, only four were women. There was only one woman among the eight provincial adult education officers, while out of 42 district adult education officers, only four were women. Similarly, of 162 assistant adult education officers, only eight were women. The situation was further extended to the literacy teachers, where women only comprised 34 percent of the fulltime teachers, with the great majority of the part-time teachers being women. The problem with this male domination, especially in teaching, is that women learners have few role models to emulate and are also taught by persons who are unlikely to be very sensitive to gender concerns (Kilemi 1993). Among the major constraints to the literacy programs has been one of financing. Apart from government projects, there have been other players in adult literacy programs, mainly religious organisations, donors and NGOs have supported literacy programs. For this reason, new development programs supported by donor agencies are particularly vulnerable. The sustainability and acceptability of any one program is dependent on the interests and priorities of

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particular donors at any given time. In the recent past, donors have shown a particular interest in supporting gender aspects. While this is highly welcome, once donors shift their interest to something else, programs specifying gender interests may find themselves starved of funds unless alternative sources are found (Meena 1991).

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SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND RELEVANCE On the basis of some of the examples of literacy programs in Africa, especially the National Literacy Program in Namibia (NLPN), participation in a well planned and executed adult literacy program can be a crucial factor in initiating a process of personal and community empowerment. The program was more than teaching adults how to read and write and to carry out basic arithmetic computation. It ignited in some participants a process in which adults started to realize their own abilities and potential. In most countries, adult literacy programs seem particularly more popular with women than men who have constituted over 70 percent of the programs. Having been denied educational opportunities in the formal school system, women perceive these programs as a second chance to acquire knowledge and skills to cope with the demands of the modern society. Although, on the whole, the programs have proved beneficial to women, they face many challenges that call for urgent attention especially by the governments. Among the major challenges to adult literacy is in the area of funding. In many countries, pronouncements by governments of commitment to promoting literacy and development are not matched by allocations of resources. In the face of budgetary constraints, adult literacy programs have lower priority than formal education. Inadequate financing seriously affects the provision of teaching and learning materials, resulting in lowered quality of the programs. In some countries, communities contribute to the provision of physical facilities, as beneficiaries also contribute towards their training as well as buying their own writing materials and paying self-help teachers. This underscores governments’ commitments not only in providing essential guidelines needed in the running of adult literacy programs, but also the provision of the necessary resources for effective implementation of such programs. One of the most difficult and critical challenges facing adult literacy in most countries is how to stimulate and sustain the motivation of adult learners. The majority of the clientele are deprived rural and slum populations and school dropouts. Many are engaged in a daily struggles for survival, in which case learning basic literacy skills is not a priority. Many of them face other competing priorities at the individual and household level, especially the multiple roles played by women, which leave them with no time to attend literacy programs. The low motivation shown in most programs has resulted in declining enrollments. The challenge, therefore, is how to make the programs a part of the development projects that fulfil the immediate needs of the people they serve. This situation in most countries arises from the fact that literacy planning and decisionmaking are heavily centralized with minimal opportunity for local innovations and responsiveness to the needs of different social groups, especially women and ethnic minorities. Planning and implementation should, therefore, be decentralized to devolve power to the local level. These need to pay more attention to the contexts of the different clientele to ensure that their literacy and development needs are identified and incorporated in the

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program. This will increase their self-confidence through an exposure to essential and practical skills. Among such an approach would be the use of participatory Regenerated Freirean Literacy Empowering Community Technique (REFLECT). This technique relates literacy education to development issues identified by the learners themselves and helps them to challenge dominant and oppressive worldviews. REFLECT has been used with potentially empowering outcomes among poor communities in a good number of developing countries (Archer 2000).

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS Literacy is a fundamental human right, a basic learning need and the key to learning to learn. In this regard, literacy is understood as the process of learning to read and write text and numbers, reading and writing to learn, developing these skills and using them in a meaningful way in different contexts. Literacy learning takes place in school and involves children, youth and adults. Literacy is related to written languages, which include script, print and digital, but also oral communication, namely, listening and speaking. For literacy to be such, it must be useful, or functional, and suitable. In the above context, therefore, in the process of empowering people, literacy is a viable instrument that is used in most cases. In fact, there is a growing worldwide consensus that “literacy and adult education are a means for people to overcome poverty and exclusion, establish and reinforce democracy, achieve justice and comprehensive peace, enhance economic and social well-being and improve health and ensure food security.” Adult literacy helps to prevent and eliminate gender and racial disparity, and other social problems such as violence against women, drugs addiction, environmental destruction and HIV and AIDS. The faith development partners have in the role of literacy in development has made the attainment of universal literacy one of the greatest challenges currently facing policymakers in developing countries. While in developed Western countries the problem of illiteracy is related to difficulties in understanding complex reading information, in developing countries, even the most rudimentary reading tasks are often beyond the reach of large numbers of the populations. The urgency for adult literacy programs in developing countries is demonstrated by its potential outcomes. On the basis of some of the examples of literacy programs in Africa, especially the National Literacy Program in Namibia (NLPN), participation in a well planned and executed adult literacy program can be a crucial factor in initiating a process of personal and community empowerment. The program was more than teaching adults how to read and write and to carry out basic arithmetic. It ignited in some participants a process in which adults started to realize their own abilities and potential. In most countries, adult literacy programs seem particularly more popular with women than men, who have constituted over 70 percent of the programs. Having been denied educational opportunities in the formal school system, women perceive the programs as a second chance to acquire knowledge and skills to cope with the demands of the modern society. Although, on the whole, the programs have proved beneficial to women, they face many challenges that call for urgent attention, especially by the governments. One of the most notable elements of the programs is the declining enrollments in the face of a continuing high proportion of illiterates in the population. This is a clear indication that

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all is not well with regard to their quality and relevance. Some surveys carried out on the factors influencing attendance of literacy classes have given reasons that include lack of interest, lack of time and mixing of sexes and others that tend to indicate the low demand for the services offered through the programs. Among the major challenges to adult literacy is in the area of funding. In many countries, pronouncements by governments of commitment to promoting literacy and development are not matched by allocations of resources. In the face of budgetary constraints, adult literacy programs have lower priority than formal education. Inadequate financing seriously affects the provision of teaching and learning materials, resulting in lowered quality of the programs, which needs to be given more serious consideration. One of the most difficult and critical challenges facing adult literacy in most countries is how to stimulate and sustain the motivation of adult learners. The issue, therefore, is how to make the programs a part of the development projects that fulfil the immediate needs of the people they serve. This situation in most countries arises from the fact that literacy planning and decisionmaking are heavily centralized with minimal opportunity for local innovations and responsiveness to the needs of different social groups, especially women and ethnic minorities. Planning and implementation should, therefore, be decentralized to devolve power to the local level. These need to pay more attention to the contexts of the different clientele to ensure that their literacy and development needs are identified and incorporated in the program. This will increase their self-confidence through an exposure to essential and practical skills. Among such an approach would be the use of participatory Regenerated Freirean Literacy Empowering Community Technique (REFLECT). This technique relates literacy education to development issues identified by the learners themselves and helps them to challenge dominant and oppressive worldviews. REFLECT has been used with potentially empowering outcomes among poor communities in a good number of developing countries

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Chapter 9

TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING (TVET)

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INTRODUCTION This chapter attempts to define the concept of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and its status in the colonial period, factors leading to its resurgence after independence, rationale and objectives of TVET, its forms, access and participation, and quality and relevance. In most African countries, technical and vocational education and training refer to a range of learning experiences that are relevant to the world of work and that may occur in a variety of learning contexts, including educational institutions and the workplace. It includes learning designed to develop the skills for practicing particular occupations as well as learning designed to prepare for entry or re-entry into the world of work in general (Green et al. 2004). In most cases, the learning is intended to or generally leads to direct labour market entry. In many African countries, however, the TVET curriculum is not organized to act as a foundation for entry into further education and training for specific occupations. Most of the TVET programmes are organized as initial vocational training undertaken by youth prior to entering the labour market and in preparation for self-employment in both rural agricultural sector and urban informal sector. There is also continuous vocational training undertaken by adults while working, but these are for very specialized government ministries and departments. In practice, TVET also encompasses, “non-formal learning” and “informal learning” occurring mostly through apprenticeship and organized within family lines, but these are usually very difficult to capture in national databases. “Informal learning” is said to be that which occurs “unintentionally” or as a by-product of other activities. Much of what is often referred to as work-experience, and particularly on the-job training, is either non-formal or informal in character and also constitutes a large part of the vocational learning that occurs in most countries (Green et al. 2004; Oketch 2007).

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TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING (TVET) IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD As an education policy and practice, technical and vocational education and training dates back into the colonial period and was tinged in the pseudo-racism and colonial ideology. The publication in 1859 of Darwin’s Origin of Species provided more ammunition for the proponents of African inferiority (Berman 1975). Africans were, therefore, relegated to a position of inferiority on the scale of human development. This led many missionaries to share the racist vision of Africans as semi-barbarians incapable of attaining European standards. The impact of these theories on missionary work was quite profound. The belief in African inferiority and depravity led many to conclude that Africans and their American descendants could not possibly benefit from a literary education. Their education should be geared towards those manual occupations attuned to their assumed arrested development. The provision of vocational education, it was argued would help combat the well observed African characteristics of indolence and depravity. Such education was thought to teach Africans to be more industrious, while at the same time instilling in them certain Christian virtues to counterbalance immorality. In this regard, Christian missionaries drew encouragement from the successful vocational programmes undertaken at Hampton and Tuskegee in the United States set up for Black Americans soon after the Civil War under the stewardship of Booker T. Washington, a strong proponent of the vocational approach. The apparent success of these institutions and their satellites in training a Christian middle class Blacks (Negroes), led missionaries to believe that the situation of the American Negroes was approximated by the African masses. If the vocational approach to education, it was argued, had proved successful with the former, making them independent and economically selfsufficient Christian citizens, then a similar course of action would prove successful in Africa. This view was strongly held by most Christian missionaries (Berman 1975). Christian missionary insistence on vocational training as part of the school programme was, however, not exclusively ideological. There were very pragmatic concerns of economic viability and self-sufficiency involved as well. The missionaries in Africa were, with a few exceptions, terribly under-financed. Without the characteristic material self-denial of their field workers, neither Protestant nor Catholic mission societies could have expanded their work on such a grand scale. Since the typical missionary enterprise in Africa was backed by a parsimonious home board answerable to congregations interested in winning souls at a nominal cost, the missionaries in the field initiated money-saving practices out of necessity. The most obvious of these included the production of foodstuffs for the mission. Also quite common was the introduction of training in the various artisan skills, such as carpentry, masonry, blacksmithing, bricklaying and others (Berman 1975). The colonial governments for their part also lauded technical and vocational education for Africans. As early 1847, the Memorandum on Education by the Privy Council in London, for example, placed emphasis on manual training as a major component of African education. This was strongly reflected in key inter-territorial education reports from the Phelps-Stokes Commission of 1923, to the Educational Policy and Practice in British Tropical Africa of 1952. Technical and vocational education was also seen by the Colonial Office in London as being suitable for Africans for political reasons after the alleged British empire’s bad experience with efforts to introduce a liberal academic curriculum that was said to have

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contributed to Indian agitation for independence. Consequently, technical and vocational education became the main feature of colonial education policy and practice. In reference to this policy, senior education officers noted that it was essential to realize that from the village school upwards, technical and industrial manual training was not professional, but educational. It was intended to train hand and eye and to develop the brain through action (Sifuna and Karugu 1988). Following the inauguration of this policy, for a long period during the colonial era in Africa, especially in the Anglophone countries, all main missionary and government primary schools were vocational. Students were indentured as they entered formal schools; and most of their school day was organized around productive labour in a particular vocation to which they had been legally bound. Most of them were indentured to follow the basic trades of masonry and carpentry. As government grants-in-aid, particularly in the early years were primarily allocated for artisan apprenticeship in a country such as Kenya, no school could attract substantial grants unless it was strictly following a vocational and technical curriculum (Anderson 1970). Apart from the technical and vocational component of the formal primary schools, there were various courses that were provided within the field of technical education that were to train young adults at one of the three levels, as a craftsman, a technician and technologist. The courses for these trainees were offered in different institutions. The trade school or trade centre offered courses in two or three subjects like bricklaying, carpentry and joinery, machine-fitting or motor vehicle mechanics, all lasting three years, and arrangements were usually made for the trainees who completed the course to obtain employment in industries, where they received in-service training for two or more years. This period of supervised training qualified the young craftsmen for a full apprenticeship status after five years of training, three in the trade centre and two in industry. The expansion of the craft training in most countries was, however, consistently hindered by the difficulty of finding employment for students where they could complete their apprenticeships after leaving the centres. Trade trainees in most countries, on completion of their courses, took the Grade III Trade Test conducted by the Trade Testing Section of the Department of Labour (Burns 1965). A significant beginning was also made in the development of vocational training for women. In some countries, three-year courses were offered in housecraft, needlework, dressmaking and machine embroidery and shorter secretarial work; courses that reflected a gender bias. In addition to the trade centres administered by governments, some industries also established vocational schools that substantially increased the total amount of the technical training available. There was also a cadre of technical workers who worked under the supervision of professionals. These were engineers and technologists who worked in designing product plants and supervised the establishment and operation of the plants. Training at this level was provided in technical institutes or also called polytechnics in some countries, which offered advanced courses in subjects such as mechanical, electrical and civil engineering and building. The courses were usually planned to lead to a qualification such as the Ordinary and Higher National Certificates of the City and Guilds Institute of London. Candidates for training as technicians had usually completed a secondary school course and held a School Certificate or General Certificate of Education (Burns 1965). A characteristic of the courses offered in a number of technical institutes was that they were either full-time or followed on a part-time basis, so as to allow the candidates to

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continue their industrial training concurrently with their theoretical work. Part-time courses were organized such that the student spent one or more full days in the institute each week on a sandwich basis. Some institutes offered commercial training alongside technical training. They offered training of secretaries, bookkeeping, clerical and junior administrators. While many of the technical, vocational and commercial courses were generally comprehensive, there were other forms of vocational training of particular importance that fell outside the mainstream of technical education and training. Among the most important ones were the training in agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry, which were regularly offered by government ministries and departments responsible for these services at centres organized by them. However, most of the services and training were directed at the officers and employees in these ministries and departments and not at farmers. Hence, some of the departments, especially in agriculture and animal husbandry, developed extension services that gave help and advice to farmers in their own communities. These usually worked in collaboration with programs of mass education or community development where they were active. Despite the colonial education authorities to encourage technical and vocational education, it remained very unpopular with the African populations in most countries. They were generally suspicious of its ultimate goal because it was perceived as a way of preventing a meaningful political dialogue and socio-economic competition between Africans and Europeans in the labour market. African suspicion was justified because what was considered as technical and vocational education was quite often confined to village industries, masonry and carpentry. Advanced industries were considered unsuitable for Africans. In European settler-dominated economies like Kenya and Zimbabwe, Africans were excluded from growing cash crops grown by white farmers. What was thought to be science was confined to rural science, which largely focused on village life. Consequently, colonial education is littered with many examples of opposition and resistance to technical and vocational education. In Tanzania, for example, a Voters’ Association in 1923 urged Africans to become as clever as the white men by embarking on academic education. Technical and vocational education was seen as having been designed to hamper their political advancement (Sifuna and Karugu 1988).

ACHIEVEMENT OF INDEPENDENCE AND RESURGENCE OF INTEREST IN TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING Developments in the primary education subsector were dictated by deliberate policies to expand enrollment, a key objective that recurred in the countries’ development plans. In all plans, the emphasis was on quantitative expansion, especially doubling enrollment within the first ten years. Among the stated objectives for primary education was to enable children to master skills that, in conjunction with the acquired scope of knowledge, would be applied in the youths' everyday life to produce goods and services, to solve environmental problems, or to engage in gainful employment in productive ventures elsewhere. As result of the rapid expansion in primary education, school-leaver unemployment was felt soon after the achievement of independence in most countries of the region. For example, in Tanzania, almost immediately after the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)

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Council of Ministers took office in 1960, politicians began to criticize the government for not increasing job opportunities of school leavers by expanding secondary enrollment and vocational training programs. The problem attained a crisis level in 1966, when results of the General Entrance Examination were announced. Almost three times as many pupils as before failed to obtain places in secondary schools (Morrison 1976). In Kenya, the Kenya Education Commission of 1964 had noted that there were roughly 67,000 out of 110,600 pupils who completed primary schooling, for whom there was no prospect for further education or paid employment. In 1966, the total number of leavers was over 150,000, indicating that the problem was growing enormously. The need to find meaningful employment was taking on an increasing urgency (Republic of Kenya 1964). Response to the primary school leaver problem varied from country to country, but generally youth training programmes were launched On the international scene, the growing youth unemployment, especially of primary school leavers, provided a favourable context for a worldwide interest in non-formal education, then defined as “any organized systematic educational activity outside the framework of the formal school system to provide selective types of learning to particular subgroups in the population, adults as well as children” (Ahmed 1983). The interest was particularly sparked off by the publication of The World Educational Crisis: A Systems Analysis sponsored by the World Bank. The crisis was the crisis of the formal education system. Both UNESCO and the World Bank started pushing for Non-formal Education (NFE) as a solution to the problem of school-leaver unemployment. The World Bank, in particular, provided funds for NFE projects in Ethiopia and Malawi without taking the trouble to convince education planners in the two countries as to the necessity of such education. Hence, there was little local support for the programs, leading to their collapse. Much of the Bank’s educational funding in the 70s and 80s also went to diversified secondary schools, which will be discussed shortly. Interest in non-formal education arose originally from a growing awareness of the complexities of the connection between education and development and as it became evident that linear expansion of formal education was not the way to meet the demands of both quantitative expansion and qualitative change in education. The proponents of non-formal education, by reviewing and analyzing past experiences and by looking at the possibilities, presented an optimistic view. They saw in non-formal education, the potential for efficient use of scarce resources, expansion of educational services, promotion of equity in educational opportunities and the enhancement of the relevance of education to the demands of socioeconomic development (Bhola 1983). The case for non-formal education, therefore, seemed compelling. It was seen by some educational and development elites as the only mechanism for the expeditious and timely delivery of educational inputs to those who needed them, when they needed them and where they lived and worked. Non-formal education was seen as an appropriate educationresponsive, immediately usable and, in terms of economic returns, highly attractive. Many non-formal education programs were launched in the region, especially by NonGovernmental Organizations. The most prominent ones were, however, in Kenya and Botswana with the National Youth Service (NYS), the Village Polytechnics and the Brigades. The National Youth Service in Kenya was started as a scheme to mobilize the unemployed out-of-school youth. The service was established in 1964, for the youth between 16 to 30 years. The objective of the National Youth Service (NYS) was to place such people

