Education System in Africa - Case Study Example

Education Analyse the effectiveness of policy approaches by one or more governments of post- war era on education. Many African s won their independence from their colonisers after protracted wars that resulted in many deaths. In the transitional process, many governments inherited formerly segregated education systems that had no equal opportunities in attaining education among the citizens. In attempting to correct the anomaly, many African countries embarked on policy formulations that gave priority to education. Zimbabwe is one such country that evolved through many stages in its restructuring process of the education system. In attempting to analyse the effectiveness of policy approaches on education, it is imperative to explain what a policy is. According to a policy document by the International Resources Group (2008), “a policy acts as a framework that supports or inhibits the balanced and effective governance and a healthy growth and interaction of a society’s many facets.” Thus in essence, its effectiveness rests in proper assessment, appropriate regulations, adequate enforcement and incentives for behavioral change. Zimbabwe, formerly a British colony, became an independent state on 18 April 1980. At independence, the new government inherited an education system where there were no equal opportunities between white and black citizens with regards to the attainment of education. In other words, quality education was a preserve for the rich and affluent during the colonial era. Just like any other country emerging from a war situation, Zimbabwe faced the political, economic, and social challenges that normally accompany attempts to build a new nation. It is against this background that on attainment of independence, the Zimbabwean government adopted a deliberate policy of giving priority to education through the expansion of education at both the primary and secondary levels. The biggest budget allocation since then, according to Ministry of Education statistics has been education in an endeavor to improve literacy levels The Education Act of 1980 states that, “Every child in Zimbabwe shall have the right to school education.” A study by Chipo Chirimuuta entitled, Gender and the Zimbabwe Education Policy (2006), contends that the main educational concern was the reversal of the education policies that characterised the colonial system. This was informed, shaped and given impetus by the nationalist philosophy of life, whose crux were the issues of national identities and shared historical experiences of the Zimbabwean populace.   In this regard, access to education is a basic human right as enshrined in other international documents. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Under this article, no citizen shall be prejudiced of his or her right to education. Therefore, there has been a massive expansion in the education sector as a result of government policies which gave priority to education at independence. While at independence the country had only 192 secondary schools, now the country boast of 1600 secondary school and 4800 primary schools. School enrolment also increased in tandem to the increase in school facilities. In 1980 enrolment for primary schools stood at 647 761 and 588 233 for males and females respectively. According to statistics obtained from the Ministry of Education Sport and Culture policy document, enrolment figures for the year 2006 stood at 1 255 990 and 1 237 270 for males and females respectively. An analysis of these statistics showed that enrolment figures have almost tripled those in 1980. It is against this background that Zimbabwe boasts of one of the highest literacy rates in the world because of priority accorded to education at independence. Zimbabwe’s total population is approximately 13 million people and has a literacy rate of 90%. From only one University in 1980, the country now has 12 Universities, 12 technical colleges and more than 12 teachers colleges. Strategic partnerships have been forged with other Universities internationally to exchange knowledge and impart effectiveness to impart knowledge. The programmes are suitably designed to meet global standards and trends in the labour market. The teaching of practical subjects is fine tuned to equip the grandaunts with the technical know how of working on their own instead of just waiting for the labour market. The realization that most of the adult generation was denied opportunity to access education prompted the government to embark on an adult literacy programme at independence. This proved to be the most effective tool of ensuring a literate population. With an adult literacy rate of over 90%, Zimbabwe boasts of the highest literacy rates in Africa and one of the highest in the world. Primary education was made free upon attainment of independence as a way of positively improving accessibility to education. Indeed this policy witnessed massive enrolments of pupils in all the country’s provinces and districts. In response to the policy of free primary education in Zimbabwe, demand for teachers also rose considerably. Therefore, the government sought to invest heavily in education especially in the teacher training programmes. According to a study by B.S Chivore (1992), entitled “Pre-Service Teacher Education at a distance: The Case of Zimbabwe,” prominent among the teacher training programmes was the Zimbabwe Integrated National Teacher Education Course (ZINTEC) program, which brought with it distance education as a mode of training pre-service, nongraduate teachers. ZINTEC, initiated in 1981, since then has been the most highly acclaimed post-independence teacher education program in Zimbabwe. The ZINTEC program was originally based on several assumptions including: the conventional teacher education system could not meet the new level of demand for teachers and was also premised on the notion that the teacher and teacher education have roles to