Introduction
T
he importance of education in the
development process cannot be over-emphasised. Besides training the workforce
for increasingly complex tasks, education is important for nation building,
health, and governance, to mention a few. Rapid technological progress in a
broad range of areas has made education a necessity for all citizens. This
necessity, combined with rapid population growth in Africa, has greatly
increased the demand for education. Unfortunately, as the demand for education
increases, Africa’s ability to supply education to its citizens seems to be
in relative decline. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2002)
indicates that Africa has the lowest index of educational development in the
world. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa has an education index of 0.55, adult
literacy rate of 60 per cent, and a combined gross primary and secondary
enrolment rate of 42 per cent. The comparable figures for developing world
averages are 0.69, 73.7 per cent, and 61 per cent, respectively.
In addition to low rates of education, there is gender inequity with
twice as many males that are literate as are women and urban/rural disparity.
This
article[1]
briefly reviews education policy in Africa. The review is neither
comprehensive nor focuses on particular country experiences. It does not
discuss pedagogy but focuses on issues of efficiency and effectiveness. The
review does not dwell on the causes of the current state of education in
Africa but on what can and should be done to improve education generally, and
science and technology education particularly. The aim of this review is to
provoke a serious discussion on educational policy and reforms in Africa.
Given the complexity of the subject and space limitations, the review will be
limited to three areas of concern: access, relevance and quality.
Current
Education Policy in Africa
Educational
systems in African countries provide credentials, not skills, to their
graduates. In a labour market that rewards credentials rather than skills, the
more credential one possesses, the stronger the signal for success; hence
African students demand more complex but less useful credentials. The less
useful a given credential is, the greater the demand since it is required for
the next level of credentialing. Current education policy in African countries
(with a few notable exceptions) may be characterised as “see nothing wrong,
do nothing to change the system”. In effect, continue to do the same things
and hope for the best. The evidences of failure abound: low enrolment rates
and high dropout rates, unequal access (between males and females and between
urban and rural), teacher absenteeism, low and declining performance by
international standards. Yet policy makers make no serious attempts to address
these issues. African educational problems are part of larger social problems
that include corruption, conflict, and poor governance.
Access
Enrolment
ratios for primary schools in African countries averaging about 80 per cent,
are about 25 per cent for secondary schools and less than 5 per cent for
tertiary institutions. African countries ration available spaces by location
(urban versus rural), by influence and connections (children of the
influential get the best) and gender (boys are favoured), but not necessarily
on merit. The major reason given for the low enrolment ratios is lack of
resources to finance the provision of education. However, African countries
could get more out of their education resources if these were allocated
efficiently. Efficiency requires
that resources be allocated to activities in which the marginal benefit to
cost ratio is the highest. Given that the social rate of return to primary
education in African countries is higher than the social rate of return to
higher education and that social rate of return to female education is higher
than that for male education (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2002), it stands to
reason that African countries will have to increase their support for primary
and female education relative to tertiary and male education, even if they
cannot increase resources allocated to the provision of education because
policy makers do not have the political courage or the interest to change it.
Yet the reverse is what is happening in African countries. For example,
African governments spend forty-four times as much on each university student
as they do on each primary school student.
Relevance
One
of the major weaknesses of African education is the irrelevance of the
curricula to the needs of Africa. The curricula in African schools are the
ones left by the colonial masters, preparing students to help administer
colonies. In a world increasingly dominated by science and technology, African
educational systems continue to graduate students with little knowledge of
basic science and technology. In upper secondary school and university
classes, fewer than 10 per cent of the students were enrolled in the sciences
and mathematics in 1996 (African Development Bank 1999), and universities
still provide degrees in subjects like Graeco-Roman civilization[2] .
At a time when the colonial masters are revamping their curricula to stress
science and technology education, African countries are reinforcing the
irrelevant curricula that the colonial masters established in the 19th
century. While Africa faces critical shortages of skills, African educational
systems squander scarce resources to turn out graduates who are not equipped
to contribute to the building of the continent.
Quality
There
is evidence that the quality of African education (from primary to university)
is low and falling. While educational quality is multidimensional there are
indications that the quality of education in African countries has fallen in
recent years. African students have performed below the mean on international
assessment tests in mathematics and science, dropout rates continue to
increase, and students are not able to perform at the grade level. Learning
emphasis is on memorisation to pass common matriculation examinations rather
than on the development of analytical and problem-solving skills. Yet, with
the exception of matriculation examinations, there are no serious policy
attempts to improve educational quality. Several reasons are given for the
falling quality but the most often cited is lack of resources, including
trained teachers, books, and laboratory equipment. Though the lack of
resources may be a source of low and falling quality, the major source of low
quality, in my view, is inefficiency and mismanagement of existing resources.
