Effects of Underdevelopment on Education Provision in Zambia - Essay Example

Effects of Underdevelopment on Education Provision in Zambia Introduction Zambia, with a population of just over 11 million people, has been undergoing the process of democracy and economic liberalization since the early 90s, similar to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, as noted by Sardanis (2014: p19), political and economic reform have failed to fulfil the high hopes and expectations held by Zambians as ~60% of the country’s population still lives below $2 a day. Indeed, most of the country no longer believes that more democratic and open political and economic systems are critical to improving their lives. Still, it has been noted that the problem is not inherently linked to the political process and could be linked to disconnect between the citizens’ needs and the country’s policies. Gewald et al (2012: p29) emphasize the critical link between political participation and education, especially noting that education is essential to the social, economic, and political development of Zambia. Zambia’s Ministry of Education has since the early 90s been determined enhance access and quality of education in accordance to the societies needs (Sardanis, 2014: p21). This paper will seek to discuss the effects of underdevelopment on the provision of education in Zambia, while also evaluating the impact of policies, practices, and projects on schooling in Zambia. First, an overview of Zambia’s current economic development and political situation will be given. Current State of Economic Development Zambia’s economy is heavily reliant on the mining industry, specifically copper mining. However, the costs of production continues to rise as copper reserves are depleted, while income is unstable due to copper prices on the world market, which has been identified as a reason why Zambia should diversify its economic base (Baldini & IMF, 2012: p35). The agricultural industry is poorly developed, while major investments both public and foreign in the manufacturing industry only took place following the country’s independence from Britain. Involvement of the state in almost every economic aspect has led to a highly bureaucratic and centralized economic structure. In real terms, economic growth in 2013 in Zambia declined by 6.5%, particularly because of a fall in output of cotton and maize that makes up most of the country’s economic output (Baldini & IMF, 2012: p35). Largely, real GDP growth is driven by the public, transportation, construction, communications, mining, and manufacturing sector. Copper contributes to at least 70% of Zambia’s export earnings, although non-traditional exports like agriculture have increased significantly. Refined and raw copper make up 44% and 29% of its exports, while corn, raw tobacco, and raw cotton make up 5.5%, 4.9%, and 2.5% of exports respectively (Baldini & IMF, 2012: p37). Regarding imports, the top five imported products include delivery trucks, excavation machinery, large constructor vehicles, iron structures, and refined petroleum, accounting for 5.9%, 3.4%, 3.0%, 2.3%, and 2.2% of imports respectively. In the past ten year, economic policy has focused mainly on creating opportunities for youth employment, strengthening anti-corruption efforts, and improving accountability. The government also plans to focus on fiscal management to narrow the country’s budget deficit, which Leiderer and Faust (2013: p53) notes doubled in 2013 as a result of increased wages in the public sector and expansion of spending in infrastructure. It is clear that the next five years will need a concerted effort to expand the government’s tax base to generate more revenues, while also streamlining expenditure to focus on priority areas and less on recurrent expenditure. Moreover, there are signs that the government is seeking to strengthen private sector competitiveness, especially in light of higher wage demands for skilled labour that continues to be in short supply. As a landlocked country, Zambia is also constrained by high transport costs that constitute ~40% of total costs (Leiderer & Faust, 2013: p54). However, the extractive industry, which accounts for most transportation costs, has high potential for development of the upstream value chain. Political Situation in Zambia Zambia’s political framework consists of a presidential form of representative democratic republic, in which the president is the head of government, head of state, and a multi=-party system leader. The country, in general, is politically stable evidenced by the peaceful transition from an authoritarian government to a democracy in the early 90s. In addition, Bauer and Taylor (2013: p37) notes that the country’s observation of human rights during this period was unprecedented in Sub-Saharan Africa, while the country has never been under military rule unlike most Sub-Saharan Africa countries. Legislation, such as the Investment Act 1993, continues to offer protection for foreign and domestic investors from industry nationalization, as well as the right to transfer funds overseas. However, the economy’s poor state as noted above risks future political stability, while the World