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in an environment that would inculcate good citizenship and provide an opportunity for education and training that would make them productive, skilled workers or farmers. Through such a program, they were expected to contribute directly to the economy of the country by helping to conserve, rehabilitate the country's natural resources while in the service and to enhance their opportunities for continued productive employment, primarily in the rural economy, after they left the service. The original motivation of the program was to keep unemployed young people off the streets. Consequently, the recruits were mainly primary school leavers. The recruits followed full-time residential programs lasting one to two years, usually combining occupational training with recreational and cultural activities and general character training. They worked on road constructions, cleared bush, constructed dams, houses, and operated as security units. Many of the servicemen were placed in paid employment. It should be noted that although NYS courses provided for some agricultural training, their main emphasis was on urban skills. The capital and recurrent costs of the scheme per trainee were extremely high, more than three times, the general cost of a secondary school graduate. This was largely because they offered boarding facilities, uniforms and others. Much of the funding for the scheme was through external aid. Although on the whole, the scheme was successful, its impact on occupational training and youth unemployment was marginal since it recruited a very small proportion of the school leavers. The village polytechnics, now known as youth polytechnics, started in a slightly different fashion from the NYS, but also responding to the critical problem of primary school leaver unemployment. The village polytechnics, unlike the NYS with its boarding and accommodations, country-wide recruitment and formal provision of resources geared to employment, the architects of the village polytechnics were anxious to avoid formalization. They wanted small, flexible and localized institutions aimed at community needs. The polytechnics were to provide skills in response to local needs and combat students' temptations to seek wage employment in the urban areas. These institutions avoided certification and were of low cost. Nevertheless, studies that were later carried out on the village polytechnics expressed alarm at the growing formalization tendencies of these institutions (Court 1974). The Botswana Brigades provide an interesting example of youth preparation for employment. Since the movement has been widely documented, it should suffice to make brief comments on some of its aspects. The Brigades were conceived and initiated as private projects aimed at assisting youth who had been forced out of the education system at the primary school level or failed to get admission into secondary schools. They were started in 1965, by Patrick Van Rensburg to offer such youth with some continued general education as well as practical skills in a number of different trades relevant to the development needs of the country. In this way, an alternative to the Western-type elitist and academic school would be created and would be a model for further educational innovation, producing graduates with an awareness of the socio-economic context of labour and a commitment to national and community development (Van Rensburg 1967; Hoppers 1984; Parsons 1989). In terms of employment, on completion of training in the Brigades, despite the philosophy of training and production as the basis for an alternative approach to development, no clear aims were formulated as to the desired nature of employment. Thus, while the future of the small number of Brigade trainees, especially at the initial stages was secure, the question remained as to what Brigades could do in terms of training and employment creation

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for the rest of the youth. It became apparent that in the face of national economic developments and the related prospects for graduates, the objective of self-employment was quite difficult to achieve. Although in the popular Brigades, especially building, the nature of ultimate employment was left open, very few graduates ever chose to start a business on their own after completion of their training. In a few cases where attempts were made at selfemployment, they were not successful. The construction of small houses in the villages where customers supplied materials, for example, Brigades graduates were faced with the problems of lack of working capital and business experience, which prevented their business from growing and competing with larger-scale contractors. Where Brigades trainees turned into successful contractors, they only did so after working with construction companies for a number of years, thereby acquiring both additional skill and some capital (Parsons 1989). There were many similar programs to the NYS, VPs and the Brigades within the countries in the region. What was obviously clear from such programs is that in virtually all countries, youth employment programs affected only a relatively small proportion of the eligible out of-school youth population. The youth polytechnics, which later grew to over 200 centres around the country, making it an extensive national program, only catered for 7 percent of the total number of primary school leavers. Despite the enthusiasm on the part of the proponents of NFE, on the whole, non-formal education programs were not designed and implemented on any large scale, nor became part of the policy agendas of many African countries. Decisions from policymakers and planners in regard to the promotion of non-formal education were quite cautious. Education planners held in thrall by formal education remained unconvinced of the usefulness of non-formal education programs. Policies and plans have been half-hearted; consequently, non-formal education programs have been starved of funds and implemented with an obvious lack of conviction (Bhola 1983). There have been other issues as well. In many cases, the youth themselves were not impressed with the available opportunities to self-employment. They entered the training centres with the hope of improving their chances for access to jobs in the modern sector. Such expectations, supported by parents and the community at large, tend to encourage programs to focus almost exclusively on wage-employment and thus strengthen the practices towards formalisation. Many of the initiatives are introduced without simultaneous reforms in other sectors of human life. The basic fallacy seems to have been the notion that “training by itself creates jobs.” Particularly in the crafts training, where much of the training was for wageemployment, it was hardly realised that the value of the training lay not in the acceptability of the graduates to employers, but also in the absorptive capacity of the economy. Where programs were seen to work in terms of enabling youth to gain employment, there was a likelihood for an increased social demand for more of the same. In a case of stagnating economies, as most African economies appeared to be, saturation was soon reached, leading to a serious devaluation of the training in the labour market, similar to what happened to formal educational credentials. In this regard, in any economy, there was an optimum number that could be trained to effectively use available opportunities. Equally important was that many of non-formal youth programs were not planned as an integrated part of a more comprehensive program for community development. They were not linked to wider societal aims such as improvement in the distribution of employment and income, reduction of

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poverty, establishment of essential social services, and the promotion of cultural values and identity. Developments in secondary education seemed to centre on human resource development. The major objective of all the countries in the region was to expand their secondary education systems, to create and expand a cadre of educated personnel to occupy the medium-level and subsequently high-level jobs, in the public and private sectors. The urgency of developing human resources was justified by the existing human capacity in the various countries. The low numbers of middle- and high-level personnel explained the rapid expansion of secondary education in the region. There was, therefore, an increased enrollment in secondary education, which like that of primary education precipitated the school-leaver unemployment problem. An important area of intervention to enhance employment opportunities following growing numbers of unemployed youth was the diversification of secondary schools. In many African countries in the 1970s, secondary education expanded more rapidly than wage employment and access to postsecondary education, leading to high rates of unemployment among the educated youth, whose aspirations it was believed made them reluctant to accept blue-collar employment. This led policymakers in Africa and other less industrialized countries to question the relevance of the curriculum of the academic secondary school for those graduates who did not enter the university. Because university and secondary school graduates were among the unemployed, many planners believed that an academic education alone was an insufficient preparation for employment. In addition, many people believed that academic education led to a disdain for manual labour, thereby exacerbating the difficulties of absorbing school leavers into the workforce. Academic secondary schools would thus be diversified in an attempt to equip students with practical skills-knowledge of how to make or do things and create positive attitudes towards blue-collar work. It is, therefore, clear that to a great extent, donor agencies set agenda for educational initiatives to combat unemployment among primary and secondary school leavers in Africa for the 70s and 80s. Their concern was, however, not to improve the economies of the aidrecipient countries, but to export their technologies (Sawamura 2004). The World Bank, for example, constructed workshops and provided equipment for diversified secondary schools in many African countries. The Swedish Development Authority (SIDA) responded to Kenya's ambitious program to expand technical secondary schools with a program that involved building new workshops, equipment laboratories in all the 13 technical secondary schools in addition to building two new ones on green sites. It also supported the introduction of industrial education in 36 public academic secondary schools. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) responded to the expansion of technical education in Kenya with a plan that included a building complex, scholarship scheme for Kenyanisation and a technical package. It also supported the National Resources College in Malawi (1979-84), Mpeka Secondary Technical and Vocational Education (1983-84), and Swazilnd College of Technology (1988-93) in Swaziland; polytechnic institutions in Zimbabwe (1984-94). Apart from diversified secondary schools, in practically all the countries of the region, the early 1970s witnessed a rapid expansion of vocational and technical training institutions as a response to the unemployment problem. Providing vocational and technical training was often posited as a cure for the large scale unemployment of young people, which was a widespread and persistent social and economic problem. The logic assumed that young people could not find employment because they did not possess the specialized skills required either by employers or for successful self-employment (Sawamura 2002). Occupational

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training, it was reasoned, would therefore, enable some significant proportion to obtain employment. The phenomena of expanding vocational and technical training was most spectacular in Kenya, where in the early 1970s, the country was locked up in a fundraising campaign to launch Harambee Institutes of Technology. The launching of the institutes seemed to be a direct response to the growing problem of unemployment among secondary school leavers. There was great concern over the failure of secondary education to equip those leaving school with the necessary skills required in the labour market, especially in the area of technology. Political leaders, therefore, went ahead to organize fundraising meetings to solicit money from the community to start institutes of technology that would offer similar courses to government technical institutions. As these developments were taking place to diversify the academic secondary curriculum and expand technical education, by the mid 1960s, there were already warning bells about the usefulness of diversified secondary education in combating unemployment. Some studies on agricultural high schools in West Africa had demonstrated the value of academic secondary education in helping students to find wage employment in economies dominated by public employment, as well as the failure of agricultural schools to divert students from aspiring to employment in the modern sector. These phenomena came to be known collectively as the `Vocational School Fallacy (Foster 1965). The experience of diversified schools in Tanzania and Columbia also seemed to indicate that diversified education did not provide students with any significant advantage. Students from diversified schools were no more likely than students from academic or vocational schools to find employment upon completion of school or obtain higher paying positions. Students from diversified schools were as likely to go to university as to go to work as were graduates from academic schools and often studied subjects there that had no relation to the diversified courses taken in the secondary schools. It was also revealed that because of the need for special equipment and specific training for teachers, diversification was the most expensive form of secondary school in both countries. It also proved to be a much more difficult programme to implement. Evaluation in other countries corroborated the findings in Tanzania and Columbia. Evaluations in Kenya showed very little labour market advantage for students who took industrial courses in academic secondary schools. Nor did these students in Kenya enter self-employment (Pscharopoulos and Loxley 1988; Lauglo and Narman 1987). Following the disappointing results of the diversified secondary schools, they were transformed into technical institutions. In Kenya, for instance, all such schools were renamed technical training institutes (TTIs) and now play similar to the Harambee Institutes of Technology.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES OF TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING From what has been discussed above, arguments for technical and vocational education and training rest on the assumption that it is more specific to job entry than general education. It is also perceived to be a cure to youth unemployment. It produces specific human capital that embodies the advantage of imbibing specific job-relevant skills that can make the worker more

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readily suitable for a given job and would thus make the worker more productive. By providing the youth with pre-employment vocational education and training, African governments would not only equip them with skills that would be necessary later in the labour market, but also take the youth off the streets. It also instils technological knowledge similar to what happened Western Europe during the industrial revolution, followed later by the USA, Japan and lately by South Korea. These examples have clearly demonstrated that economic progress heavily depends on technological development (Psacharopoulos 1997; Tilak 2002; Sawmura 2002). Technical and vocational education and training is not only advantageous in being flexible, but is also seen to offer some hope to academically less able students who are not able to advance through the school system. As everyone can be trained for top level jobs, vocational education and training provides the much-needed middle-level technicians. In its role in equipping the youth with skills needed in the labour market, vocational education and training is likely to reduce unemployment leading to increased incomes and reduced poverty. Vocational education and training is also said to improve attitudes towards skilled, manual work and thus divert some youths from seeking white-collar jobs that are increasingly in short supply. Above all, economic globalization has not only raised the premium on skills, but has also reinvigorated a need for a fresh look at the nature of vocational education and training (Middleton et al. 1993). Such arguments in favour of technical and vocational education and training have meant that it is primarily regarded as an occupational education that is terminal in nature. Furthermore, there are usually widespread and legitimate concerns that the secondary school curricula often lack relevance and utility and are embedded in the elite traditions of academic schooling unsuited to mass systems. Criticism often focuses on outdated and overloaded curricula, the dominance of examinations and certification in shaping learning and teaching towards narrowly defined outcomes, the prevalence of didactic teacher-centred pedagogy and the problematic nature of supply and demand for more explicitly technical and vocational education. This highlights the need for curriculum reform that can encourage creative innovations in learning and teaching, new methods of assessment capable of capturing valued learning outcomes and selection of content and thinking skills that are more rather than less relevant to entrants to the labour market, and to much broader range of learners (Lewin 2005). In this regard, among the aims and objectives of technical and vocational education and training the following are included, among others: • • • •

To develop practical skills and attitudes that will lead to income-generating activities in urban or rural areas through salaried or self-employment; To provide increased training opportunities for school leavers that will enable them to be self-supporting; To provide technical knowledge and vocational skills necessary for growth of agriculture and commerce; and To produce people who can apply scientific knowledge to the solution of environmental problems.

On this basis, and faced with serious school leaver unemployment problem, many African governments strongly embraced technical and vocational education and training.

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Massive support from international assistance agencies was also directed towards establishing and expanding public vocational education and training systems and to legitimize preemployment training as an important component of public education. The World Bank, for example, allocated more than half of its assistance investment in educational systems of developing countries to support vocational education and training. Even as the World Bank’s support for education broadened in the mid-1970s to include basic general education, investment in vocational education and training continued to hold a central place in the expanded lending program (Middleton et al. 1993). Despite continued appeal and the momentum gained in support for technical and vocational education and training nationally and internationally, doubts raised by Foster (1965) about its efficacy have continued to linger on. Growing evidence from field research has not matched the benefits that are attached to it. Most youths seem not to have strong aspirations for TVET. Even those who have trained through it are not only paid less, but often stay unemployed much longer than their counterparts who have gone through general education (Middleton et al. 1993). Yet such strong research evidence has not deterred African countries from continuing vocational education and training programs in public education systems. Some few countries may have momentarily slowed down their emphasis to develop elaborate systems of vocational education and training following these debates, but evidence in subsequent years shows that the tempo for it seems to have been maintained (Oketch 2007). Among the recent trend in technical and vocational education and training was in Ghana. The 1986 reforms set out to increase access to education at all levels, to improve the quality of education and to diversify the curriculum by introducing vocational subjects. The intention behind the reforms was to remodel an education system that was widely perceived as elitist and that undervalued vocational, technical and agricultural education. The reformed junior secondary school curriculum was intended to prepare students either to enter training for employment or go on to further schooling at senior secondary school level. The reform was designed to offer a pre-vocational as well as an academic education, thus enabling students to develop both cognitive and manual skills. Students were expected to take 13 subjects altogether; 12 core subjects, including a Ghanaian language and two pre-vocational subjects, and one non-vocational elective (Osei 2004). The Ministry of Education also published a Blue Print for Implementation, which was intended to augment the National Policy on Education of 1985, and included specific proposals for implementing the new curriculum. Two approaches were suggested for applying the pre-vocational curriculum, namely, a subject-based approach and an integrated approach. According to the subject-based approach, students were to take two pre-vocational subjects for two years and in the third year, they specialized in only one subject. According to the integrated approach, students were to be introduced to a wide range of subjects, which they studied for three years. The emphasis of the latter approach was on developing general aptitudes. The Blue Print for Implementation also recommended that pre-vocational subjects should be part of the general education for every student at the junior secondary school level. These subjects were to be incorporated into an integrated course, which included elements of woodwork, plastics, metalwork, ceramics, elementary building technology, elementary mechanical and electrical technology, technical drawing and basic agriculture (Osei 2004). The crux of the new reform was that whereas pupils at the primary education level had for long been given opportunities to develop academic as well as practical skills, it was then

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being recognized that a greater range of talents and aptitudes must be developed at the secondary school level. While some students would profit from purely academic training, others would benefit from more vocational and technical training. It was perceived that the nation needed both types of talents in appropriate proportions. At the research level, it was, however, being reasoned that in Ghana and elsewhere, academic education was perceived to hold the key to success and any other form of education was regarded as having a lower status. Consequently, vocational education stood a very poor chance against academic education. Even where access to academic education was very limited, students tended to resort to vocational courses only as a means of gaining a place in grammar schools. This attitude reflected the real aspirations of school leavers and their parents in relation to the curricular offerings of the schools. Whereas the goals of vocational education generally emphasized orientation to jobs in the rural areas, school leavers and their parents aimed at access to the modern sector that offered higher incomes (Osei 2004).