play in Zimbabwes development process. To that end, on the job training was needed to blend theory with practice. Education being a basic human right, this meant that the country needed a large teaching force capable of working under difficult and trying conditions. Thus the decision to start the ZINTEC program and those that followed it (the three- and four-year programs) was related to the political decision to make primary education free and compulsory. The expansion of primary education meant that more professionally trained teachers were needed. Above all, the education policies developed were guided by Zimbabwes socialist ideology meant to effect developmental changes through teacher education. Together with this, the government also introduced three and four year conventional teaching programmes meant to equip the new teachers with basic teaching skills and experience. Also in an attempt to promote literacy among members of especially disadvantaged communities, the government recently embarked on the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) programme. BEAM is one of the various social protections government has provided to vulnerable groups through different ministries. Through BEAM, the government has managed to provide social protection to orphans and vulnerable children by assisting them with fees, levies and even examination fees. Since its inception in 2001, BEAM has managed to reduce the number of children who drop out of school due to financial constraints. This programme is administered by the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture. On higher and tertiary education, the government also introduced a funding mechanism that was meant to assist the students from disadvantaged families to acquire education. The government made available grants to students which they would repay later after completion of their studies. During the initial post-independence period of the early 1980s the signs for Zimbabwe’s growth and stability looked encouraging. The new nationalist government under the statesmanship of a younger Mugabe, focused on reconstruction, reconciliation and redistribution under an apparently new banner. (Brian Raftopoulos 2003:3). The 1980s were marked by successful expansion of public services and basic infrastructure such as health education and roads to formerly neglected rural populations (Auret,1990). However, macro-economic and fiscal constraints in the late 1980s began to reverse the development gains that had been made. By 1990, facing economic decline and under pressure from a new global neo-liberal hegemony after the collapse of Soviet socialism, the government designed a World Bank-style economic structural adjustment programme (ESAP), Raftopoulos: 2003:5. Officially cast as ‘home grown’ reform, ESAP had initially been more about expansion than contraction. The severe drought of 1991/92 also affected Zimbabwe to fulfill its goals. Thus the negative effects of ESAP were immediate and they included unprecedented increases in the interest rates and inflation and a 65% fall in stock market, deindustrialization, massive job cuts, company closures and a substantial decline in real wages and overall standards of living (Bond,2001: Raftopoulos,2001). Increased levels of poverty followed. A government Poverty Assessment Survey conducted in mid -1990s noted the extensive prevalence in Zimbabwe concluding that about 61 % of the population lived below a level sufficient to provide basic needs, and about 45% living below the food Poverty line. Not surprisingly, the 1990swas a decade of growing public protests, labour strikes and a flourishing of civil society organizations. The effects of economic decline did not spare either the education sector in the country as it was also adversely affected. Although the Zimbabwean government had formulated promising policies on education at independence that were meant to foster development, it also encountered some shortcomings in effectively implementing all the policies. Having embarked on the socialist ideology of free education, this proved to be a burden on the government. The cost incurred through the provision of free education by the government overburdened the national fiscus where a lot of money was being used on subsidizing free education. This affected other sectors of the economy in that expenditure on education was not in tandem with other economic developments that were necessary to stimulate economic growth. The government should have rather effected a nominal fee that it would subsidise rather than offering education totally for free. In this regard, it can also be noted that the rate of infrastructural development did not tally with the rate of advancements being made in education. Such scenario is not healthy for the proper functioning of a balanced economy where there would be more job seekers than actual jobs on the market. Though effective in improving literacy to a certain extent, the massive expansion in the education sector witnessed a rapid growth on the number of teachers being employed. This meant that more money would be spent on salaries. To this effect, the government’s policies on education did not take into consideration the full scale of the likely impact of a huge a huge civil service body. It meant that more money would be spent on salaries which is detrimental to the normal operations of the economy. This on the other hand contributed to other factors that compromised the quality of education as a result of massive production of grandaunds which did not tally with the job opportunities offered on the market. In terms of making education accessible to many people, the policies did not take into consideration issues related to quality of education on the other hand. The transition of examining bodies of all the public examinations in Zimbabwe created a void in the credibility of the local examinations. Since independence the University of Cambridge Examination syndicate was in control of the