Bank and IMF have expressed concern about debt levels and obligations (Bauer & Taylor, 2013: p39). The government’s actions to resuscitate the economy have seen it undertake efforts to privatize parastatals, down-sizing the public workforce, subsidy abolition for consumer products, and reduction of social welfare spending (Beuran et al, 2011: p44). However, this has resulted in increased unemployment, specifically from the privatization program. In turn, this has seen an increase in political spill-off, including rising crime rates, while industrial unrest could result from the government’s implementation of a wage ceiling. Thirdly, abolishment of consumer goods subsidies has led to culture shock for most average and low-income earning people, which could also create risks for socio-political upheavals. Also, the government’s cuts on health, educational, and social expenditure is already raising hostile reactions from women’s lobby groups, university student bodies, and other pressure groups (Beuran et al, 2011: p44). These factors are essential in auditing the current political situation and environment in the country, as well as assessing how favourable the political climate in Zambia is to attracting investment in sectors like education. Overview of Zambia’s Education System The education system in Zambia has a 7-5-2 structure, in which students go through seven years of primary school, 2 years and 3 years respectively in junior and higher secondary school, and 4 years for undergraduate degrees in university. The education structure is characterized by a sharp apex at the top that represents higher education and a broad base that represents lower education (Schwenke, 2013: p41). The system begins with four years that make up pre-school education, although this is optional for Zambian children. Children usually enter pre-school at the age of 3 years. The first education level in Zambia is primary education, which consists of seven years with an entrance age of seven years. After primary school education, secondary education is the next level and this takes a time period of five years and has an entrance age of seven years at average. For a student to progress from one level to the next, they have to pass an external extermination under government direction, including baccalaureate education and end of primary school education examinations (Schwenke, 2013: p41). As a result there are no expectations that all children will graduate to secondary education and, at present, the government’s emphasis lies in making sure that children are provided with primary education for seven years. Over the past twenty years, ~67% of primary school children do not proceed on to secondary education, while only 33% of those who drop out of primary school get the opportunity to join secondary school education (Schwenke, 2013: p43). Moreover, out of all students who enrol in primary education for seven years, less than 20% join the next level, while ~2% of the age group 20-24 actually joins university, college, or another form of higher education. As a result, this education structure, coupled with its related selection hurdles, means that most students joining the education system do not go to higher education and education levels. Thus, the government has sought to make continuing education a priority for their new education system and structure. The official instruction language for Zambian schools is English, which is the case for pre-school, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Gewald et al (2012: p29) shows that a total of 1.67 million students are currently enrolled between grade 1 and 9, while a further 225,000 students in 10-12 grade are presently enrolled training colleges for teachers. Additionally, at least 4.500 students are enrolled in university, while another 23,000 are undergoing distance and continuing education. At present, Zambia has two universities, one national correspondence college, fourteen open learning and continuing education centres, fourteen teachers training colleges, 200 secondary schools, and 3,800 governments basic and primary schools. Community schools have increased by seven times between 2009 and 2013 from 55 to 373, while enrolment in these schools has increased to 47,276 from 6.599 during the same period (Gewald et al, 2012: p32). The increase is attributed to the government’s role as a facilitator, encouraging the growth of community schools. It is expected that the growth of community schools will offer an alternative path for children’s basic education. These are non-profit making schools that enable disadvantaged children to access opportunities for education, especially because they are relatively cheap. Children between nine and sixteen, especially those who have dropped out of primary school, are served by these community schools, which mostly use untrained community-based volunteer teachers. The Zambian government and the Community Schools Secretariat signed a memorandum in 2008 that recognized the crucial role of community schools in education provision, obliging the Ministry of Education to provide educational advisors, learning materials, and to employ trained teachers (Gewald et al, 2012: p33). Policies