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FORMS OF TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING In most Sub-Saharan African countries, as in many parts of the world, education systems lead to two pathways. There is general education, which enables students to go through an academic type of schooling to higher education, and a vocational type of education for those who opt to focus on immediate employment or those who due to limited access to educational opportunities drop out of general academic education. However, some countries have provisions that enable those in a vocational pathway to access higher education, although in many educational systems, the vocational pathway normally leads to a dead end (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). While general education tends to be quite homogenous, there is considerable diversity in pattern and emphasis with regard to vocational and technical education and training. In many of the countries, the mode, content and functioning of TVET systems have been heavily influenced and continue to retain patterns established by the former colonial powers. This accounts for significant differences in modes of delivery, general organization and levels of participation on the continent. Despite the differences in the various systems, there appear to be two major forms of provision of technical and vocational education and training. The first involves the provision at lower and upper secondary level, post-secondary and not in tertiary institutions. The second involves training outside the formal education system. These often take the form of traditional training offered in technical and vocational institutions or the informal apprenticeships. Such forms of training normally prepare trainees for trades that include carpentry, masonry, auto-mechanics, welding, foundry, photography, tailoring, dressmaking, masonry and others. Some of the informal types of training are provided on the basis of family relations, and while operators tend to exhibit a high degree of creativity, they lack the necessary technical knowledge related to their skills and the capital to expand their enterprises (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). The emphasis placed on technical and vocational education and training at the different levels of the formal education systems varies from one country to another and the importance attached to the training. In some countries, TVET forms a separate system that is parallel to

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the general academic education system with its own institutions, teachers, course programmes and curriculum. In such arrangements, the key issue is usually on the proportion of the academic content, which should be offered alongside the particular vocational courses. In other cases TVET is offered alongside general academic education in integrated schools, forming a dual track school system. In a good number of countries, TVET begins at lower secondary education, although there are also many countries in which technical and vocational education forms part of the primary education curriculum. There are also TVET institutions, which are non-secondary schools, but they are considered post-primary institutions. Such post-primary vocational schools are mostly in countries where primary education has expanded very rapidly over the years and much faster than its graduates could be absorbed into the existing secondary schools. The competition for the few available places in secondary schools leaves those unable to gain entry with either the choice of repeating primary schools and trying to obtain a higher examination score that can enable one to get a place in a secondary school in countries where such practices are allowed; or to join the TIVET programmes offered in the various institutions that are non-secondary in status and vocational in orientation. Furthermore, there are children from poor families who cannot afford the burden of secondary education fees. These are usually the case in countries where secondary education is not free, as is still the case in many of the Sub-Saharan African countries. There is also the attraction to join the labour market, especially in the informal sector, and chances of earning an immediate income, which constitute an important factor for decisions to enter TIVET programmes (Oketch 2007). In some countries, courses offered at both lower and senior secondary school levels are mainly aimed at exposing participants to a range of TVET options to stimulate their interest in skills and help make a career decision leading to higher levels of education or direct entry into the labour market. Those who complete lower secondary enter TVET institutes or senior secondary schools, where they take a three-year program. Upon completion of senior secondary schools, students proceed to university for degree courses or polytechnics for higher national diploma programs. In such systems, graduates from polytechnics have some option to undertake university degree courses (Oketch 2007). In terms of participation, the size of the group of school leavers who normally get some post-basic training, whether in public or private sector formal or informal training institutions, is difficult to determine. However, a World Bank study is cited to imply that this is a rather small segment of the entire cohort, perhaps as small as 5 to 10 percent, and it is argued that the bulk of the small percentage is in private or non-government provision (King 2005). Therefore, TVET occupies a small and marginal position in the school systems of most African countries. While in a number of countries some specialized ministries have been created with the objective of strengthening and or streamlining the development of TVET in the entire education systems, for a greater part, they do not receive the same weight that general academic education is accorded. At the secondary level, where much of TVET programs are specifically expected to develop, only a small percentage of enrolled students are classified as pursuing the TVET pathway. However, there are problems of data collection at the national levels in most countries and lack of consistency across countries, which make a comparative analysis difficult. There are generally data problems resulting both from data collection and

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classification, which make it difficult to analyse the precise nature of TVET provision in the different countries of the region (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). There is also a further problem that arises from the fact that much of the private provision and even some of the public TVET provision are not captured in the national data collection, especially following the privatization of many of the programs to generate more funds after increased government cutbacks on funding of public institutions. On the overall, however, there appears to be a decline in the share of TVET enrollments as a percentage of general secondary education students. This is because of uncertainties in the effectiveness of TVET in matching requirements of the labour market. In addition, there is an expanded secondary education offering general academic education. In spite of the problems of data collection, the study by Atchoarena and Delluc (2001) analysis of country patterns grouped them into three categories. First, there are countries in which the provision of TVET in terms of secondary school enrollments is under 2 percent. Among these countries include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia, Niger and South Africa. Most surprisingly a number of the countries are Anglophone, where TIVET programs seem to have a higher premium than in the Francophone. In these countries, TVET did not receive sustained focus from government, and even when it appeared to have done so, the purpose was not of developing a system of education, but rather to respond to the increasing demand for non-existent white collar jobs or keeping the youth content with life in the rural traditional agricultural economy. In some of the countries, with international funds clearly prioritized towards free primary education, it was obvious that governments felt hard pressed to prioritise basic education with a general academic track. In a number of countries that have shown some promising results towards meeting the goals of universal primary education, there is a lot of discussion on how to expand secondary education to cope with increased primary school enrollments. Not much is said about TVET, and where it is mentioned, it is not actually on the agenda of international donor agencies or national governments to finance. This is because there seems to be a diminishing demand for TVET skills in the generally weak economies and the rise and growth in informal sector apprenticeship within existing enterprises that attract primary school leavers to join straightaway instead of wasting more time in specialized TVET institutions. Furthermore, the perception that TVET will help in solving labour market problems has become untenable as countries such as Kenya, which vigorously pursued this policy, have realized that it does not create jobs and rural poverty has increased as urban migration unemployment has also continued to rise. There is also the issue of high cost in TVET in terms of the skills imparted and the returns on investment, which are estimated to be quite low, particularly in some African countries in which production is still mainly related to low technology and semi-processed products. Hence, more and more families tend to see higher returns not for those who participate in the marginalized or survival driven informal sector, but in general academic skills and knowledge that are useful both nationally and internationally (Oketch 2007). Second, there are those countries in which the proportion of TVET enrollments in general secondary education has been around 5 to 9 percent over the past several years. This category includes such countries as Botswana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Morocco, Mozambique, Tunisia, Uganda and Cote I’Voire. A common element among these countries is said to be modernization of their TVET programs to include a reasonable balance of general as well as

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the vocational content. This makes it easy for those who opt to join TVET for one reason or another to progress to higher levels of education or to return to general programs, without much difficulty (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). The problem, however, is how to arrive at the right balance, whereby the TVET program does not include a high dosage of general education content and de-linked from the informal and artisan/technician labour market or a high dosage of technical and vocational content, making it difficult or impossible to move either laterally within TVET because of a high specialization or vertically to higher levels of general academic education (Oketch 2000). Third, there are countries in which TVET enrollments in secondary education are over 10 percent. In this category fall such countries as Cameroon, Mali, Gabon, Congo and Egypt. In Mali, for example, the share of TVET has for a long time stood at around 10 to 11 percent, reflecting the importance that the government attaches to this type of education and considers it quite relevant to the industrial development of the country. In Egypt, the share of TVET has been around 29 percent during the past several years. This was attributed to the dual track nature of the Egyptian secondary education, whereby there is one track for general academic education and another for vocational education to which admission is controlled by the government. In Cameroon, TVET constituted a substantial part of the secondary education sector, with around 26.8 percent of the enrollment, although it has fluctuated quite a lot falling to 16.6 percent in 1994. This has been equally the case with Gabon and Congo where the share of TVET has stood at 19.6 and 11.7 percent respectively (Atchoarena and Dullec 2001). In terms of provision, for many years, the state has dominated the TVET field in many countries. However, over many years since independence, private provision has been steadily growing. This has happened as state provision has either found it increasingly difficult to expand and cope with increased demand for education or state capacity to monopolise the provision of education in the light of seriously weakening economies as well as growing demands in other sectors has witnessed sharp declines. This has also affected the provision of TVET. Research in different patterns of provision seems to show that private provision of TVET is growing rapidly and even appears to dominate in some of the countries. Such private provision is heterogeneous, with key aspects such as legal status, ownership, objectives and financing being difficult to establish. Most of the private providers offer courses with a high concentration in commercial trades, although there are also a few cases that offer programs in technical areas. Furthermore, private providers have the benefit to tailor their courses to the demands of the labour market and seem to be flexible in changing them in response to the demand. A majority of the private TVET institutions tend to enrol students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and, given their private nature, tuition fees are the main source of operational resources for these institutions. There is also the issue that a sizeable number of private institutions cannot be properly traced in government registration records, implying that they operate illegally. In addition, just like public TVET institutions, there is little or no evidence to indicate a close relationship between enterprises and private institutions. In other words, the degree to which they respond to the actual needs of the enterprises is not all that clear. However, private providers tend to provide programs, which on the average appear better prepared compared to state institutions to respond to market demands, although there

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are also great variations in terms of quality within the private provision (Atchoarena and Esquieu 2002).

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ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION On the whole, despite the increasing role of private provision, there is serious and declining participation in the traditional TVET secondary education programs in most African countries. This can be attributed to growing disenchantment with the usefulness of this type of education as well as opportunities for higher education. On the aggregate, there is a general lack of progression to higher education and even chances for employment after completion; and the lack of job enhancement by skills offered by TVET institutions for those who enrol. TVET, which assumes to offer better employment opportunities as a result of its special skills, ends up leading to a dead end or quandary. This tends to make it equally undesirable to most of the youth and their families. However, there is still strong competition between general academic education and TVET to the extent that parents and the youth are prepared to go an extra mile through various means to get progression to the former. There is however, the general perception that those who enrol in the latter are supposed to be failures in securing a place in the general academic education programs. Moreover, those who get enrolled in TVET still consider themselves lucky to have passed the difficult hurdle of admission to any type of secondary schooling. In many countries, the vast majority do not have access to secondary education, and the most available option, apart from joining the low level employment with primary completion or staying unemployed, opt to join the traditional apprenticeship (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). The situation is even more critical for women entrants in TVET, who, for a number of reasons, face more difficulties in accessing secondary education than men. In this regard, gender inequalities that have persisted in the general education systems are more prevalent in the TVET programs. In cases where the situations seem to have improved in terms of female participation, they are usually relegated in related traditional gender-biased programs such as secretarial studies, home science, which includes such courses as textiles and the like. Countries where women account for less than 15 percent of TVET enrollments include Niger, Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea, Malawi, and Namibia. As already discussed, for this group of countries, the share of TVET enrollments in overall secondary enrollment is less than 2 percent, and the proportion of girls is low not only in technical and vocational education, but in the entire education system. In some other countries such as Benin, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Togo, Botswana, Chad, and Guinea, the proportion of girls in TVET accounted for about 30 to 35 percent in 1995/6. In many countries, the proportion of girls enrolled in TVET has hardly reached percentages close to 50 percent (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). Focusing on Kenya as an example, although the number of female students enrolled in technical institutions has increased, the number enrolled in engineering courses is low. The majority of the female students enrol in institutional management courses and in business studies. There are serious gender disparities in enrollment both at the Kenya Polytechnic and Mombasa Polytechnic. For example, only 1.4 percent of the total students enrolled in mechanical engineering in 1998 were females, while institutional management registered 84.4

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percent females. Business studies attracted 58 percent of women who enrolled in the institutions. During the same year, a total of 2,797 students were enrolled in Mombasa Polytechnic, 21.2 percent of whom were female students. The bulk of female students (52.4 percent) were enrolled in business studies, compared to less than 5 percent who were taking engineering courses (MoEST 2003). Table 9.1 shows the percentage of student enrollment by gender in technical institutions in Kenya. Reasons for their low enrollment are many and vary from one country to another. Although there are not many researches in this area, possible reasons for low women participation however, include; the traditional streaming of girls out of the vocational training, which includes employment, industrial and urban oriented programs; the traditional male dominance in the field; the gender stereotypes of desired male and female occupations; the macho environment of vocational trades; and parents' attitudes towards girls' vocational training. Other possible explanations may be economic (the perceived low return from vocational training as opposed to other opportunities), educational (lack of girls’ exposure to technical/craft skills), ignorance of vocational opportunities, particularly in the rural areas, the opportunity cost of girls' labour or early marriage (Mbughuni 1991). Among the key reasons for women’s low enrollment in TVET is the fact that few of them perform well in sciences and technical subjects at the secondary school level. As already discussed, women are not only under-represented in the science subjects at the secondary school level, but they also perform poorly in them in the national examinations. Another factor in the selection process, which perhaps affects girls’ enrollment, is the age requirement. Many centres select candidates up to the age of 27, but it is most likely that girls enter at pre-marriage age, directly or shortly after school. Their youth makes them particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment as well as to the “sugar daddies” situation, thus affecting their performance and even leading to dropout.

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Table 9.1. Percentage of student enrollment by gender in technical institutions, 19992003 in Kenya Institution Kenya Polytechnic Mombasa Polytechnic Kisumu Polytechnic Eldoret Polytechnic Total Other TTIs TTIs Institutes of Technology Total Grand Total Total Number

Male 61.0

1999 Female 39.0

Male 70.9

2000 Female 29.1

Male 76.6

2001 Female 23.4

Male 69.8

2002 Female 30.2

Male 69.0

2003 Female 31.0

61.0

39.0

70.9

29.1

76.6

23.4

69.2

30.8

65.6

34.4

61.0

39.0

70.8

29.2

76.6

23.4

69.8

30.2

70.0

30.0

61.0

39.0

70.9

29.1

55.7

44.3

69.9

30.1

69.0

31.0

61.0

39.0

70.9

29.1

70.9

29.1

69.8

30.2

68.0

32.0

61.0 70.5

39.0 29.5

60.2 60.2

39.8 39.8

56.0 56.0

44.0 44.0

55.0 55.0

45.0 45.0

55.0 55.0

45.0 45.0

59.0 59.8

41.0 40.2

60.2 64.1

39.8 35.9

56.0 61.5

44.0 38.5

55.0 61.2

45.0 38.8

55.0 61.6

45.0 39.4

23,661

24,554

28,073

32,750

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There is a tendency for many women to resist taking up technical training due to gendertyping. They suffer from deeply rooted socio-cultural norms and ideals for male and female behaviour, with girls thinking that technical education is a “male” field; hence they have little confidence to pursue it or are afraid of getting dirty. Such gender typing is reinforced rather than broken in the earlier educational levels. Gender typing often contributes to gender streaming. Girls generally tend to concentrate in the so-called “soft” trades or fields. Girls are thus not only streamed into the traditionally feminine trades and fields, but are concentrated in trades with low technology and or low employment opportunities. In some institutes, tailoring is taught on domestic machines with no design/cutting training. Painting/sign writing is a problem trade for in-plant placement, as is printing and book binding. In the polytechnics and related institutions, women’s reasons for choosing fields such as electronics, laboratory technician and electrical engineering is that they are “soft” subjects that do not require physical strength. Another set of reasons for turning down technical careers may be the methodology and content of technical education. Some study in Tanzania points out that the rote learning methods and male favouritism of teachers are among the major factors contributing to women's rejection of these subjects. It was clear that rote teaching or the “terrorist pedagogy,” which hinges on examination performance and the control of knowledge by the teacher cannot forward the transformation process for either men or women (Mbughuni 1991). There is also the teachers’ favouritism of male students, which could stifle interest. Even in the absence of open discrimination, there is often the macho environment of technical education, which is a crucial barrier to success as it influences the dominant gender relations, whether this means interaction with teachers or male students, as well as among themselves. After admission, women face greater chances of non-completion of technical and vocational courses. Although hard data on the situation in many countries is hard to come by, a related study in Tanzania indicated a higher drop-out for girls (Lauglo 1990). Another study showed 14 percent for boys and 17 percent for girls (Mbughuni 1991). Among the possible reasons for dropouts include dissatisfaction, misplaced expectations, pregnancy, harassment and academic problems. The main reasons seem to centre on socio-cultural factors and not their academic ability. The Lauglo study also asserts that girls are more likely to drop out in courses where they are a minority. More often, however, the field or trade being taught seems to have a higher correlation to drop out rates than the percentage of girls in class (Mbughuni 1991). These studies also showed that in terms of examination performance, there was no difference between men and women. Examination performance in technical subjects was generally good for the two groups. However, obstacles for women seem to emerge at the levels of placement or employment. Some surveys have shown that women make a relatively small percentage in the technical staff and very few in managerial positions. Women technical staff are also under-represented in the staff development and training (Hughes and Mwiria 1989). At least one identified obstacle to women's advancement at the technical level is the attitude of employers. Although many employers deny discrimination against women, the facts tell a different story. Generally, only a small number of women are promoted or given staff development opportunities. This situation is part of the same pattern of women's employment, which focuses on factors such as gender typing of employment and sociocultural and economic reasons. However, as the graduates of technical colleges represent the

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cream of secondary school leavers, there is need for special attention to be given to the future of these high potential women.

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QUALITY AND RELEVANCE The influential World Bank sector policy paper on TVET, which was published in 1991, argued forcefully that public sector TVET in most developing countries is usually poorly planned, managed and resourced. This results in low quality, but high cost provision, namely, low internal efficiency, coupled with often limited skills utilization among trainees once in employment, which is low external efficiency. However, the paucity of good quality, up-to-date data on the internal and external efficiency of artisan and other pre-employment TVET in specific countries has been a major obstacle in reaching robust conclusions about the overall cost-effectiveness of TVET in Africa. In particular, very few good quality tracer surveys have been undertaken that provide accurate information on employment and other outcomes among representative samples of TVET graduates (Bennell, et al. 2006). One of the biggest challenges for the quality and relevance of TVET in the region seems to be the continuation of its low status in the perceptions of many learners, parents, employers and policymakers. The problem has its roots in the colonial system, where academic education was the route to modernity, social status and prosperity. This was more pronounced in white-settler-dominated countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, where it was a deliberate policy to limit African access to academic education during the colonial period, thereby building strong demand for it. An increased demand for academic education continued in the early independence period due to the better employment and income opportunities it provided. Although the economic rationality of such a position seemed to diminish with post-independence expansion of education, amid slow economic growth, a strong legacy for academic education versus technical and vocational education and training had been established. The low status for TVET seems to be embedded in the attitudes that can only be changed through an improvement in its quality and the placement of learners in decent and well remunerating jobs (McGrath et al. 2006). Focusing on the funding of TVET sheds some light on the dichotomy between the emphasis for skills and the limited funding that governments are willing to commit to the sector. Furthermore, the international pressure on countries to meet their EFA goals by 2015 has actually meant that more resources have shifted, both within national budgets and international aid assistance to Universal Primary Education (UPE), and, at the same time, the rhetoric over skills and the value of TVET that seems to continue. On the whole, the financing of TVET as a percentage of public education expenditure varies considerably from one country to another. It ranges from as low as 0.9 percent a decade ago in Ethiopia to 12.7 percent in Gabon (Atchoarena and Delluc 2001). Generally, TVET is expensive, since materials and equipment are usually expensive, especially in the technical subject areas as they are reliant on costly infrastructure and require low learner to instructor ratios. It was on the grounds of their low rates of return and high cost that many agencies have justified their reduction of support to TVET systems since the beginning of the 1990s. Adequate finance is crucial to the development of high-quality TVET systems and for the achievement of many elements of its transformation agenda. However, many TVET systems and sub-systems in the