Despite the evidence that school inputs, books, and laboratory equipment have
marginal efficiency ratios, often more than ten times that of teacher salaries
(Hanusheck and Kim 1996), almost all expenditures on education at primary and
secondary schools in Africa are for teacher salaries. A better input ratio
will greatly improve efficiency. Inefficiency may result from the power of
entrenched interest groups, lack of local involvement in decision-making,
indifference or corruption on the part of policy makers.
Reforms
Given
the rapidly increasing demand for education and African governments’
inability to supply the needed space in the given quality, policy makers need
to make some necessary choices. There are a number of policies available for
African countries to reform their education sectors. In view of poor economic
performance and tight budgets in the short-term, reforms will involve
reallocating existing resources. Long-term reforms will include increasing
education funding.
Enhancing
Access
African
countries cannot provide free education at all levels for all people.
Governments should therefore choose to provide high quality universal, free,
and compulsory primary and lower secondary education by redirecting
expenditures from tertiary institutions to primary education. Senior secondary
and tertiary institution students should be made responsible for the cost of
their education with governments providing loan guarantees and targeted
scholarships in priority areas such as science and engineering, and gender
equity. Central governments should cost-share education funding with local
governments and parent/teacher associations. There is evidence that even low
income parents are willing to pay to support their children’s education (Ablo
and Reinikka 2002). Another way to increase the provision of education at all
levels is though the private sector. Besides traditional methods of private
sector provision, governments could allow the private sector to rent public
facilities when not in use (e.g., evenings and weekends) to provide
instructions, thus reducing cost, which is then passed onto students. Although
private provision of education is controversial in some African countries, it
need not be so since it adds to the total supply of education in a country.
Furthermore, private provision is implicitly occurring in African countries,
as the affluent send their children to schools in developed countries.
Allowing the provision of this type of education in African countries has the
potential for “technological” spillover in education administration.
Governments should provide support for promising students who come from
families with low income, who choose to attend these private schools, if there
is concern about equal access. In addition to these, African educational
systems will have to experiment with alternative delivery systems, such as
radio-delivered instructions, and expand non-residential and part-time student
admissions.
Relevance
Curricula
reforms seem to be the first policy area for African education. Curricula
should emphasise integrating experimental science and technology into all
subjects at all grade levels. Nations should aim at 70 per cent of students in
senior secondary schools and universities to major in science, mathematics and
technology, with special efforts to attract females to these areas. Besides
targeting education to meet labour market needs for Africa, emphasis should be
put on science, mathematics, and technology.
Curricula should emphasise African customs and African institutions.
Meaningful curricula reforms cannot be left to “educators” alone;
business, community leaders, and parents must be involved in the development
of the curricula. Governments should then provide targeted scholarships for
higher secondary and tertiary students in priority areas. In addition, wage
policy should reflect relative shortages of skills rather than the current
system of rewarding credentials.
Quality
Quality
should be a top priority of educational reforms in African countries. The
central government should set high standards (in line with the best anywhere
in the world) but monitor performance and leave local school boards to find
efficient ways to achieve these standards. Although education resources are
more limited in African countries than elsewhere, there can be very large
gains if the available resources are allocated efficiently. Teacher salaries
may be low in African countries, but using all funds to pay teacher salaries
implies that there are no complementary inputs in the education production
process. The reason for this situation may be due to poor administration
resulting from centralised control. Management of schools should be devolved
to local school boards that hire and fire school administrators based on
performance. Local control will make it easier for local contribution to fund
as well as improve efficiency (Jimenez and Paqueo 1996). Any effort aimed at
improving quality will involve the reallocation of resources from salaries and
administration to the provision of other materials such as books and
laboratory equipment, central governments giving local governments taxing
authority to raise the necessary revenue, better teacher training and
retention, and changing the incentive structure to reward success and punish
chronic failure. Policy makers and administrators should be creative and
entrepreneurial in finding new sources of revenue to support education. An
unexplored and untapped source of support is the alumni of various
institutions, especially those in the Diaspora.
Conclusion
One
reason why African countries are not able to reform their education systems
may be lack of political courage to take on entrenched interest groups.
University students and teachers unions tend to be well-organised powerful
political forces in African countries. Attempts to reduce the privileges they
enjoy are met with fierce resistance that African governments cannot overcome.
The reality of the political economy of budgeting is that policy makers will
not make expenditure changes that elicit serious political challenges (Gyimah-Brempong
1998). The second reason may be that education policy makers are beneficiaries
of the current system; so they have no incentive to reform it. If education is
to be improved, the pressure for improvement will have to come from the
population as a whole.
Hopefully,
as democracy takes root in Africa, the general population can bring political
pressure to bear on their elected officials and education leaders to make the
necessary reforms.
References
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