and/or Projects, National Aspirations, and Population’s Involvement in Education There are several relevant policies, regulations, and legislations that govern Zambia’s education system. The Education Act of 1996 provides a legal framework for Zambia’s education system’s development, including university education, college education, high school, and basic education (Jones, 2013: p62). The Technical Vocational, Education, and Entrepreneurship Training Act of 2005 provides the legal framework for development of technical, educational, vocational, and entrepreneurship training , while also providing for the private sector to participate in providing these programs. In addition, the University Act No.11 1999 provides a legal framework for Zambia’s university education, stipulating requirements for governance and establishment of university education, while also defining required parameters and conditions for setting up and maintaining private institutions and standards (Jones, 2013: p63). Shortly following independence, an educational policy seeking to enhance access to non-formal and formal education, as well as to improve educational quality, was adopted by the Zambian government. However, Zambia continues to experience limited education access, which has contributed to exacerbation of socio-economic underdevelopment and poverty. Moreover, austerity measures seeking to restart the economy, such as market and economic liberalization, allocation of resources has declined in the educational sector, while capital investment has declined in the education sector and the number of qualified teachers has also decreased (Jones, 2013: p68). Additionally, scholarships for higher education were cut drastically, while higher education and post-secondary tuition was implemented and capacity building funding for education has also declined. Instead, the government has sought to introduce measures aimed at enhancing parental contributions to secondary and primary education, as well as encouraging initiatives by the private sector. Balas and Mulder (2014: p50) notes that education institution budgets have not kept up with increasing rates of inflation and that, while ~68% of the population in Zambia is literate, at least 20% of school-aged children in urban areas and 40% in rural areas do not go to school. This may indicate that educational reforms have worked to exclude youth and children from vulnerable and low-income societal groups. Educational reforms in Zambia have led to an enormous need for the government to train and re-train teaching staff (Balas & Mulder, 2014: p51). Unfortunately, however, the current economic situation in Zambia as discussed above has meant that inadequacy of resources has precluded adequate human development resources within the required time frame using the current system of education. Thus, there seems to be a need to re-deploy the scarce funds and resources if the government is to increase literacy levels. Zambia was part of the Education for All World Conference in the 90s that adopted a unanimous declaration on education for all, as well as a framework to meet basic needs of learning. Like other signatory countries, Zambia broadened its basic education scope to include non-formal, primary, and early-childhood education. As a result, the government adopted various policy strategies, such as Focus on Learning, Education for All, Educating our Future, and ICT in developing a system of education that meets its developing society’s socio-economic needs (Balas & Mulder, 2014: p51). Therefore, current policies in Zambia’s education system stress that there is a need to expand ICT competencies, as well as informal and formal education delivery modes, to educate its rapidly growing population of school age. The education system that Zambia inherited after independence has been identified as massively underdeveloped with only 107 graduates from the university at the time. As a result, Zambia’s First National Development Plan between 1966 and 1979 sought to ensure the availability of sufficient places to make sure that children could at least get 4 years of education in primary school (Verger et al, 2013: p66). Despite the fact that these targets were not met by the government, there was a dramatic expansion in primary education enrolment and completion during this period. Still, additional emphasis was provided for the expansion of technical and secondary education, which saw an increase of ~27% every year in secondary school intake. Zambia’s second National Development Plan, which lasted between 1972 and 1976, increased the government’s emphasis on primary education as it was recognized that expansion of secondary school education had to be linked to human resource needs (Verger et al, 2013: p67). As a result, however, primary school education was increasingly viewed as terminal for less-fortunate and academically weak students. The most significant period of education policy reform in Zambia occurred against the background of economic decline as copper prices fell on the world market, resulting in a fall in education expenditure as enrolments increased. In addition, salaries for teachers increased as a proportion of Zambia’s national budget