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region remain highly dependent upon state funding. Such dependence is quite problematic as TVET continues to be accorded a low priority among the conflicting demands on the budgets of most countries. Since the 1980s, budgetary allocations have become quite inadequate for the needs of TVET. Actual amounts allocated to the sector have seriously declined. Instructors’ salaries tend consume most of the financial allocations, leaving a very low proportion for essential inputs. To cope with the financial requirements, many TVET institutions have been forced to introduce user-fees, which, due to rising inflation, do not cover the gap between the desirable unit cost and government grants. In addition to the fees paid to institutions, students have to pay for textbooks and other learning materials. Such resources expected from parents are higher than what an average household can afford. As a result of under-funding, TVET institutions experience inadequacies in the provision and maintenance of physical facilities, which include classrooms, lecture theatres, workshops and laboratories and training technologies. There are also inadequacies with regard to boarding and catering amenities. Furthermore, most of the facilities are old and in need of repair. In general, the training technology in most TVET institutions is obsolete as compared to what is in use in industries. Also important is the non-availability of some consumable training materials. These inadequacies exacerbate the mismatch between institutional training and the requirements of industry. Many TVET institutions are understaffed due to poor remuneration and conditions of service. In order to cope with staff shortages, some TVET institutions resort to employing part-time lecturers for most of their evening programmes, whose salaries are directly met from fees paid by the students. To a large extent, staff shortages in TVET institutions arise from their inability to attract qualified and competent personnel who readily find greener pastures elsewhere in the economies. One of the most common criticisms of the public TVET is that it has curricula that are outdated in terms of learning theory and relevance to industry. Supply-based systems, which are applied in the majority of TVET institutions, follow academic programmes whose performance criteria are determined by the educational system itself and not by the demands of the production sector or by students’ need to find a place in the job market or in society. Much of the instruction provided, including vocational and technical training, bears no relationship to the needs of employers. Programs are excessively long and inflexible. Theoretical classes bear no relation to the practice and are geared more towards getting ahead within the system than toward satisfying the needs of the job market, which is an attitude in keeping with the assessment criteria defined from the supply side itself. The rigidity of these systems and the emphasis on performance for internal progress mean that students are poorly suited to meet the changing needs of the job market (Labarca 1998). On its part, the industry or production sector it finds itself in a difficult situation to convey its requirements, primarily because, despite the existence of critical demands for skills, employers do not have instruments for formulating them or the organizational channels for communicating them. The kind of qualifications required in modern technology are quite complex and imply new methods of organizing work and are changing very fast as a result technological innovations and the importance attached to international competition. The supply and demand imbalance in basic education and in technical and vocational education and training institutions often lead to waste and, hence, to a by no means negligible loss of resources. Policies for overcoming such imbalances need to address two problems, namely, defining what has to be taught and accomplishing this at the lowest possible cost. Demandbased systems seek to adjust and correct supply. Policies that favour demand, through

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consumer subsidies or other similar instruments, seek to increase its quantity through market pressures (Labarca 1998). Another factor impacting on quality and relevance of TVET systems in the region is that they have tended to develop in an unsystematic manner. After independence, many countries built new public institutions through donor support in addition to the ones established during the colonial era. The presence of multiple donors in a country resulted in a series of loosely articulated institutions that often strongly reflected their countries of origin through funding and staffing. NGOs and religious organizations established other TVET institutions, as they became aware of gaps in the provision of technical and vocational education and training or concerned about such issues as youth unemployment and rural development. A number of government ministries also built their own institutions, which operate largely autonomously from the main system, such as agriculture, health and others. As a result, there is no country that has one system of TVET, but largely two separate systems under the control of Ministries of Education and Labour with different rules and regulations. The lack of coherent systems often reflects a gap between training and an education philosophy, which also reflects a division between theory and practice and between an education-oriented and employeroriented model, although TVET provision is often criticized for its weaknesses in both domains. The duality can be problematic when funds for certain activities are channelled in the two different Ministries of Education and Labour (MacGrath et al. 2006). As already discussed, an important expectation through the inculcation of TVET skills is that it should lead to increased salaried employment of its graduates. To some limited extent, this has occurred in many countries. However, just like increased unemployment of general academic education, a large proportion of successful TVET trainees are unable to obtain salaried employment. Among the main reason is that there is a growing mismatch between institutional training and suitable opening in the labour market. First, there has been a tendency to put a greater premium on skill formation through formal training, largely as a way of satisfying social demand and not as a response to actual opportunities in the industry. Second, largely owing to general poor achievement in secondary schools in science subjects and mathematics, demand for training in strictly technical areas such as engineering is relatively low. Candidates for TVET tend to be concentrated in courses where entry criteria do not require more than an average school achievement in languages and humanities. Such concentration has swamped the labour market, leading to serious unemployment. Furthermore, there are growing concerns among employers that formal training is theoretical rather than practical and therefore not inculcating the skills valued by industries. This situation is also partly attributable to the mismatch between the out-dated technology in training institutions and the more modern technology in industries as well as the growing distance between training institutions and industries, especially with regard to the on-the-job development of training staff. Teaching staff in TVET institutions is in danger of becoming obsolete in terms of contemporary industrial knowledge and skills because of growing isolation from industry and practitioners elsewhere.

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SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND RELEVANCE Despite the many challenges, there is no doubt that TVET is important in Africa’s development, and there is the need to transform it such that what is offered reflects the prevailing reality in the labour market. Such transformation must partly start with TVET shedding off its traditional mould and taking as its key objective the need to directly link itself with industry, including the informal sector. The failure of TVET institutions to relate to industry is that in many Sub-Saharan African countries, there is very little or nothing approaching a discourse about an obligation to train, let alone any debate about a training policy on skills development (King 2005). The lack of policy on skills development in TVET seems to emanate from international trends. For example, while the Dakar, and especially the Jomtien, agreements made skills development a much more explicit priority, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are quite restrictive. The six Dakar goals included the goal of “ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs,” while the World Declaration (Jomtien) included “skills training, apprenticeships, and formal and non-formal education programs” (WCEFA 1990 and UNESCO 2000). With regard to the MDGs, on the other hand, the only goals that could be said to implicitly relate to skills development are goals eight and sixteen, which mention “develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth.” Part of the strategy for decent and productive work promotion is certainly, skills development, but for as long as this is not made explicit, and since donors tend to follow the MDGs narrowly, there is the danger that skills development will remain on the sideline of the international education agenda (Palmer 2007). Similarly, the neglect of skills development is seen in many poverty-reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), where as far as education and training are concerned, Universal Primary Education (UPE) is prioritized (Caillods 2003). In fact, the ILO notes that “a striking feature of most poverty reduction strategies is the absence of vocational education and training” (ILO 2003). The neglect of skills development for the informal economy in the MDGs and many PRSPs seems particularly disturbing, given that this represents the largest post-school training in most of the developing countries (Palmer 2007). There is, therefore, a need in many countries to avoid formulating skills development strategies that follow a top-down approach with programs having little labour market relevance and post-training support that is weak. Skills development strategy needs to recognize education and training pathways in order to adequately improve education and training of most youths. Such skills development strategy should be closely linked to the development of industry as well as the informal sector. The underlying assumption of the skills development agenda, that skills training in employable skills solves unemployment and leads to economic growth and poverty reduction, is unlikely to be realized unless effective and innovative programs targeting a majority of the youth and lead to livelihoods that are both decent and productive in both rural and urban settings. Adequate funds are of critical importance in the development of high-quality TVET systems and the achievement of their objectives. There is need to increase funding to TVET institutions. Levies could be an important source of funding for training, and various modes need to be planned. Levies could generate large amounts of money in countries with

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relatively large formal sectors. There is also the need for fundraising through the sale of products and services. Training with production could be given greater emphasis without compromising the training component. There should also be opportunities for provision of training at full cost for employers through the delivery of short courses tailored to their needs. There is also the need for increased coordination of TVET activities through the national training authorities that have been seen in the international policy literature as a way of breaking the dual role of government ministries in the provision and regulation and as part of the broader approach to reduce the role of the state in TVET. They also have the potential to act as an umbrella agency, free from the domination of the Ministries of Education and Labour. The World Bank recommends that such authorities should be autonomous, have significant employer representation and decision-making powers as well as their own sources of funding. This has led to the establishment of the National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF) agencies, which also offer possibilities for greater coordination of all education and training provision (Johnson and Adams 2004). Such agencies will also coordinate activities of private providers, who are generally perceived to have greater efficiency and responsiveness compared to public institutions and have much greater freedom from excessive regulatory requirements. This will also bring them more into focus with regard to the quality of their programs. These agencies should give top priority to establishing sound management information systems through their planning. This will be vital for monitoring programs and institutions in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency. They would also help in keeping track of the latest developments in technology, industry and the employment sector.

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SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS In most African countries, technical and vocational education and training refer to a range of leaning experiences that are relevant to the world of work and that may occur in a variety of learning contexts, including educational institutions and the workplace. It includes learning designed to develop the skills for practicing particular occupations as well as learning designed to prepare for entry or re-entry into the world of work in general. In most cases the learning is intended to or generally leads to direct labour market entry. As an education policy and practice, technical and vocational training dates back into the colonial period and was tinged in the pseudo racism and colonial ideology. Therefore, despite the colonial education authorities to encourage technical and vocational education, it remained very unpopular with the African populations in most countries. They were generally suspicious of its ultimate goal because it was perceived as a way of preventing a meaningful political dialogue and socio-economic competition between Africans and Europeans in the labour market. With the achievement of independence in many African countries, there was a strong resurgence in technical and vocational education and training that rested on the assumption that it is more specific to job entry than general education. It is also perceived to be a cure to youth unemployment. It produces specific human capital that embodies the advantage of imbibing specific job-relevant skills that can make the worker more readily suitable for a given job and would thus make the worker more productive. By providing the youth with pre-employment

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vocational education and training, African governments perceive that it will not only equip them with skills that would be necessary later in the labour market but also take the youth off the streets. Despite continued appeal and the momentum gained in support for technical and vocational education and training nationally and internationally, doubts raised about its efficacy in the mid sixties have continued to linger on. Growing evidence from field research has not matched the benefits that are attached to it. Most youths seem not to have strong aspiration for TVET. Even those who have trained through it are not only paid less but often stay unemployed much longer than their counterparts who have gone through general education. Yet such strong research evidence has not deterred African countries from continuing vocational education and training programs in public education systems. In terms of participation, the size of the group of school leavers who normally get some post-basic training, whether in public or private sector or formal or informal training institutions is difficult to determine. However, studies imply that a rather small segment of the entire cohort, perhaps as small as 5 to 10, participate and a small percentage is in private or non-government provision. Therefore, TIVET occupies a small and marginal position in the school systems of most African countries. For a variety of factors, women are grossly under-represented in the TVET programmes. One of the biggest challenges for the quality and relevance of TVET in the region seems to be the continuation of its low status in the perceptions of many learners, parents, employers and policymakers. The problem has its roots in the colonial system, where academic education was the root to modernity, social status and prosperity. Focusing on the funding of TVET sheds some light on the dichotomy between the emphasis for skills and the limited funding that governments are willing to commit to the sector. On the whole, the financing of TVET as a percentage of public education expenditure varies considerably from one country to another. It ranges from as low as 0.9 percent a decade ago in Ethiopia to 12.7 percent in Gabon. As a result of under-funding, TVET institutions experience inadequacies in the provision and maintenance of physical facilities, which include classrooms, lecture theatres, workshops and laboratories and training technologies. There are also inadequacies with regard to boarding and catering amenities. Furthermore, most of the facilities are old and in need of repair. Adequate funds are of critical importance in the development of high-quality TVET systems and the achievement of their objectives. There is need to increase funding to TVET institutions. Levies could be an important source of funding for training, and various modes need to be planned. Levies could generate large amounts of money in countries with relatively large formal sectors. There is also the need for fundraising through the sale of products and services. Training with production could be given greater emphasis without compromising the training component. There should also be opportunities for provision of training at full cost for employers through the delivery of short courses tailored to their needs.

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Chapter 10

CONCLUSIONS AND THE WAY FORWARD

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INTRODUCTION In the introductory chapter, we saw that the achievement of independence in Africa in the 1960s failed to alter the colonial state arrangements, with education continuing along the Western models and paradigms that have no relevance to African needs and aspirations. As in the colonial era, education is still perceived as the major determining factor for social mobility, because it is only through education that an individual can achieve higher occupational enhancement, high income, higher status and higher prestige. It is seen as the only avenue into the elite status, and educational policies are still designed to perpetuate this elitist perception. The African governments’ failure to reconstruct their educational systems to respond to their immediate problems has been compounded by their heavy reliance on technical assistance. Technical assistance has by and large shaped the African countries’ educational agenda, which began with education for human resource development at independence to the present pathetic situation in which the donor community, under the control of the World Bank and IMF, formulate and supervise the implementation of educational policies in Africa. As a result of the current socio-economic environment, despite the widely publicized claims of the benefits of the World Bank/IMF initiated SAPs, their repercussions on the allocation of both public and private resources to education have been more than obvious. The Bank’s restrictions on educational expenditure, coupled with the on-going economic crisis, have crippled most of the African governments’ ability to provide quality education for their people. Quality education is a relative concept. Educators who seek particular defined outcomes tend to rate it in those terms and will rank educational institutions according to the extent to which their graduates meet those outcomes. These different emphases have deep roots and are reflected in the major traditions of the development Western educational thought. In studies of quality and equality issues in education in third world countries, it is pointed out that there is as yet no consensus on the definition of the term “quality.” More importantly, notions of quality change over time and are tied to societal values. Another important point that has been raised relates to the relative paucity of meaningful data that could provide indicators of quality. Although the concept of quality education is still contentious, it is clear from a lot of research that good quality education facilitates the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes that have an intrinsic value and also help to address important human goals.

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Evidence is now clear-cut on the links between good education and a wide range of economic and social development benefits. Better school outcomes, as reflected in student scores, are related to higher income in later life. Empirical work has also demonstrated that high-quality schooling improves national economic potential. There are also strong and significant social benefits. It is now believed that the acquisition of literacy and numeracy, especially by women, has an impact upon fertility. More recently, it has become clear that cognitive skills required to make choices about HIV and AIDS risk and behaviour are strongly related to levels of education. In this regard, Sub-Saharan African countries need to put a higher premium in improving the quality of their educational systems.

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EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION Despite efforts to promote ECCE in Sub-Saharan countries, access continues to be a significant challenge. Enrollment rates in preschools in the region are often below 10 percent, mainly due to limited facilities available and the effect of poverty. While there seems to be a common agreement on the need to increase access to preschools, this is not without tensions and dilemmas, including who should provide preschooling and how can it be financed. Although in many countries in the Sub-Saharan region preschool education is not part of the formal education system, governments do appreciate the value of preschool education, and the sector is contained in official policy documents. An examination of official policy documents from many countries reveals that goals and objectives are clearly stated and are generally similar. They define goals and objectives of ECCE centres as offering non-formal education that aims at not only providing an all-around development of children, but also preparing them for formal education. There is the compelling case for and more and better ECCE programs, as they help to reduce existing and future disadvantages faced by many children through addressing their nutritional, health and educational needs. ECCE participation reduces the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting, improves cognitive development and contributes to increased school participation, completion and achievement. ECCE becomes the guarantor of children’s rights and can open the way to all the EFA goals. While ECCE programs in many countries have made considerable progress as a result of the policy strategies and guidelines, the quality of many programs is still unsatisfactory, especially with community-based ECCE centres. Among the key contributory factors to this situation is that the policy that makes parents and local communities responsible for the development and recurrent costs of ECCE centres, which has led to the establishment of many unregistered institutions with very poor facilities. Many of them operate at sub-standard levels, especially with regard to physical facilities, teaching and learning materials as well as teachers. A number of measures, therefore, need to be put in place to improve the quality of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). Many countries should establish national frameworks for the financing, coordination and supervision of ECCE programs for very young children. There is an urgent need to control the mushrooming of unregistered ECCE centres to ensure that the stated objectives and goals are pursued and minimum standards are maintained. There is also the need for the governments to subsidize salaries of community

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managed ECCE centres. Teachers also need to be trained in various aspects of simple child care, health monitoring, nutrition and cognitive stimulation as well as payment of their salaries by the states, especially those in public preschools. The syllabus for such training needs to be basic, with an emphasis on practical competence rather than theory. Above all, it is important to provide school feeding programmes for ECCE centres.

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PRIMARY EDUCATION Considering the importance of primary education in national development, it would be expected that many countries would have launched programs to increase access leading to achieving universal primary education. This has, however, not been the case with many of the African countries. They reflect enormous differences in enrollments and participation, with some countries having achieved close to universal provision, while others continue to lag behind. Among the key underlying factors affecting primary school enrollment rates are economic ones. Researches indicate that poverty is one of the most important economic factors accounting for the low participation. Many households, especially in the rural areas, are too poor to afford direct and opportunity costs of their children to enrol in school. As economists tend to demonstrate, economic development normally boosts educational growth. In this regard, countries that have more resources to allocate to education, both as an investment and as a consumption good, achieve a higher participation in education, as shown by evidence from more industrialized countries. In response to the globalised framework of Jomtien and Dakar as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for achieving universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, many Sub-Saharan African governments have abolished school fees in public primary schools under the banner of the free primary education policy. In addition, increased access to good quality education is seen as an important means of achieving many of the other development goals. Following the introduction of free primary education, many countries have experienced robust increases in primary education enrollments. Despite such enrollment increases, especially over the last decade, many countries have fallen short of achieving the goal of primary schooling for all in both quantitative and qualitative goals. Although UPE policies have contributed significantly to access and equity in primary education, the push for UPE in many countries has come to be identified with increasing deterioration of the quality of primary education right from the provision of physical facilities, teaching and learning materials, deployment of teachers and performance and transition from primary to secondary education. There seems to be strong evidence of internal inefficiency, due enrollment of over-age children, high rates of repetition and dropouts rates, and use of unsound pedagogical approaches. Among the measures to improve the quality of primary education, there is strong evidence that increasing the provision of instructional materials, especially textbooks, is among the most effective ways of raising the quality of primary education. The scarcity of learning materials in the classroom is the most serious impediment to educational effectiveness in most African countries. The availability of all instructional materials has declined in recent years as increased fiscal stringency has led to severe cuts in non-salary expenditures.

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Teachers’ use of time and other classroom resources is known to be a principal determinant to pupil achievement. To the primary school teacher falls the important task of turning into reality government strategies for improving quality. However, for that to happen, the teacher needs to be motivated and dedicated. The lifting of teachers’ morale through monetary incentives is a major challenge due to poor economies, but some measures need to be taken to regenerate their professional pride and enthusiasm through improving working conditions as well as increasing supervisory support and services. There is also the need for most countries to address the policy of the medium of instruction, with an emphasis on the use vernacular languages in lower classes of the primary school.