running of examinations. However, during the mid 1990s upon realization of the need to localize its public examinations, the government embarked on establishing a local examination body. Whilst this was a noble idea with reference to fostering an education system that shared the vision of national identity, it had its own shortcomings, some still haunting the current local examination body running the public examinations, the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC). The Herald of 16 October 2006 reported that English examination papers had leaked resulting in the cancellation of the exam on the date it was supposed to be written. Since its inception, ZIMSEC has always faced numerous challenges especially with regards to the leakages of final exam papers. Confidential as they are supposed to be, examination papers are alleged to have hit the streets well before the scheduled day of the examination thus compromising on the credibility of the examinations. On the other hand, ZIMSEC is often understaffed and ill-equipped thereby likely compromising the quality of education. Zimonline, March 9 2008, said the delay in publishing of the ordinary level results was a result of severe shortage of markers due to low payments that were offered by ZIMSEC. These are some of the problems likely to raise concerns on the effectiveness of education policies in the country. In 2000, the government embarked on a massive overhaul of the country’s policies especially on land. The agrarian reforms that were launched in 2000 saw a complete turn in the operations of the economy which is agro-based. This resulted in farm invasions which were often violent. In Amnesty International’s report 2004, the measure taken by the government affected virtually all sectors of the economy which started to deteriorate. The countrys economic situation steadily deteriorated, with rampant inflation and unemployment, and critical shortages in basic food commodities, fuel and cash. Sadly, the adverse economic conditions that characterized the agrarian reform in Zimbabwe did not spare either the education sector. With current inflation figures standing at 165 000 %, Financial Gazette 17 April 2008, almost every school in the country has been hit by mass exodus of qualified teachers for greener pastures especially in the neighboring South and abroad. Africa News, 1 February 2008 reported that there was no learning taking place virtually in all schools in Harare due to the Industrial action by teachers who were demanding minimum salaries of about Z$10 billion equivalent to about US$56. Most of the learning time is lost as a result of teachers going on endless job actions to press the government to review their salaries. The Los Angels Times, 8 April 2008 reported that since 2005, the trickle of teachers abandoning their jobs due to poor remuneration slowly turned into an exodus. ‘By 2007, the departures from Mufakose 3 High School in one of Harare’s high density suburbs were like bricks in a collapsing building with all leaving their careers behind to work as cleaners, shop assistants, and laborers in other countries,’ the paper reported. Zimbabwes education system, once the best in Africa, is slowly crumbling with other teachers not even bothering to tender their resignations. In 2007 alone, 25,000 teachers fled the country, according to the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe. In the first two months of this year, 8,000 more disappeared. A staggering 150,000 teaching vacancies cant be filled. The Education Ministry sends out high school graduates with no degree or experience to do the job. The tertiary education in Zimbabwe is also no longer the same in Zimbabwe with endless job actions by lectures demanding better working conditions. Tertiary institutions in the country are also facing unprecedented levels of mass exodus of experienced staff to other countries in search of greener pastures. Zimonline March 14, an online independent newspaper reported that the University of Zimbabwe has a shortage of more than 600 lectures in all faculties. In other words the higher learning institution in the country is operating far below the expected capacity of teaching staff. Basically, it can be noted that the economic decline that has characterised Zimbabwe for the past years has had a toll on the full potential of the education sector in the country. Given the statistics above, the once prosperous state is certainly facing a gloomy picture in the face of the ever deterioration of the standards of education which set the momentum for the Zimbabwean education at independence. It can be noted that the approach to the policies in education established in 1980 did not fully yield the expected results due to various factors that affected the macro economic environment in the country. 1. Chipo Chirimuutata.: Gender and the Zimbabwe Education Policy: Empowerment or Perpetuation of Gender Imbalances in Zimbabwe, 2006. 2. The Zimbabwe Student’s Handbook, Academic Books, 1992. 3. Rika Joubert & Sakkie Prinsloo, Education Law: A practical guide for educators, Van Schaik, 2001. 4. Horrace Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe, The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation, David Philip Publishers, 2003. 5. Gerard O’Donnell, Mastering Sociology, 3rd Edition, Macmillan, 1994. 6. Amanda Hammar et al.: Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis, Weaver Press, 2003. 7. Ministry of Education: http://www.zimfagov.zw/zimeduca001.html 8. International Resources Group (IRG) http://www.irgltd.com/our-work/services/policyformulation. 9. Financial Gazette, 17 April 2008. 10. Africa News, 1 February 2008. 11. The Herald , 16 October 2006. 12. Zimonline, 9 March 2008. 13. Wikipedia, Free encyclopedia http://www.en.wikipedia.org./wiki/historyofzimbabwe 14. http://www.amazon-com/education-government-control-zimbabwe-commissions/dp/0275931706 15. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 November 1948. Read More