but failed to keep up with inflation, while teaching materials and textbooks became an increasingly scarce resource (Abdi & Cleghorn, 2012: p73). As a result, Zambia became increasingly reliant on external aid, which included technical support, grants, loans, and commodity support. During the 1990s, especially in light of dramatic economic, social, and political reform, the Ministry of Education undertook resounding reforms in the education sector. Majority of these reforms aimed at improving education delivery that had been in decline since the mid-70s as aforementioned. Particularly, the system of education suffered from declining enrolments that did not match rising population growth and subsequent demand. Moreover, the Ministry was unable to improve or sustain education quality. The Focus on learning educational policy document, which emanated from the Education for All World Declaration, stressed the essential nature of educational access and opportunities (Abdi & Cleghorn, 2012: p73). Educating our Future is another educational policy document that resulted from broadly-based and lengthy process of consultation, which involved stakeholders from the formal education sector. This policy document paid particular attention to productivity, decentralization, and democratization, as well as curriculum diversification and relevance, effective and efficient management, cost sharing, capacity building, and revitalized partnerships (Klees et al, 2012: p77). Some other recurrent themes from this policy document included responsiveness to needs, pluralism, flexibility, and protection of quality. However, even with the government’s articulation of education policies and strategies aimed at cushioning the sector from the adverse effects of economic and political risks and underdevelopment, there is little impetus and resources to enable effective and appropriate responses to these challenges. The government has consequently designed an integrated program aimed at accelerating education policy implementation. Named the Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Program (BESSIP), actual implementation took off in 2009 with two major objectives, namely improvement of schooling learning objectives and improvement of basic education for all Zambians (Klees et al, 2012: p77). BESSIP has resulted in a number of positive changes, such as the declaration of free primary education by the government, reduction of the education course for primary teachers to two years to increase the number of staff, and increased emphasis on an outcome-based curriculum from a content-based curriculum with a move away from traditional norm-referenced assessment to criterion-referenced assessment (Frankema, 2012: p341). In addition, Zambia’s Ministry of Education has started a vigorous campaign aimed at decentralization that seeks to make sure that school and school districts are empowered to come up with their own decisions in matching qualifications of personnel to positions. However, in spite of these achievements, the government has had to confront major challenges, especially regarding implementation. Several signs already indicate that these reforms are too fast-paced to the extent that education stakeholders are finding it difficult to grasp the reforms’ underlying principles. For instance, although Zambian schools are required not to charge any fee for primary school enrolment, it has been reported that some schools are asking for payments using different labels, specifically due to inadequacy of government funding for schools due to economic difficulties (Frankema, 2012: p341). Thus, it appears that Zambia’s education policy reforms and evolution has beset with implementation uncertainties due to an underdevelopment of the economy and subsequent budgetary allocation fluctuations. Overview of Zambia’s Education System’s Health and the way forward Although Zambia’s education ministry has adopted and implemented various policies since the country gained its independence to guide the equitable provision of education, its status as a less economically developed country has conspired to hinder assurances of access by every category of learner. In addition, it has also faced challenges in funding required reforms as the price of copper, which funds at least 65% of Zambia’s budget, has declined on the world market (Glewwe, 2011: p38). This, in turn, has reduced government funding targeted at ensuring equal access to education, such as the glaring disparities of gender across various levels of the education system. For example, although girls have favourable gender parity in pre-school and lower primary education, this index drops significantly towards upper primary school. Again, socio-economic underdevelopment accounts for majority of drop-outs among girls, mainly due to early pregnancies, early marriages, and an unsafe environment for adolescent girls (Glewwe, 2011: p38). Despite the aforementioned community schools, which are anchored in the government’s policy framework, being in place, support given by the government and the community is minimal. Moreover, budget cuts in the education sector have resulted in community schools being unable to provide access to education