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SECONDARY EDUCATION In terms of access, secondary school systems exclude most of the population of secondary-age children in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, the region was estimated to have a total population of about 600 million. Of this population, about 86 million were of general secondary school age. The gross enrollment rates (GERs) at secondary school averaged 25 percent. On this crude basis, about 64 million, thus 75 percent, of secondary age pupils are not enrolled in the region. The proportion of those excluded was likely to be higher than this, since some places are filled by repeaters. In this regard, it was probable that the numbers of those who failed to enrol were in the tune of 70 and 75 million, or over 80 percent, of the total of secondary-school-age children. With regard to quality, most governments in the Sub-Saharan African region recognize that facilities and teaching-learning materials, particularly in science and practical subjects, do lead to the stated secondary school objectives. However, in many countries, there are large backlogs of workshops, science laboratories and home science rooms. While in some countries the provision of these facilities has improved through donor assistance, due to the cost-sharing policies, the construction and equipping of facilities is currently the responsibility of parents and communities. Considering the continued downward trend in the economies and rising costs of education that parents are required to meet, the provision of facilities and teaching-learning materials has seriously deteriorated. The main teaching strategy that characterizes secondary school teaching is the large amount of teachers’ talk, which involves mainly the teacher presenting information or lecturing to the students, interspersed with questions, generally asked to the whole class, with predetermined answers. A minimal amount of time is spent by teachers talking to students on an individual basis and, throughout most of the lessons, the students play a passive role. A considerable amount of teaching-learning time is also spent with pupils silently working on teacher-assigned tasks. By use of the national examinations to assess the efficiency of the secondary schools, it is clear that in most countries, many students score very poorly, mainly because of deficiencies in the foreign languages, lack of teaching and learning resources and the use of rote memorization in many subjects of the curriculum. To improve quality, funds for the improvement of physical, acquisition of laboratory/workshop equipment, textbooks and other supplementary teaching resources, especially in science and vocational subjects, need to be provided. In particular, there is an

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urgent need for locally developed textbooks appropriate for secondary school examinations, instead of reliance on imported science textbooks which are widely used in schools.

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UNIVERSITY EDUCATION Higher education, especially at the university level, is of paramount importance for Africa’s future. Africa requires both highly trained people and top-quality research in order to be able to formulate the policies, plan the programmes and implement the projects that are essential to economic growth and development. Preparing individuals for positions of responsibility in government, business, and in professions is a central role of the continent’s universities, and supporting these individuals in their work with research, advice and consultancy is another equally important role. Although there was a rapid expansion of university education in many countries of the Sub-Saharan African region, which increased access, demand for places still outstrips supply. In spite of the expansion, only a small proportion of the eligible age group has access, based on the assumption that that the great majority of university students are aged between 19 and 24 years. In many countries, no more than 2 percent of the eligible age group attends public university education. With the addition of students in private and foreign universities, most countries would average 3 percent of the eligible students. Like other levels of the education systems, there are major regional imbalances in access to university education. Communities that made early and stable contacts with colonial institutions enjoy better access to university education than those who did not. This is particularly the case with students from the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), which are inhabited by the pastoralist groups. Admission procedures by individual universities or centralized bodies tend to reproduce existing regional and gender disparities in access to university education, as they are not quite sensitive to specific educational environments and their effects on examination performance. In most countries, the proportion of female student enrollment declines as they move up the educational ladder. University education, in particular, is characterized by large gender disparities to the detriment of females. Gender disparities at the university are seen in relation to what happens in the earlier levels of the education system, especially at the secondary school. Due to a variety of demand and supply factors, including socio-economic and cultural influences and less favourable settings in girls’ secondary schools, female participation in terms of access, persistence and achievement is lower than that of males. These disadvantages translate to inequitable selection and participation at the university level. The quality of university education, like other levels of education, can be measured through an analysis of (a) inputs such as teaching and non-teaching staff, curricula, facilities and technologies for teaching and learning arrangements for students’ catering and institutional management; and (b) outputs such as tests and examinations. Physical planning in the public universities in many countries is not commensurate with their rate of growth and expansion; as more students are enrolled, the managers of universities continue to accommodate them in the existing facilities. This has often led to an over-stretching of such facilities. As a consequence, there is congestion in lecture theatres, workshops, laboratories, libraries and boarding facilities. The situation is most deplorable in the sciences and

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technologies. The required inputs, which include adequate laboratory space and workshops as well as spare parts for equipment maintenance and repair, routine replacement and upgrading of equipment, reagents and other consumable supplies, are seriously lacking in most universities in the region. Libraries are among the worst-hit facilities in public universities in most countries. Despite increased enrollments, universities do not invest much in the acquisition of books. Libraries hold less capacity of the required books, most of which are too old. Some libraries that were designed to accommodate 600 students now serve as many as 10,000 students. Apart from inadequate space, most libraries cannot afford to contribute to current journals, and other scholarly publications from outside Africa have greatly declined. There is also a scarcity of reference materials. The massive expansion of enrollments without a corresponding increase in the number of teaching staff has meant that staff-to-student ratio has risen. Normally, each university has its own staff development scheme. However, there are many indications that due to financial constraints, post-graduate study, which is the basis of staff development, does not meet the demands in the university faculties. To recruit academic staff for the public universities, the tendency has been towards relaxing the recruitment and promotion criteria. In many universities, a Ph.D degree is no longer a requirement for tenure, and publications are less important criteria for judging who should be promoted. Consequently, many of the academic staff who in the past would not have qualified for university positions are now doing so. Moreover, due to very low salaries, it is no longer possible to attract competent staff from abroad to teach in the public universities. From the poor situation of the teaching and learning environment and the quality and morale of the academic staff, not much is expected in the quality of instruction. Many lecturers in public universities use old material (yellow notes), which means that the courses they teach are also out of date. Coupled with the flight of the best lecturers from the public universities, the situation has affected the quality of instruction in the public universities. With lack of reading materials, students prefer the familiar expository method of teaching, as they perceive university education to consist primarily of the reproduction of assimilated lecture materials for purposes of passing examinations. Developing measures to increase the quality of higher education through teaching and research remains the principal objective and not to abolish universities as at one time proposed by some leading researchers at the World Bank. Long-term development goals cannot be met without it. It is, however, appreciated that improvements in quality are unavoidably expensive. The improvement of quality can be achieved through a variety of measures. Urgent attention should be paid to the establishment and gradual implementation of standards of provision for the full range of inputs to teaching and research. The provision of libraries with the necessary books and periodicals should be the highest priority, closely followed by supplying laboratories and workshops with consumables and materials needed for equipment maintenance and repair. The revival of long-term efforts to upgrade the academic qualifications of staff is also quite essential through postgraduate training in masters and doctoral programmes.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND THE TEACHING PROFESSION As a major goal of teacher education, academically and professionally qualified teachers are regarded as prerequisite for the provision of high-quality and relevant education at all levels. The quality of teacher education is dependent upon the availability of qualified and motivated teacher trainers, a curriculum that is both relevant and manageable and adequate physical facilities and instructional materials in teacher education institutions. For public teacher training colleges, grants from the public budget are the main source of resources for teacher education. As is the case in other sub-sectors, due to constraints in the state budget and rising cost of living, allocations for teacher education are inadequate. Due to shrinking public capitation, teacher colleges have been forced to introduce user fees. Following over-enrollment of student teachers, classrooms in many countries are reported to be congested because they had been built to cater for smaller groups of student teachers. Other physical facilities, such as laboratories, workshops, special rooms, resource centres that include libraries and catering facilities, are also grossly inadequate and poorly maintained. Equally important, because over-enrollment was not systematically accompanied by commensurate increase in the government grant, inadequacies in instructional materials, such as textbooks, library books and stationery and equipment, are rampant. Unlike teachers’ colleges, there are major problems with teaching staff in the public universities that prepare graduate and diploma teachers. The rapid growth in university enrollments has not been matched by a commensurate increase in teaching staff. Most departments are understaffed, and individual staff have large classes, often as many 500 to 1,000 students or more. In teacher education curricula, there seems to be some considerable dichotomy between theory and practice in some countries, especially at the preschool and the preparation of primary school teachers as well as secondary education. In some countries, the pass rate for student teachers, especially of primary college students, is extremely high. This raises some fundamental issues. First and foremost, given many weaknesses with the selection system, low pre-training academic achievement of many students, and the congested nature of the training curriculum, there is a possibility that the examination system is not rigorous enough, and thus allows some undeserving student teachers to qualify as teachers. Furthermore, no attempt is made to formally translate the passing grade into an order of merit with student teachers obtaining excellent grades not tangibly recognized above those who scrape through the final examination. The motivation to excel during training is, therefore, not rekindled. With regard to the teaching profession, while African governments expect a great deal from their teachers as their agents, most states do not reward them well. As public servants, teachers’ salaries and status are relatively low as compared with their counterparts in other systems. The work of African teachers is handicapped by very large class sizes, a dearth of teaching support resources, long working hours and low pay. Teachers in most Sub-Saharan African countries work for long hours in unpaid positions related to the school and pupil interests, especially organizing extracurricular activities and undertaking clerical and secretarial activities. Most in-school roles performed by teachers, with exception of the school head teacher or principal, are unpaid. These voluntary

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commitments shorten the amount of time teachers have to prepare lesson plans and to do other paid work, especially if they are working in the double shift. The working and living environments for many teachers are poor, which tends to lower their self-esteem and is generally demotivating. Schools in many countries do not only lack basic teaching and learning facilities, but also lack basic amenities such as piped water, electricity, staff rooms and toilets. Housing is a major problem for nearly all primary school teachers. As a result of inflation, teachers’ salaries in most Sub-Saharan countries are still low, which is one of the main reasons contributing to less attraction or keeping the best candidates in teaching. In many countries, due to inadequate salaries, many highly experienced and qualified teachers leave the profession to find better employment elsewhere. There is the need for better incentives, especially for rural teachers, improved conditions of service, attractive career structures and increased school accountability. As a major priority in most countries, there is a need for improvement in the incentives of teachers in the rural areas. Unless this is done, the large majority of children living in rural areas will continue to receive poor quality education. Among the measures should include the provision of good quality housing with running water and electricity for teachers as a way of attracting and retaining teachers in hard-to-reach schools. At the core of teacher motivation crisis in most Sub-Saharan African countries is that their salaries are seriously inadequate. Despite some improvement in pay in many countries, most teachers, particularly in relatively high-cost urban centres are unable to meet their basic needs. As a result, many of them are forced to find other sources of income. Therefore, many teachers’ salaries need to be doubled with possible support from donor agencies. The persistent late payment of salaries and allowances in most countries is also a major demotivator, which needs to be addressed urgently. Salary increases need to be addressed in tandem with attractive career structures, with regular promotions based on clearly specified and transparent performance criteria. Teachers working in hard-to-reach schools need also to be given accelerated promotions and or preferential access to qualification-upgrading opportunities. There should also be regular professional mechanisms with good quality inservicing training during their careers.

ADULT LITERACY Literacy is a fundamental human right, a basic learning need and the key to learning to learn. In this regard, literacy is understood as the process of learning to read and write text and numbers, reading and writing to learn, developing these skills and using them in a meaningful way in different contexts. Literacy learning takes place in school and involves children, youth and adults. Literacy is related to written a language, which includes script, print and digital, but also oral communication, namely listening and speaking. Literacy, to be such, must be useful, or functional, and suitable. In the above context, therefore, in the process of empowering people, literacy is a viable instrument that is used in most cases. In fact, there is a growing worldwide consensus that “literacy and adult education are a means for people to overcome poverty and exclusion, establish and reinforce democracy, achieve justice and comprehensive peace, enhance economic and social well-being and improve health and ensure food security.” Adult education helps to

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prevent and eliminate gender and racial disparity and other social problems such as violence against women, drugs addiction, environmental destruction and HIV and AIDS. The faith development partners have in the role of literacy in development has made the attainment of universal literacy one of the greatest challenges currently facing policymakers in developing countries. While in developed Western countries, the problem of illiteracy is related to difficulties in understanding complex reading information, in developing countries, even the most rudimentary reading tasks are often beyond the reach of large numbers of the populations. The urgency for adult literacy programs in developing countries is demonstrated by its potential outcomes. On the basis of some of the examples of literacy programs in Africa, especially the National Literacy Program in Namibia (NLPN), participation in a well planned and executed adult literacy program can be a crucial factor in initiating a process of personal and community empowerment. The program was more than teaching adults how to read and write and to carry out basic arithmetic computations. It ignited in some participants a process in which adults started to realize their own abilities and potential. In most countries, adult literacy programs seem particularly more popular with women than men, who have constituted over 70 percent of the programs. Having been denied educational opportunities in the formal school system, women perceive the programs as a second chance to acquire knowledge and skills to cope with the demands of the modern society. Although on the whole the programs have proved beneficial to women, they face many challenges that call for an urgent attention, especially by the governments. One of the most notable elements of the programs is the declining enrollments in the face of a continuing high proportion of illiterates in the population. This is a clear indication that all is not well with regard to the quality and relevance of the programs. Some surveys carried out on the factors influencing attendance of literacy classes have given reasons that include lack of interest, lack of time and mixing of sexes and others that tend to indicate the low demand for the service offered through the programs. Among the major challenges to adult literacy is in the area of funding. In many countries, pronouncements by governments’ commitment to promoting literacy and development are not matched by allocations of resources. In the face of budgetary constraints, adult literacy programs have lower priority than formal education. Inadequate financing seriously affects the provision of teaching and learning materials, resulting in lowered quality of the programs. One of the most difficult and critical challenges facing adult literacy in most countries is how to stimulate and sustain the motivation of adult learners. The issue, therefore, is how to make the programs a part of the development projects that fulfil the immediate needs of the people they serve. This situation in most countries arises from the fact that literacy planning and decisionmaking are heavily centralized with minimal opportunity for local innovations and responsiveness to the needs of different social groups, especially women and ethnic minorities. Planning and implementation should, therefore, be decentralized to devolve power to the local level. These need to pay more attention to the contexts of the different clientele to ensure that their literacy and development needs are identified and incorporated in the program. This will increase their self-confidence through an exposure to essential and practical skills. Among such an approach would be the use of participatory Regenerated Freirean Literacy Empowering Community Technique (REFLECT). This technique relates literacy education to development issues identified by the learners themselves and helps them to challenge dominant and oppressive

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worldviews. REFLECT has been used with potentially empowering outcomes among poor communities in a good number of developing countries.

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TECHNICAL, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING With the achievement of independence in many African countries, there was a strong resurgence in technical and vocational education and training, which rested on the assumption that it is more specific to job entry than general education. It is also perceived to be a cure to youth unemployment. It produces specific human capital, which embody the advantage of imbibing specific job-relevant skills that can make the worker more readily suitable for a given job and would thus make the worker more productive. By providing the youth with preemployment vocational education and training, African governments perceive that it would not only equip them with skills that would be necessary later in the labour market, but also take the youth off the streets. Despite continued appeal and the momentum gained in support for technical and vocational education and training nationally and internationally, doubts raised in the sixties about its efficacy have continued to linger on. Growing evidence from field research has not matched the benefits that are attached to it. Most youths seem not to have strong aspirations for TVET. Even those who have trained through it are not only paid less, but often stay unemployed much longer than their counterparts who have gone through general education. Yet such strong research evidence has not deterred African countries from continuing vocational education and training programs in public education systems. In terms of participation, the size of the group of school leavers who normally get some post-basic training, whether in public or private sector formal or informal training institutions, is difficult to determine. However, studies imply that a rather small segment of the entire cohort, perhaps as small as 5 to 10, participate, and a small percentage is in private or nongovernment provision. Therefore, TVET occupies a small and marginal position in the school systems of most African countries. For a variety of factors, women are grossly underrepresented in the TVET programs. One of the biggest challenges for the quality and relevance of TVET in the region seems to be the continuation of its low status in the perceptions of many learners, parents, employers and policymakers. The problem has its roots in the colonial system, where academic education was the route to modernity, social status and prosperity. Focusing on the funding of TVET sheds some light on the dichotomy between the emphasis for skills and the limited funding that governments are willing to commit to the sector. On the whole, the financing of TVET as a percentage of public education expenditure varies considerably from one country to another. It ranges from as low as 0.9 percent a decade ago in Ethiopia, to 12.7 percent in Gabon. As a result of under-funding, TVET institutions experience inadequacies in the provision and maintenance of physical facilities, which include classrooms, lecture theatres, workshops and laboratories and training technologies. There are also inadequacies with regard to boarding and catering amenities. Furthermore, most of the facilities are old and in need of repair. Adequate funds are, therefore, of critical importance in the development of high-quality TVET systems and the achievement of their objectives. There is a need to increase funding to

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TVET institutions. Levies could be an important source of funding for training, and various modes need to be planned. Levies could generate large amounts of money in countries with relatively large formal sectors. There is also the need for fundraising through the sale of products and services. Training with production could be given greater emphasis without compromising the training component. There should also be opportunities for provision of training at full cost for employers, through the delivery of short courses tailored to their needs.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Daniel Namusonge Sifuna is professor of history of education and international and comparative education in the Department of Educational Foundations at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya and a director and senior partner of OWN & Associates: Centre for Research and Development. He holds a B. Ed degree of Makerere University in Uganda, an M. A (Education) and Ph.D from University of Nairobi. He has published several books and many referenced articles on education in local and international journals. Professor Sifuna has held many prominent positions in the academia and professional organizations. He has worked with many universities in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, and won several awards and fellowships that have enabled him to work as a visiting scholar in universities in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. He has also provided consultancy services to many international organizations, including the United Nations’ agencies. Nobuhide Sawamura is Professor of Education and Development in Africa at the Center for the Study of International Cooperation in Education (CICE), Hiroshima University, Japan. He got an M.Phil. at the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. at Osaka University. He first visited Africa, namely Malawi, in 1982-84, as a secondary school science teacher of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) and then worked for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for more than 11 years. He has carried out research on a wide range of educational issues and published in a good number of referenced local and international journals, as well as contributing chapters in books. His recent research interest has been in the area of multiple realities in primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Kenya.

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INDEX

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A abusive, 139 academic problems, 186 academic progress, 94 academics, 31, 49, 114, 115, 118, 129 accountability, 12, 61, 134, 141, 143, 200 acculturation, 145 achievement test, 25, 41 acquisition of knowledge, xii, 16, 24, 29, 151, 193 action research, 105 Adams, 18, 33, 191, 205, 212, 215 adaptation, 118, 162 addiction, 150, 166, 201 adjustment, 33, 57, 59 administration, 6, 51, 56, 80, 99, 100, 105, 106, 119, 124, 128, 130, 131, 136, 137, 164 administrative, 3, 6, 8, 22, 45, 78, 145, 147, 156 administrative workers, 145 administrators, 17, 23, 99, 164, 172 adult education, xiv, 7, 8, 46, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 164, 166, 200 adult learning, 146, 147 adult literacy, xiv, 36, 61, 145, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 201 adult population, 145 adults, 17, 38, 46, 59, 60, 61, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 169, 171, 173, 190, 200, 201 advocacy, 124 affirmative action, 110 African culture, 78, 106 African schools, 138 African Union, 105

age, 22, 25, 32, 37, 39, 42, 45, 47, 48, 58, 59, 62, 64, 67, 68, 75, 77, 84, 85, 96, 108, 109, 113, 120, 139, 148, 159, 162, 185, 195, 196, 197, 206, 207 agents, 118, 132, 133, 143, 150, 199 agricultural, 7, 9, 11, 55, 78, 81, 84, 103, 105, 107, 162, 169, 174, 177, 179, 182 agricultural sector, 103, 105, 169 agriculture, 51, 68, 81, 82, 84, 106, 107, 133, 151, 172, 178, 179, 189 aid, 7, 11, 12, 13, 23, 59, 60, 69, 102, 152, 174, 176, 187, 188 AIDS, 25, 27, 29, 39, 138, 150, 166, 194, 201, 206, 212 alternative, 9, 11, 17, 32, 90, 155, 159, 165, 174 Amsterdam, 218 analysts, 27 Angola, 111, 135, 160 animal husbandry, 107, 172 anomalous, 90 apartheid, 158 apathy, 139 application, 20, 48, 72, 82, 89, 110 applied mathematics, 84 aptitude, 82 Arab countries, 9 arithmetic, 146, 158, 159, 165, 166, 201 articulation, 19 artistic, 37, 54 Asia, xiii, 56, 58, 60, 146, 161, 207, 209, 221 Asian, 34, 222 aspiration, 70, 162, 192 assessment, 16, 17, 23, 41, 46, 71, 72, 81, 131, 134, 178, 188 assets, 91 assignment, 84, 93 assumptions, 18, 90, 95

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Index

attitudes, xi, xii, 23, 24, 27, 29, 53, 70, 77, 78, 81, 82, 94, 95, 96, 104, 125, 127, 146, 148, 150, 151, 158, 178, 185, 187, 193 authority, 43, 71, 114, 159, 164 autonomy, 26, 90, 100, 103, 108, 112, 136, 161 availability, xii, 21, 23, 39, 73, 75, 128, 140, 142, 155, 188, 195, 199 awareness, 16, 27, 35, 37, 46, 53, 132, 134, 151, 156, 159, 173, 174

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B banking, 106 banks, 62 barrier, 186 basic needs, 32, 53, 58, 141, 143, 153, 200 beginning teachers, 132 behaviours, 37, 116, 139, 150 beliefs, 17, 51, 90, 159 benefits, xi, xii, xiii, 1, 5, 7, 13, 14, 24, 25, 26, 29, 38, 40, 43, 48, 55, 62, 63, 73, 74, 113, 124, 161, 179, 192, 193, 194, 202 bias, 82, 171 binding, 186 birth, 32, 35 Blacks, 170 Bolivia, 210 Botswana, 33, 40, 57, 65, 66, 80, 81, 87, 88, 111, 135, 157, 160, 173, 174, 182, 184, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 220 boys, 22, 40, 87, 88, 186 Bretton Woods, 12 Britain, 2, 5, 11, 78, 79, 81, 106, 107 broad spectrum, 72 budget cuts, 62, 103 buildings, 35, 68, 73, 117, 125 Burkina Faso, 36, 57, 65, 66, 87, 88, 111, 135, 160, 182 Burundi, 65, 111, 135, 160

C CAE, 150 Cameroon, 39, 41, 65, 87, 109, 135, 160, 183 campaigns, 79, 159 Canada, 25 candidates, 72, 80, 91, 94, 112, 127, 131, 137, 141, 143, 171, 185, 200 capacity building, 36, 112 Cape Town, 211 capital cost, 43 Capitalism, 209 capitalist, 11, 16 caregivers, 138

cartel, 9 cash crops, 172 cast, 116, 130 Catholic, 170 censorship, 11 certificate, 80, 117, 128, 132 certification, 45, 131, 174, 178 Chad, 65, 66, 87, 88, 160, 184 channels, 59, 188 child development, 31, 32, 36, 46, 48, 130 child mortality, 22 child welfare, 11 childbearing, 162 childcare, 31, 32, 36, 42, 48, 50 childhood, xiii, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 54, 59, 61, 67, 74 childrearing, 32 Christianity, 3 citizens, xi, 18, 53, 74, 133, 158, 170 citizenship, xi, 27, 28, 55, 145, 174 civil engineering, 113, 171 civil service, 112, 128, 133 civil society, 56, 61 Civil War, 170 class size, 20, 42, 44, 59, 69, 70, 129, 133, 134, 143, 199 class teaching, 71 classes, 33, 44, 69, 70, 75, 77, 103, 104, 106, 114, 117, 129, 130, 134, 136, 143, 145, 152, 154, 155, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 167, 188, 196, 199, 201 classification, 182 classroom, 17, 21, 33, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 89, 92, 93, 132, 133, 138, 139, 195, 196 classroom environment, 33, 139 classroom practice, 21, 139 classrooms, xii, 19, 23, 44, 46, 64, 68, 71, 89, 128, 134, 139, 142, 188, 192, 199, 202 cognitive abilities, 150 cognitive development, xi, xii, 23, 28, 33, 38, 47, 49, 53, 150, 194 cognitive function, 35 cognitive test, 47 coherence, 116 Cold War, 211 collaboration, xv, 48, 61, 104, 172 college students, 125, 131, 142, 143, 199 colleges, 100, 104, 108, 117, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 138, 142, 146, 147, 186, 199 Colombia, 218 colonial education, 2, 4, 6, 14, 51, 52, 147, 171, 172, 191 colonial power, 2, 3, 180 colonial rule, 3, 52, 71, 78, 100

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Index colonialism, xiii, 1, 2, 3, 8, 14, 17, 78, 95 colonization, 1, 2 Columbia, 177 commerce, 1, 56, 84, 106, 133, 178 commodities, 2, 3, 57 commodity, 9, 14 communication, 54, 60, 71, 80, 117, 127, 137, 148, 152, 155, 166, 200 communication skills, 117, 127, 155 community service, 102 community support, 52 comparative education, 225 competence, 18, 48, 50, 126, 133, 136, 145, 154, 195 competition, 1, 47, 83, 116, 172, 181, 184, 188, 191 complement, 15 complexity, 134 components, 19 compounds, 79, 138 concentration, 85, 95, 112, 183, 189 conceptualizations, xii, 18, 23 confidence, 158, 186 conflict, 79, 132 consciousness, 79 consensus, xi, xii, 10, 17, 19, 28, 29, 59, 137, 149, 166, 193, 200 conservation, 105 consolidation, 119 conspiracy, 112 constraints, 43, 54, 67, 93, 113, 114, 121, 123, 128, 129, 131, 142, 152, 162, 164, 165, 167, 198, 199, 201 construction, 43, 44, 63, 64, 73, 89, 95, 96, 101, 117, 154, 175, 196 consultants, 12, 110, 112 consumption, 57, 74, 195 control, 9, 12, 14, 21, 34, 44, 48, 50, 60, 71, 105, 117, 125, 150, 162, 186, 189, 193, 194 conviction, 102, 175 coping, 218 correlation, 55, 186 corruption, 4, 86 cost of living, 128, 142, 199 cost-effective, 187 costs, 9, 21, 42, 43, 44, 49, 52, 57, 63, 67, 69, 74, 80, 86, 89, 90, 96, 100, 116, 119, 127, 136, 174, 194, 195, 196 cost-sharing, 11, 13, 83, 86, 89, 95, 96, 110, 196 Council of Ministers, 173 counterbalance, 170 covering, 130, 138 CRC, 36 creative potential, 159 creativity, 37, 159, 180

229

credentials, 175 credit, 36, 100, 162 critical analysis, 17 critical variables, 102 criticism, 102, 103 crop production, 2, 3 cultural character, 78 cultural factors, 89, 155, 186 cultural influence, 110, 120, 197 cultural norms, 186 cultural perspective, 79 cultural values, 19, 28, 78, 176 culture, 7, 19, 32, 37, 47, 78, 79, 106, 140, 151, 164 curiosity, 53 currency, 54, 103 curriculum development, 42, 44, 46, 80, 90 cycles, 52, 81, 94

D dances, 79 danger, 189, 190 data collection, 114, 181, 182 death, 138, 140 debates, 5, 18, 101, 179 debt, 4, 9, 57, 58, 59 debt burden, 58, 59 decision makers, 13, 37 decision making, 103 decisions, 11, 35, 115, 118, 159, 181 decolonization, xiii, 1, 4, 13 definition, xi, 17, 18, 19, 28, 29, 31, 32, 112, 146, 151, 193 delivery, 21, 38, 90, 118, 173, 180, 191, 192, 203 demobilization, 162 democracy, 149, 166, 200 Democratic Republic of Congo, 160 demoralization, 139 Department of Education, xv, 128, 225 deprivation, 52 destruction, 150, 166, 201 devaluation, 175 developed countries, 5, 7, 13, 133 developing countries, xii, 5, 9, 10, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 29, 39, 56, 58, 85, 90, 111, 140, 150, 166, 167, 179, 187, 190, 201, 202 development assistance, 11 development banks, 62 developmentalism, 102 dichotomy, 47, 187, 192, 199, 202 dignity, 53 diplomas, 5, 18, 41, 106 direct costs, 63 directives, 140

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Index

disabilities, 161 disability, 23 disabled, 59 disaster, 148 discipline, 70, 82, 100, 110, 134 discontinuity, 140 discourse, 9, 11, 19, 21, 71, 146, 190 discrimination, xii, 61, 186 discriminatory, 146 disenchantment, 2, 102, 184 dissatisfaction, 52, 129, 186 disseminate, 105, 111 distilled water, 113 distribution, xiii, 26, 53, 68, 70, 74, 89, 92, 95, 117, 153, 175 diversification, 3, 108, 176, 177 diversity, xii, 23, 31, 49, 85, 91, 180 division, 35, 154, 162, 189 doctors, 41, 81, 107, 117 domestic chores, 163 dominance, 3, 155, 178, 185 dominant strategy, 92 donations, 44, 114 donor, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 44, 48, 59, 63, 69, 89, 95, 96, 102, 111, 112, 141, 143, 164, 176, 182, 189, 193, 196, 200 donors, 11, 12, 13, 44, 58, 60, 63, 112, 123, 157, 164, 189, 190 downsized, 119 dropout rates, 15, 22, 29, 68 dropouts, 45, 75, 165, 186, 195 drugs, 150, 166, 201 duality, 189 duplication, 108 durability, 148 duration, 39, 117, 130, 163 duties, 43, 138, 139

E earnings, xii, 25, 55 East Asia, xiii, 60 economic assistance, 112 economic crisis, 9, 13, 14, 59, 102, 103, 193 economic development, xiii, 5, 7, 8, 46, 55, 57, 74, 88, 101, 147, 149, 151, 153, 161, 173, 175, 195 economic efficiency, 56 economic growth, xiii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 25, 26, 56, 57, 105, 119, 187, 190, 197 economic growth rate, 26 economic performance, 62 economic policy, 14 economic problem, 176 economic security, 155

economic status, 162 economics, 31, 79, 82, 84 education expenditures, 80 Education for All, 15, 24, 28, 35, 37, 40, 41, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66, 85, 87, 88, 111, 123, 135, 136, 160, 161, 208, 212, 221, 223 education reform, 13 educational attainment, 150 educational institutions, xi, 15, 29, 140, 169, 191, 193 educational objective, 16 educational policies, xiii, 1, 5, 14, 193 educational policy, 7, 11 educational process, 146, 149 educational programs, 2, 16 educational psychology, 128 educational qualifications, 163 educational quality, xiii, 1, 11, 17, 20, 21, 22, 58, 113 educational research, 116 educational services, 35, 173 educational system, xii, 3, 6, 14, 71, 72, 134, 179, 180, 188, 193, 194 educators, xi, 5, 17, 18, 19, 41 Egypt, 183, 214 El Salvador, 206 electricity, 89, 113, 137, 141, 143, 200 emotional, xi, 24, 28, 32, 49 employees, 133, 172 employers, 106, 175, 176, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 202, 203 employment, 34, 59, 124, 127, 133, 134, 137, 140, 143, 153, 155, 162, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 191, 200, 202 empowerment, 150, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166, 201 encouragement, 99, 104, 164, 170 energy, 9, 89 enrollment, ix, 13, 15, 22, 28, 29, 31, 36, 39, 40, 41, 46, 52, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 75, 81, 85, 87, 88, 89, 96, 103, 110, 128, 134, 139, 142, 152, 153, 154, 172, 173, 176, 183, 184, 185, 195, 196, 199 enrollment rates, 36, 57, 85, 96, 196 enthusiasm, 5, 44, 46, 73, 75, 89, 124, 154, 175, 196 entrepreneurs, 34, 45, 48, 79, 117 entrepreneurship, 117 environment, 13, 14, 19, 22, 23, 32, 33, 37, 49, 53, 61, 67, 78, 90, 100, 101, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137, 142, 151, 163, 174, 185, 186, 193 equality, xi, 17, 28, 29, 36, 102, 193 Equatorial Guinea, 160

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Index equilibrium, 12 equity, xii, 28, 56, 63, 68, 75, 86, 109, 173, 195 Eritrea, 36, 37, 40, 41, 65, 66, 87, 88, 111, 135, 182, 184 erosion, 11, 118, 134, 137 estimating, 72 Ethiopia, 40, 65, 66, 81, 85, 87, 88, 111, 135, 160, 173, 182, 184, 187, 192, 202, 213 ethnicity, 23 euphoria, 34, 49 Euro, 5, 17 Europe, 1, 5, 79, 99, 104, 119 Europeans, 172, 191 evening, 106, 145, 188 evolution, xiv, 123 examinations, 16, 18, 38, 41, 52, 53, 71, 72, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 104, 107, 113, 115, 117, 120, 121, 126, 128, 131, 178, 185, 196, 197, 198 excess demand, 79 exchange rate, 9 exclusion, 35, 149, 162, 166, 200 exercise, 11, 72, 90, 93, 125, 131, 158 expansions, 81 expenditures, 13, 14, 56, 57, 62, 64, 73, 75, 103, 195 expertise, 5, 6, 111, 112, 162 exploitation, 3, 14, 48 exposure, 22, 32, 33, 79, 116, 132, 166, 167, 185, 201 extraction, 2, 3

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F facilitators, 150 factual knowledge, 71, 72, 73 failure, 14, 17, 32, 33, 35, 60, 102, 177, 190, 193 faith, 60, 86, 150, 166, 201 family, xiii, 22, 26, 31, 32, 34, 36, 55, 59, 67, 138, 139, 146, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154, 159, 162, 169, 180 family factors, 67 family life, xiii, 26, 151 family planning, 153, 154 family structure, 34 famine, 13 farmers, 55, 107, 145, 172, 174 farming, 155, 162 farms, 155, 162 fear, 21, 70, 99, 100, 103, 119, 147, 155 feedback, 16, 72, 93, 94, 95 feeding, 38, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50, 195 feelings, 139 fees, 13, 43, 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 75, 128, 142, 181, 183, 188, 195, 199

231

females, 109, 110, 120, 184, 197 fertility, xii, 6, 22, 25, 26, 29, 55, 161, 194 fertility rate, 6, 26 finance, 68, 105, 182, 187 financial crisis, 118 financial resources, xv, 4, 11, 13, 62, 91, 151 financial support, 61, 63 financing, 5, 6, 11, 21, 25, 31, 42, 47, 50, 51, 73, 141, 164, 165, 167, 183, 187, 192, 194, 201, 202 First World, 9 flexibility, 107, 141 focus group, 91 focusing, 28, 35, 116 food, 46, 48, 63, 101, 103, 107, 113, 115, 141, 149, 156, 166, 200 food production, 46, 101 Ford, 8, 209 foreign exchange, 12, 103 foreign language, 47, 54, 71, 79, 83, 97, 116, 196 foreign person, 56 forestry, 172 formal education, 6, 16, 27, 37, 43, 49, 51, 55, 58, 74, 146, 155, 156, 159, 161, 165, 167, 173, 175, 180, 190, 194, 201 formal sector, 191, 192, 203 France, 1, 2, 5, 78, 79, 100, 104 freedom, 53, 74, 114, 191 fulfillment, 102 functional approach, 153 funding, 10, 36, 37, 43, 44, 48, 56, 60, 62, 102, 103, 109, 116, 117, 137, 165, 167, 173, 174, 182, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 201, 202 fundraising, 177, 191, 192, 203 funds, 4, 44, 63, 73, 80, 97, 102, 113, 116, 117, 118, 165, 173, 175, 182, 189, 190, 192, 196, 202

G Gabon, 65, 135, 160, 183, 187, 192, 202 GDP, 57 gender, ix, 22, 23, 27, 36, 39, 40, 60, 61, 86, 88, 109, 110, 120, 123, 127, 139, 145, 150, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171, 184, 185, 186, 197, 201, 220 gender differences, 22 gender equality, 61 gender inequality, 22 gender stereotyping, 163 General Certificate of Education, 125, 171 general education, 83, 96, 106, 162, 174, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 191, 192, 202 general election, 63 general knowledge, 54, 130 Geneva, 212 geography, 54, 74, 84, 130, 141