by vulnerable groups and children with special education needs. Leiderer (2012: p60) identifies a need to address concerns that the education system in Zambia has suffered from economic underdevelopment, as well as that the subsequent educational underdevelopment exacerbates the economic uncertainty. Underdevelopment has led to restricted access in the pre-school and tertiary subsectors, while the basic school sector continues to be dogged by efficiency and quality concerns and rates of progression to high school continue to decline. In order to achieve the objectives contained in education policies and to attain the current goals of fulfilling the Education Fund Agency’s educational milestones by 2015, the government must undertake further significant reforms (Leiderer, 2012: p60). One recommendation is that the government should increase budgetary allocation to the sector to the 20% recommended by the Southern African Development Community, up from the current 15% of budgetary allocation. The government of Zambia has found it difficult to provide quality, equitable education because of its economy’s shrinking tax base. The low employment rates have resulted in a small domestic tax base, while export earnings have also shrank, which has meant that the government can only guarantee education up to primary school. Even with free primary school education, ~20% of students do not have a permanent teacher, especially in the rural areas where schools are mostly established and maintained by the community with additional help from the government (Leiderer, 2012: p65). Budgetary support should be sought, including from foreign donors, to train more teachers. Finally, the economic and political liberalization that characterized post-1991 Zambia should be extended into the education sector. In order to liberalize provision of education, fundamental changes in power relations between the government and private educators must change. A liberalized education system would allow religious bodies, individuals, private organizations, and local communities to establish, maintain, and control their own educational institutions and schools (Leiderer, 2012: p65). As a result, resourceful private sector actors will have the capability to establish schools and run them subject to stipulated regulations and rules arrived at after consultations with the government. This will enable the expansion of educational opportunities as the government attempts to balance deficits in its budget. References Abdi, A. A., & Cleghorn, A. (2012). Issues in African education: Sociological perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Baldini, A., & International Monetary Fund. (2012). Monetary policy in low-income countries in the face of the global crisis: The case of Zambia. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund. Bauer, G., & Taylor, S. D. (2013). Politics in southern Africa: State and society in transition. Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Beuran, M., Raballand, G., Kapoor, K., Beuran, M., & World Bank. (2011). Political Economy Studies: Are they Actionable? Some Lessons from Zambia. Washington, D.C: The World Bank. Balas, F., & Mulder, K. (2014). Engineering education in sustainable development. Bradford, England: Emerald Group Pub. Frankema, E. H. P. (November 01, 2012). The origins of formal education in sub-Saharan Africa: Was British rule more benign? European Review of Economic History, 16, 4, 335-355. Gewald, J.-B., Hinfelaar, M., & Macola, G. (2012). One Zambia, many histories: Towards a history of post-colonial Zambia. Leiden: Brill. Glewwe, P. (2011). School resources and educational outcomes in developing countries: A review of the literature from 1990 to 2010. Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research. Jones, V. (2013). Unfinished business: making a difference in basic education: An evaluation of the impact of education policies in Zambia and the role of budget support. The Hague: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Klees, S. J., Samoff, J., Stromquist, N. P., & Bonal, X. (2012). The World Bank and education: Critiques and alternatives. Rotterdam: SensePublishers. Leiderer, S. (2012). Efficiency of local service provision in Zambias health, education and road sectors: Implications for decentralisation and the effectiveness of budget support. Bonn: Dt. Inst. für Entwicklungspolitik. Leiderer, S., & Faust, J. (2012). Evaluation of budget support in Zambia: Implementation, direct effects and political economy. Bonn: Dt. Inst. für Entwicklungspolitik. Michelle, M. (January 01, 2014). Education and the Economy: Achievements and Shortfalls in Independent Zambia, 1964-2014. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 5, 1091-1108. Sardanis, A. (2014). Zambia: The First 50 Years. London: I.B.Tauris. (Sardanis, 2014: p59) Schwenke, C. (2013). Reclaiming value in international development: The moral dimensions of development policy and practice in poor countries. Westport, Conn: Praeger. Verger, A., Novelli, M., & Mundy, K. E. (2013). Campaigning for "Education for All": Histories, strategies and outcomes of transnational advocacy coalitions in education. Rotterdam: SensePublishers Read More