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Germany, 225 GERs, 13, 64, 85, 96, 196 girls, 22, 40, 55, 61, 67, 68, 86, 88, 110, 120, 139, 155, 184, 185, 186, 197 global education, 60 globalization, 24, 178 GNP, 57 goals, xii, xiii, xiv, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 37, 38, 42, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 60, 61, 62, 63, 74, 75, 82, 96, 101, 116, 118, 121, 123, 127, 139, 145, 180, 182, 187, 190, 193, 194, 195, 198 God, 1 gold standard, 101 goods and services, 117, 172 governance, 23, 24, 28 government policy, 38 grades, 22, 25, 45, 94, 110, 115, 129, 130, 131, 143, 199 grading, 94, 131 grants, 11, 44, 51, 62, 102, 116, 118, 128, 142, 171, 188, 199 Greenland, 216 gross national product, 57 group work, 124 grouping, 94 groups, 3, 4, 5, 13, 17, 34, 35, 39, 40, 60, 62, 63, 66, 68, 79, 88, 104, 106, 109, 110, 113, 120, 128, 136, 142, 155, 156, 161, 165, 167, 186, 197, 199, 201 growth, xi, xiii, xiv, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 19, 25, 26, 32, 34, 37, 46, 52, 56, 57, 72, 74, 94, 95, 99, 105, 113, 119, 120, 126, 129, 138, 140, 142, 147, 161, 178, 182, 187, 190, 195, 197, 199 growth rate, 26, 56 Guatemala, 210 guidance, 43, 108, 136 guidelines, 37, 42, 45, 47, 49, 63, 165, 194 Guinea, 4, 41, 65, 66, 87, 88, 135, 160, 184, 209

H handicapped, 133, 143, 199 harassment, 186 harmonization, 95 Harvard, 206, 207 Head Start, 208, 217 health, 6, 9, 11, 22, 23, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 55, 59, 80, 81, 84, 130, 138, 149, 150, 151, 154, 166, 189, 194, 195, 200 health care, 32 health clinics, 46 health education, 138 health services, 37 healthcare, 32, 37, 38, 42, 46, 48, 153

hegemony, 90 heterogeneous, 183 high school, 145, 177 higher education, 6, 7, 13, 56, 79, 80, 81, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 108, 109, 111, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 180, 184, 198 higher quality, xiii, 18, 25, 26, 27, 43, 124 high-level, 7, 8, 80, 81, 102, 105, 116, 176 high-risk, 138 hip, 5, 158 Hiroshima, xv, 225 HIV/AIDS, 25, 27, 29, 39, 138, 150, 166, 194, 201, 206, 207, 212 holism, 147 holistic, 32, 36, 49, 72 holistic approach, 32 homework, 20, 24, 69, 72, 93 homogenous, 180 hospitals, 107 hostility, 163 House, 218, 220 household, xiii, 26, 39, 51, 63, 67, 68, 74, 83, 86, 137, 140, 157, 161, 165, 188 household income, 68, 83, 86 households, 55, 57, 63, 67, 68, 69, 74, 83, 85, 86, 89, 109, 155, 161, 195 housing, 43, 70, 100, 129, 141, 143, 200 HSC, 84 human, xii, xiii, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 53, 54, 55, 56, 74, 78, 80, 95, 101, 102, 105, 108, 109, 112, 119, 148, 149, 151, 166, 170, 175, 176, 177, 191, 193, 200, 202 human capital, xiii, 6, 26, 56, 177, 191, 202 human development, 23, 102, 170 human dignity, 53, 74, 102 human experience, 54, 74 human nature, 15 human resource development, 6, 7, 8, 14, 78, 80, 95, 101, 112, 119, 176, 193 human resources, 8, 25, 80, 149, 176 human rights, 27, 78 humanity, 10, 148 husbandry, 107, 172 hygiene, 32, 150

I ICT, 116, 117 ideology, 11, 78, 99, 108, 170, 191 IEA, 20, 41 illiteracy, 59, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 161, 164, 166, 201 imagination, 102, 158 imbalances, 13, 109, 120, 188, 197

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Index immunization, 42, 46 implementation, 7, 14, 21, 39, 45, 69, 86, 105, 118, 121, 137, 141, 153, 159, 165, 167, 193, 198, 201 imports, 103 in transition, 73 inauguration, 33, 171 incentives, 73, 75, 95, 127, 129, 140, 141, 143, 152, 196, 200, 213 incidence, 48, 67 inclusion, 7, 111, 127 income, xiii, 5, 7, 9, 13, 14, 18, 24, 26, 29, 46, 57, 68, 85, 117, 124, 128, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 149, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159, 175, 178, 180, 181, 187, 193, 194, 200 increased access, xiii, 26, 62, 75, 108, 120, 195, 197 India, 2, 55 Indian, 34, 171, 206 Indiana, 220 indication, 58, 94, 110, 147, 161, 166, 201 indicators, xii, 17, 20, 29, 67, 117, 149, 193, 215 indigenous, 3, 17, 79, 117, 147, 161, 206 indirect effect, 22 individual character, 161 individual characteristics, 161 individual differences, 25 induction, 116, 138, 163 industrial, 1, 2, 84, 99, 171, 172, 176, 177, 178, 183, 185, 189 industrial policy, 1 industrial production, 2 industrial revolution, 178 industrialization, xiii, 3, 116 industrialized countries, 6, 8, 13, 19, 56, 57, 58, 74, 86, 124, 137, 176, 195 industry, 1, 84, 171, 188, 189, 190, 191 inefficiency, 68, 195 inequality, 16, 17, 109 infant mortality rate, 57 infants, 150 infection, 27, 138 inferiority, 2, 158, 170 inflation, 9, 69, 103, 115, 129, 137, 143, 188, 200 informal sector, 138, 169, 181, 182, 190 information systems, 191 infrastructure, 2, 23, 24, 100, 124, 187 inherited, 79 injustice, 16, 140 innovation, xiii, 20, 26, 117, 174 insecurity, 109, 115 inspectors, 23, 42, 43 instability, 111, 112, 149 instruction, 21, 35, 54, 72, 73, 75, 78, 79, 115, 116, 121, 151, 152, 154, 188, 196, 198

233

instructional materials, 42, 69, 73, 75, 90, 128, 129, 142, 195, 199 instructional time, xii, 20, 21 instructors, 152, 153 instruments, 16, 27, 41, 91, 104, 188 integration, 101, 102, 145 intellectual development, 32 intelligence, 25, 42 intentions, 36 interaction, 21, 32, 44, 48, 55, 71, 72, 93, 117, 146, 186 interaction process, 71 interactions, 44, 71 interest groups, 3, 13 interference, 114 internalizing, 79 International Labour Office (ILO), 190, 212 International Monetary Fund (IMF), xiii, 1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 112, 193 international standards, 104 intervention, 11, 35, 62, 64, 69, 70, 79, 138, 176 intervention strategies, 138 intrinsic value, xii, 24, 29, 193 investment, 5, 6, 9, 13, 57, 61, 74, 80, 101, 108, 142, 179, 182, 195 investment rate, 9 IQ scores, 33 Ireland, 33 Islamic, 164 ISO, 112 isolation, 125, 142, 157, 189 Israel, 9 ivory, xv Ivory Coast, 215

J Japan, 6, 178, 219, 225 Japanese, 83, 219, 223 job satisfaction, 137, 140, 141 job training, 169 jobs, 6, 26, 78, 85, 107, 138, 140, 175, 176, 178, 180, 182, 187 journalism, 106 justice, 53, 74, 149, 166, 200

K key indicators, 67 kindergartens, 32, 39, 45 King, 111, 181, 190, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 216, 219, 223 Korea, 6

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L labour, xiii, 2, 6, 21, 24, 25, 26, 43, 51, 53, 63, 117, 133, 162, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 202 labour force, xiii, 6, 26 labour market, 21, 24, 25, 117, 133, 169, 172, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 189, 190, 191, 192, 202 lack of confidence, 38 language, 33, 47, 54, 71, 73, 74, 79, 83, 84, 92, 94, 116, 130, 148, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 179, 200 language policy, 71 language skills, 155 later life, xii, 24, 29, 194 Latin America, 56, 57, 58, 59, 220 Latin American countries, 57 law, 78, 104, 108, 133 leadership, 3, 23, 25, 87, 100, 105, 106, 133, 139, 145, 156 learner achievement, 24 learners, xi, 15, 16, 17, 23, 28, 33, 52, 72, 89, 93, 145, 146, 148, 150, 152, 154, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 178, 187, 192, 201, 202 learning environment, xi, xii, 21, 110, 112, 115, 121, 163, 198 learning outcomes, xi, 28, 58, 61, 112, 123, 133, 178 learning process, 16, 21, 23, 44, 48, 93, 115, 145, 164 learning skills, 27 learning society, 147 learning task, 16 legal protection, 116 lending, 11, 60, 179 lesson plan, 132, 136, 143, 200 liberal, 3, 11, 78, 81, 95, 104, 109, 170 Liberia, 160 lifelong learning, 17, 147 lifetime, xiii, 26 likelihood, 67, 100, 119, 175 limitation, 67, 72, 159 linear, 173 linguistic, 130, 148 linkage, 46 links, xii, 3, 24, 26, 27, 29, 101, 153, 194 listening, 93, 148, 166, 200 literacy, xii, xiii, xiv, 5, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 38, 47, 53, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 73, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 194, 200, 201 literacy rates, 149, 161 living conditions, 57, 140, 152, 154 living environment, 137, 143, 200

loans, 11, 13, 101, 116 local authorities, 34, 35 local community, 136 local government, 35, 43, 45, 46, 111, 127, 156 localization, 90 London, 2, 100, 104, 170, 171, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221 long distance, 67, 163 long period, 77, 171 long work, 133, 143, 199 losses, 139 low tech, 182, 186 low-income, 57, 124 low-level, 2, 149

M machinery, 3, 8 machines, 117, 186 Madison, 219 mainstream, 17, 35, 119, 155, 161, 172 mainstream society, 161 maintenance, 43, 63, 73, 108, 113, 118, 120, 121, 188, 192, 198, 202 malaria, 48 Malaysia, 210 males, 110, 120, 197 malnutrition, 38, 48, 49, 194 management, xiii, 24, 45, 48, 51, 70, 80, 105, 111, 113, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 130, 137, 141, 162, 184, 191, 197 manipulation, 16 manpower, 7, 8, 80, 81, 101, 102 manual training, 170 manufacturing, 133 market, 11, 21, 24, 25, 56, 86, 116, 117, 129, 133, 134, 169, 172, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 202, 216 marketing, 107 marketisation, 116 markets, 2, 9 marriage, 22, 155, 185 Marxists, 16 mask, 114 masonry, 51, 170, 171, 172, 180 mass media, 59, 146, 153 mastery, 18, 20, 21, 62, 67, 71, 72, 89, 116 material resources, 22, 42, 108 maternal, 38, 55, 150 mathematics, 33, 54, 74, 84, 93, 94, 130, 141, 189 maturation, 47 Mauritania, 36, 184

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Index Mauritius, 36, 39, 40, 41, 65, 66, 87, 88, 111, 135, 160 measles, 150 measurement, 16, 72 measures, xii, xiii, 9, 17, 20, 21, 25, 31, 47, 50, 62, 64, 73, 75, 79, 94, 118, 121, 126, 140, 141, 143, 146, 194, 195, 196, 198, 200 media, 59, 78, 79, 146, 153 medical care, 129 medical school, 108, 116 medical services, 107 medicine, 59, 78, 101, 106, 107, 108, 110, 114 memorizing, 21 men, 1, 87, 127, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161, 164, 165, 166, 172, 184, 186, 201 mental ability, 48 mental development, 32, 38 meritocratic, 78 messages, 27 metropolitan area, 134 microscope, 91 middle class, 170 Middle East, 58 middle income, 159 migrant, 51 migrants, 161 migration, 155, 182 militant, 99 military, 4 milk, 153 Millennium Development Goals, 36, 62, 74, 85, 190, 195, 221 Ministry of Education, 58, 69, 157, 179, 207, 212, 213, 214, 215 minorities, 61, 161, 165, 167, 201 minority, 186 missions, 112 MIT, 206 mixing, 162, 167, 201 mobility, 5, 14, 32, 67, 78, 150, 193 modalities, 86 models, 5, 14, 26, 78, 79, 90, 164, 193 modern society, 126, 148, 165, 166, 201 modernisation, 6, 112 modernity, 4, 5, 187, 192, 202 modernization, 4, 6, 8, 32, 56, 78, 80, 95, 102, 147, 182 momentum, 179, 192, 202 money, 4, 32, 43, 60, 83, 112, 115, 117, 136, 151, 154, 170, 177, 190, 192, 203 monopoly, 102 morale, 45, 70, 73, 75, 93, 111, 115, 121, 137, 140, 152, 196, 198

235

morbidity, 138 Morocco, 182 mortality, 22, 55, 57 mother tongue, 47, 74, 83, 158 mothers, 34, 48, 55, 150, 162, 163 motivation, 23, 25, 45, 70, 93, 127, 129, 131, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 152, 153, 155, 165, 167, 174, 199, 200, 201 Mozambique, 4, 65, 66, 87, 88, 135, 160, 182, 184 multilateral, 10, 11, 13, 62, 129 multiple-choice questions, 72 multiplication, 154 multiplicity, 35 music, 79, 84, 130, 132 Muslim, 51, 155, 164, 208

N Namibia, 19, 36, 40, 65, 66, 87, 88, 135, 158, 160, 165, 166, 182, 184, 187, 201, 209, 211, 212, 215, 222 nation, 3, 19, 55, 57, 74, 78, 79, 101, 102, 104, 106, 149, 153, 157, 158, 180 nation building, 3, 106 national action, 61 national culture, 104 national economies, 103 national expenditure, 8, 9 national income, 7 national policy, 35, 37, 48, 102 nationalism, 3, 78, 104, 151 nation-building, 78, 79, 104, 149 natural, 72, 84, 100, 105, 174 natural resources, 174 natural sciences, 84, 105 neglect, 2, 34, 35, 56, 109, 118, 139, 190 neo-liberal, 11, 109 NEPAD, 147, 209 Nepal, 212 Netherlands, 206, 221 network, 4, 27 New York, 7, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 218, 221, 222, 223 NGOs, 13, 36, 44, 58, 59, 60, 86, 155, 163, 164, 189 Niger, 41, 57, 65, 66, 87, 88, 160, 182, 184 Nigeria, 8, 41, 55, 57, 62, 65, 66, 80, 87, 88, 106, 111, 113, 135, 160, 208, 217 Non-Aligned Movement, 9 nongovernmental organization, 36 normal, 48, 106, 125, 137, 142 norms, 17, 25, 186 North America, 104, 119 nuclear, 34 nursing, 84, 117

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nutrition, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 55, 107, 130, 151, 195 nutrition education, 48

O obligation, 190 obsolete, 188, 189 occupational, 5, 14, 78, 138, 174, 178, 193 occupational mobility, 78 OECD, 10, 11, 56, 214 oil, 9, 62, 103 omission, 36 OPEC, 9 opportunism, 114 opportunity costs, 57, 74, 195 opposition, 102, 103, 147, 172 oppression, 164 optimism, 8, 9 oral, 47, 73, 92, 130, 148, 166, 200 orientation, 2, 18, 45, 180, 181 orthodox, 12 outreach programs, 106 overproduction, 102, 130, 141 ownership, 125, 183

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P Pacific, 60, 221 Pacific Region, 221 Pan-Africanism, 205 pandemic, 27, 39, 138, 139 Papua New Guinea, 209 parental care, 48 parents, 17, 21, 27, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 59, 63, 68, 70, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 89, 95, 96, 110, 136, 150, 155, 175, 180, 184, 185, 187, 188, 192, 194, 196, 202 Paris, 24, 40, 41, 65, 66, 87, 88, 100, 111, 135, 160, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 218, 221, 222, 223 Parkinson, 221 Parliament, 152 partnership, 48, 80, 81 partnerships, 52, 59, 119 passive, 21, 71, 92, 96, 162, 196 pathways, 180, 190 patriotism, 151 pedagogical, 21, 68, 73, 75, 90, 95, 132, 195 pedagogies, 16, 28 pedagogy, 16, 17, 21, 70, 71, 107, 124, 126, 130, 131, 178, 186 peer assessment, 16 peer rejection, 33

peers, 42, 94, 138 pensions, 138 per capita expenditure, 103 per capita income, 13, 149 perception, 5, 6, 12, 14, 15, 29, 38, 41, 52, 70, 72, 102, 103, 106, 107, 110, 111, 146, 147, 149, 162, 182, 184, 187, 192, 193, 202 permanent resident, 34 permit, 21, 81 perseverance, 25 personal efficacy, 25 personality, 25, 42, 51, 54, 72, 130 petroleum, 9, 62 philosophers, 15, 16 philosophical, 16, 90, 95 philosophy, 4, 78, 95, 130, 174, 189 physical education, 84, 130, 132 physics, 84, 91, 113 planning, 6, 7, 16, 36, 46, 70, 83, 95, 96, 101, 104, 105, 111, 113, 118, 119, 120, 123, 132, 153, 154, 165, 167, 191, 197, 201 pluralism, 4 policy reform, 9 policymakers, 15, 27, 28, 29, 123, 134, 150, 166, 175, 176, 187, 192, 201, 202 political leaders, 4, 5, 158 political parties, 63 political power, 3, 115 politicians, 99, 134, 173 politics, 5, 79, 114 polytechnics, 171, 174, 175, 181, 186 poor performance, 70 population, 2, 22, 26, 34, 39, 57, 85, 96, 117, 133, 134, 147, 157, 158, 159, 161, 166, 173, 175, 196, 201 population group, 161 population growth, 161 ports, 1, 215 Portugal, 5, 78, 79 positive attitudes, 82, 151, 176 positive feedback, 72 postsecondary education, 176 post-secondary institutions, 125 posture, 102 poverty, 4, 9, 10, 34, 39, 49, 57, 61, 63, 74, 83, 86, 96, 101, 138, 148, 149, 153, 156, 161, 166, 176, 178, 182, 190, 194, 195, 200 poverty reduction, 190 power, 3, 4, 9, 16, 17, 63, 115, 165, 167, 201 power relations, 17 powers, 1, 2, 3, 13, 180, 191 pragmatic, 3, 170 prejudice, 116

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Index premium, 2, 47, 53, 178, 182, 189, 194 preschool, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 127, 130, 141, 143, 194, 199 preschool children, 42, 47, 48 pressure, 9, 67, 72, 83, 93, 109, 130, 131, 187 prestige, 5, 14, 133, 193 Pretoria, 214 preventive, 107 prices, 3, 9, 14, 57, 86 primary school enrollment, 56, 57, 58, 74, 182, 195 primary sector, 86 prior knowledge, 17 private benefits, 55, 74 private costs, 63 private enterprises, 35 private schools, 45, 79, 83, 86, 91 private sector, 6, 48, 62, 80, 115, 119, 133, 176, 181, 192, 202 privatization, 11, 109, 182 proactive, 132 probability, xii, 25, 67 problem solving, 7, 103 production, xiii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 21, 26, 46, 53, 71, 130, 151, 152, 153, 154, 170, 174, 182, 188, 191, 192, 203 productivity, xiii, 8, 11, 20, 25, 26, 55, 59, 149, 151 professional development, 42, 45, 93, 132, 138 professional growth, 138, 140 professional qualifications, 70, 106, 146 professional teacher, 136 professions, 2, 78, 82, 105, 119, 128, 130, 134, 197 profit, 79, 86, 116, 117, 180 program, 10, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 59, 107, 110, 113, 132, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 174, 175, 176, 179, 181, 183, 201 proliferation, 116, 155 property, 1, 125 property owner, 1 proposition, 102 prosperity, 4, 187, 192, 202 protection, 32, 107, 116 protocols, 15 proxy, 20, 26, 28, 32, 117 pseudo, 170, 191 psychological development, 126 psychology, 130, 164 public administration, 105 public education, 4, 127, 179, 187, 192, 202 public employment, 177 public expenditures, 103 public funds, 4, 102, 116 public health, 107

237

public schools, 45, 79, 92, 134 public sector, 4, 11, 187 public service, 104, 106, 129 punishment, 16, 70 pupil, 21, 23, 44, 45, 48, 64, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 85, 92, 93, 134, 136, 138, 143, 196, 199 pupil achievement, 73, 75, 196 pupils, xi, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 33, 39, 44, 45, 52, 62, 63, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 80, 82, 85, 92, 93, 95, 96, 125, 132, 133, 134, 136, 139, 173, 179, 196 purchasing power, 115

Q qualifications, xiv, 44, 45, 99, 118, 121, 123, 127, 188, 198 quality assurance, 116, 118 quality research, 105, 119, 197 questioning, 90, 95, 103, 162

R race, 23, 117 racism, 34, 170, 191 radicalism, 102 radio, 163, 164 range, xii, xiii, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 32, 39, 46, 48, 64, 77, 81, 82, 94, 106, 111, 117, 118, 121, 123, 125, 126, 134, 141, 142, 146, 162, 169, 178, 179, 180, 181, 191, 194, 198, 225 rate of return, 56 rationality, 187 raw materials, 2, 3 readership, xv reading, xii, 15, 18, 29, 53, 79, 84, 107, 115, 121, 132, 146, 148, 150, 151, 157, 158, 163, 166, 198, 200, 201 reagents, 113, 120, 198 real income, 57 real terms, 60, 103 real wage, 137 reality, 73, 75, 79, 130, 190, 196 reasoning, 72 recall, 20, 71, 92 recession, 59, 62, 69, 112 recognition, 35, 90, 93, 110, 130, 133, 140, 154 recovery, 62 recreation, 53 recreational, 43, 174 recruiting, 70 recycling, 115 redistribution, 9 reflection, 52

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reforms, 3, 4, 9, 90, 126, 134, 136, 175, 179 regenerate, 73, 75, 196 regional, 5, 45, 52, 58, 61, 62, 88, 92, 109, 110, 120, 127, 159, 161, 197 regionalism, 104 regular, 11, 32, 45, 49, 62, 70, 72, 92, 93, 104, 106, 113, 116, 117, 141, 144, 200 regulation, 9, 117, 191 regulations, 22, 48, 83, 189 regulatory requirements, 191 rehabilitate, 174 rehabilitation, 105 reinforcement, 55, 151 rejection, 12, 33, 79, 186 relapse, 164 relationship, xiii, 3, 5, 7, 20, 26, 57, 100, 101, 104, 149, 161, 183, 188 relationships, 23, 102, 137 relevance, xiv, 14, 15, 17, 20, 35, 38, 90, 101, 102, 113, 119, 123, 145, 153, 161, 167, 169, 173, 176, 178, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 201, 202 reliability, 25 religions, 51 remission, 62 repair, 113, 118, 120, 121, 188, 192, 198, 202 replication, 129 representative samples, 187 reproduction, 2, 14, 78, 115, 121, 198 Republic of the Congo, 65, 87, 135 reputation, 91 Research and Development, xv, 225 residential, 100, 174 resistance, 108, 139, 147, 157, 164, 172 resolution, 9 resource allocation, 28, 56, 63, 139 responsibilities, 46, 82, 84, 104, 106, 108, 117, 119, 126, 135, 136, 138, 152, 155, 158, 162 responsiveness, 165, 167, 191, 201 restructuring, 9, 12, 108 retention, xiii, 22, 26, 28, 46, 52, 89, 140, 162 retirement, 43, 140 returns, xii, 22, 25, 36, 48, 51, 62, 67, 83, 92, 173, 182 revenue, 44, 62, 86, 116, 128 rewards, 16, 25 rhetoric, 124, 187 rigidity, 188 risk, 25, 27, 29, 33, 48, 138, 194 rote learning, 16, 71, 186 routines, 92 rural, xiii, 3, 8, 17, 26, 34, 35, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 57, 66, 74, 78, 101, 107, 119, 139, 140, 141,

143, 152, 153, 156, 157, 165, 169, 172, 174, 178, 180, 182, 185, 189, 190, 195, 200 rural areas, 3, 34, 35, 40, 45, 46, 49, 57, 74, 101, 119, 139, 140, 141, 143, 152, 153, 178, 180, 185, 195, 200 rural communities, 157 rural development, 189 rural people, 107 rural population, 48, 101 rural poverty, 182 rural women, 55 Rwanda, 65, 87, 134, 135, 160

S safety, 35, 110 salaries, 11, 13, 20, 23, 43, 45, 48, 50, 86, 114, 115, 121, 129, 133, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 188, 194, 198, 199, 200 salary, 9, 73, 75, 133, 136, 137, 195 SAPs, xiii, 1, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 57, 58, 59, 193 satellite, 116, 117 satisfaction, 53, 112, 136, 137, 140, 141 saturation, 175 scarce resources, 173 scarcity, 73, 75, 114, 120, 127, 133, 195, 198 scholarship, 11, 179, 129, 76 school achievement, 20, 189 school activities, 72 school climate, 79 school enrollment, 22, 81, 139, 159, 182 school management, 70, 137, 139 school objectives, 89, 95, 96, 196 school performance, 134 school work, 47 schooling, xi, xii, xiii, 2, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 38, 41, 57, 62, 63, 67, 68, 71, 75, 77, 85, 86, 94, 95, 140, 146, 155, 159, 178, 179, 180, 184, 194, 195 science education, 90 science teaching, 89 scientific knowledge, 90, 178 scores, xii, 20, 22, 24, 25, 29, 94, 194 second language, 73, 92 secondary education, ix, xiii, 6, 7, 8, 60, 61, 68, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 101, 107, 116, 127, 129, 143, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 184, 195, 199 secondary school students, 77, 78, 79, 84, 90, 94, 145 secondary schools, 13, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 107, 110, 120, 125, 128, 130, 142, 173, 174, 176, 177, 181, 189, 196, 197

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Index sectoral policies, 36 security, 28, 63, 141, 149, 155, 166, 174, 200 segregation, 51, 52 self-awareness, 37 self-concept, 55 self-conception, 55 self-confidence, 37, 151, 159, 164, 166, 167, 201 self-employment, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178 self-esteem, 37, 137, 143, 200 self-expression, 37, 53 self-government, 100, 106, 119 self-help, 34, 35, 43, 52, 68, 151, 153, 163, 165 self-improvement, 99 self-interest, 2 semi-arid, 69, 109, 120, 197 Senegal, 10, 15, 36, 40, 41, 60, 65, 66, 87, 88, 100, 123, 135, 160, 184, 209, 221 sensitivity, 13 sensitization, 48 series, 93, 189 services, 9, 10, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 46, 62, 73, 75, 80, 89, 105, 106, 117, 152, 167, 172, 173, 176, 191, 192, 196, 203, 225 settlements, 132 sex differences, 22 sexual behaviour, 138 sexual harassment, 185 Seychelles, 39, 40, 41, 65, 87, 135, 160 shape, 52, 72, 123 shaping, xiii, 1, 16, 71, 178 sharing, 11, 13, 57, 83, 86, 89, 95, 96, 110, 132, 156, 196 short supply, 113, 178 shortage, 13, 45, 69, 71, 90, 107, 109, 114, 115, 124, 129, 130, 136, 188 shyness, 139 siblings, 33, 34 Sierra Leone, 101, 160 sign, 64, 67, 186 signals, 63 signs, 55, 139, 158 Singapore, 10 singular, 101, 119 sites, 78, 176 skills training, 190 slums, 66, 132 social attitudes, 133 social benefits, xii, 25, 29, 55, 74, 194 social capital, 133 social change, 17, 145 social context, 42 social control, 133

239

social development, xii, 5, 24, 29, 42, 56, 148, 149, 194 social expenditure, 57 social group, 17, 165, 167, 201 social hierarchy, 159 social indicator, 57 social inequalities, 16 social integration, 145 social justice, 53, 74 social movements, 10, 148 social participation, 153 social problems, 133, 150, 166, 201 social relations, 19 social responsibility, 53, 101, 145 social sciences, 105, 107, 110 social services, 9, 35, 46, 62, 106, 152, 153, 176 social skills, 33, 164 social status, 187, 192, 202 social structure, 17, 105 social work, 117 social workers, 117 socialism, 106 socialization, 26, 38, 47, 159 socioeconomic, 18, 34 socioeconomic background, 18 sociologists, 16, 41 solidarity, 155 South Africa, 26, 39, 40, 41, 57, 65, 66, 85, 87, 111, 135, 160, 182, 187, 211, 215, 220 South Asia, 60, 207 South Korea, 178 Soviet Union, 10, 11 specialization, 45, 81, 84, 183 spectrum, 72 speed, xiii, 26 spheres, 17 spiritual, 37, 53, 82, 130, 136 sponsor, 13 sports, 27, 132 stability, 16, 25, 100, 103, 148 staff development, 42, 114, 118, 120, 186, 198 staffing, 31, 45, 91, 114, 140, 141, 189 stages, 52, 58, 81, 83, 84, 158, 174 stakeholders, 21, 112, 119 standard of living, xiii, 26, 137 standards, 6, 11, 19, 20, 23, 24, 42, 43, 48, 50, 52, 53, 69, 70, 82, 83, 91, 99, 100, 104, 106, 108, 112, 117, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 170, 194, 198 state intervention, 11 statehood, 63 statistics, 11 status of children, 44 stereotypes, 185

Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

240

Index

stimulus, 16 strategic planning, 105 strategies, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 23, 24, 31, 35, 42, 49, 54, 56, 61, 62, 72, 73, 75, 92, 112, 136, 138, 141, 190, 194, 196 strength, 88, 186 stress, 32, 49, 140 stretching, 113, 120, 133, 197 structural adjustment, xiii, 1, 9, 12, 57, 59, 80, 112 structural adjustment programmes, xiii, 1, 57, 80 student achievement, xii, 20, 22, 25 student enrollment, ix, 8, 56, 109, 110, 116, 120, 134, 135, 185, 197 student teacher, 128, 130, 131, 134, 142, 143, 199 subgroups, 173 subsidies, 86, 189 subsidy, 85, 86 subsistence, 131, 162 subsistence farming, 162 subtraction, 154 sugar, 34, 185 supervision, 35, 38, 42, 47, 50, 60, 80, 100, 126, 153, 171, 194 supervisors, 23, 42, 43, 131, 138 supply, 63, 69, 70, 85, 89, 91, 107, 108, 110, 120, 123, 130, 178, 188, 197 support services, 80 support staff, 23 survival, 32, 38, 55, 67, 103, 137, 150, 165, 182 survival rate, 67 sustainability, 63, 64, 116, 148, 164 sustainable development, 59, 147, 149 switching, 71 symbiotic, 149 symbolic, 63 symbolic value, 63 symbols, 147 syndrome, 44 syntax, 116

T talent, 1, 102, 111 Tanzania, 4, 7, 8, 17, 39, 41, 62, 65, 66, 67, 70, 80, 81, 85, 101, 106, 111, 135, 160, 163, 172, 177, 186, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 213, 214, 215, 218, 219, 222 targets, 6, 8, 36, 59, 61, 107, 123, 153 teacher performance, 70 teacher preparation, 130 teacher training, 21, 43, 45, 124, 127, 128, 130, 134, 137, 138, 142, 199 technical assistance, xiii, 1, 8, 13, 14, 60, 110, 112, 128, 193

technician, 171, 183, 186 technicians, 171, 178 technocratic, 103 television, 13, 164 tension, 113, 139 tenure, 114, 121, 198 territorial, 170 terrorist, 186 tertiary education, ix, 6, 8, 56, 85, 86, 108, 110, 111, 112, 118, 129 test items, 72 test scores, xii, xiii, 21, 22, 25, 26 textbooks, xii, 5, 11, 13, 20, 22, 23, 69, 73, 75, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 129, 142, 152, 188, 195, 196, 199 Thailand, 15, 58 thinking, 2, 10, 12, 17, 23, 37, 53, 71, 72, 90, 92, 93, 106, 125, 178, 186 Third World, 10, 11, 101, 206, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 222 threat, 11, 46, 131, 147, 164 threatened, 163, 164 Togo, 40, 41, 65, 66, 87, 135, 160, 182, 184 top-down, 138, 190 trade, 3, 9, 13, 162, 171, 186 tradition, 3, 16, 35, 71, 73, 104, 107 trainees, 107, 124, 127, 130, 138, 141, 171, 174, 180, 187, 189 training programs, 55, 141, 179, 192, 202 traits, 2, 25 transactions, 151 transfer, 3, 5, 9, 71, 73 transformation, 112, 145, 150, 156, 186, 187, 190 transition, 31, 33, 42, 47, 68, 74, 75, 195 transmission, 16, 17, 47, 78, 154 transparency, 12 transparent, 142, 144, 200 transport, 43, 80, 106, 129 transportation, 70 treaties, 27 trust, 148 tuition, 63, 183 Tunisia, 182 turnover, 45, 140

U Uganda, 36, 37, 40, 41, 55, 65, 81, 86, 87, 88, 111, 135, 160, 182, 184, 207, 209, 213, 216, 220, 225 UN General Assembly, 12 undergraduate, 104 unemployment, 9, 57, 83, 127, 140, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 182, 189, 190, 191, 202 UNFPA, 60

Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index UNICEF, 36, 44, 46, 57, 58, 60, 91, 110, 209, 218, 221 uniform, 22, 66 unions, 81, 115, 125, 137, 140 unit cost, 188 United Kingdom, 25, 33, 225 United Nations (UN), 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 27, 28, 36, 58, 67, 210, 221, 225 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 6, 12, 58, 60 United States, 5, 6, 11, 13, 25, 33, 79, 99, 170, 225 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 27, 58 Universal Primary Education, 60, 62, 187, 190, 206, 209, 213, 216, 219 universality, 7, 36, 90 universities, 5, 8, 13, 79, 95, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 128, 129, 130, 131, 142, 146, 197, 198, 199, 225 university education, xiv, 78, 99, 103, 108, 109, 110, 113, 115, 118, 120, 121, 197, 198 university students, 105, 108, 109, 120, 197 upward mobility, 78 urban areas, 35, 45, 46, 47, 66, 70, 92, 95, 106, 134, 140, 174 urban centres, 34, 35, 45, 139, 140, 141, 143, 154, 200 urban population, 66 USAID, 102, 103, 207

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

V values, xi, xii, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 37, 51, 53, 55, 59, 78, 79, 82, 94, 95, 96, 105, 127, 132, 146, 150, 176, 193 variables, 18, 23, 102 variation, 93 vehicles, 44, 114, 117 ventilation, 46 venue, 10 village, 152, 156, 171, 172, 174 violence, 150, 166, 201 visible, 63 vision, 10, 170 vocational, xiv, 2, 68, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 95, 97, 101, 102, 156, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 196, 202 vocational education, xiv, 2, 78, 169, 170, 172, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 202 vocational schools, 171, 177, 181

241

vocational training, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 185, 191 voluntary organizations, 35, 124, 142 volunteers, 225 voting, 10, 12 vulnerability, 102, 103

W wages, 11 water, 46, 69, 80, 89, 105, 113, 137, 141, 143, 150, 153, 162, 163, 200 weakness, 90 wealth, 9, 39, 53, 74 welding, 180 welfare, 10, 11, 34, 55, 150 well-being, 82, 101, 119, 149, 161, 166, 200 West Africa, 2, 99, 100, 177, 217, 218, 221 Western countries, 10, 150, 166, 201 Western culture, 32 Western Europe, 178 Wisconsin, 219 wisdom, 4 women, xii, 17, 22, 25, 26, 29, 31, 34, 55, 61, 91, 95, 110, 127, 145, 148, 150, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 171, 184, 185, 186, 192, 194, 201, 202 wood, 84, 162, 163 workers, 6, 55, 107, 138, 162, 170, 171, 174 workforce, 138, 176 working conditions, 21, 73, 75, 126, 133, 137, 139, 196 working hours, 133, 143, 199 workload, 129, 137, 138 workplace, 169, 191 World Food Program, 44, 48 writing, 11, 15, 29, 53, 93, 117, 146, 148, 150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 163, 165, 166, 186, 200

Y yield, 62, 161 young adults, 171 young teachers, 139, 140 younger children, 32, 33 youth literacy, 161 youth unemployment, 173, 174, 177, 189, 191, 202

Z Zimbabwe, 39, 40, 55, 57, 65, 66, 67, 68, 87, 88, 135, 160, 172, 176, 187, 214, 215, 216 zoology, 113

Challenges of Quality Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,