Ivy Bensonreporting
1 October 2004
Nairobi — LACK OF facilities in the primary education system continues to be a challenging factor to most African countries in achieving quality education for all children of school going age, following the introduction of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme.
Even though the system had attracted thousands of dollars from development partners, it still wallows in inadequacies.
At a three-day training workshop organized by the National Education Statistical Information Systems (NESIS), an affiliate of UNESCO for African journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi last week, inadequate teachers and classrooms, according to statistics, are a major problem confronting primary education in Africa.
The workshop, on the theme: "Statistics for Journalists", brought together 14 journalists from Ghana, Kenya, Gambia, Nigeria, Eritrea, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
It was aimed at creating awareness among journalists about the importance of statistics in their jobs, thereby increasing their interest to write about education and play more advocacy roles in educational development.
The 2003 statistics on public basic schools in the 110 districts of Ghana indicated that the teacher-pupil ratio stood at 1:33 in a total number of 12,848 schools with the teacher-school ratio at 5:1, implying that each school has five teachers.
The poor academic performances are the direct result of the inadequacies confronting basic schools in the country.
The 2001 national schools statistics as at March, indicated that out of a total of 450,873 pupils who began primary one, only 304,476 were still in school at the end of primary six, a reduction of 32%.
Additionally, school enrolment in national public basic schools from 2001 to 2003 had decreased by 19% from 2001 enrolment figure of 2,676,165 pupils to 2,171,585 pupils in 2003.
Enrolment of girls also suffers unduly as a result of cultural factors. According to the statistics, 48% of girls gain admission to public schools throughout the country as against 52% of enrolment of boys.
In 2003, a total of 1,136,793 boys were enrolled in public basic schools throughout the country whiles a total of 1,034,792 girls were enrolled.
Ghana needs to put in more efforts to arrive at gender parity in the enrolments into the basic level of education.
As at the end of the 2002/2003 academic year, only one out of the ten regions and ten out of the 110 districts had achieved gender parity at the primary level whiles at the Junior Secondary School (JSS) level, one region and six districts had achieved parity.
In Nigeria, participants were told that the number of pupils, who turned up after the introduction of the FCUBE system, overshot the projected estimation of the government.
In Kenya, the response was so overwhelming that the existing facilities were strained. Kenya's 17, 000 primary schools, though the biggest number in East Africa, still found it tough to cope with the increased enrollment that marked the beginning of her free primary education programme.
Enrollment figures rose from 5.9 million in 2002 to 7.2 million in 2003.
Quality suffered due to the huge demand for places in high institutions where both the private and public offer less than 50%. Though Kenya's transition from primary to secondary stands at 29%, the figure is regarded low, due to high demand.
With the increased enrollment, it is worth noting that the government has not yet addressed the problem of additional classes as it grapples with funding the programme. Today, the Kenyan Education Ministry has been allocated a whopping 7.8 billion shillings, most of which is being channeled to funding free education and paying the over 250, 000 teacher-workforce, both in primary and secondary schools, among others.
The free education programme is further compounded by the problem of teacher understaffing with the number in schools being at 178, 000 although 60, 000 more are needed, according to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT).
Overcrowded classes with the set ratio of 40 pupils per teacher termed as flawed since the ratio varies up to 100 pupils per teacher.
The number of primary schools in the country had increased steadily from 14,864 in 1990 to 18,901 in 2001/2002, representing a 27.2% increase. Enrolment in absolute terms had also gone up from 5,392,319 to 6,314,726, a 17.1% rise over the same period.
The percentage of girls' enrolment also increased in the same period to 49.3%, implying that gender parity in enrolment in primary schools at the national level had nearly been achieved.
In January 2003, it was estimated that the Net Enrolment Rate (NER) rose from around 6,314,726 to 7,614,326 by the end of the year, representing a 22.3% increase nationally. It was also estimated that another 3 million children were not enrolled in school. Despite the various logistical problems that seem to be hampering a successful implementation of the Free Primary Education (FPE) meant for cushioning children from poor socio-economic backgrounds, especially girls from failing to participate in primary education or dropping out of school due to lack of fees and other school levies, the problem persists.
Districts that registered over 20% increase in enrolment in 2003, hardly recorded more than 5% of standard one enrolment this year. In the 2003/04 financial year, the government increased its education budget by 17.4% to Kshs.79.4 billion, with over K.shs 7.6 billion specifically allocated to the FPE programme. The consequence - poor quality education as a result of overcrowding, lack of teachers and of learning materials.
In order to make the free primary education programme sustainable, multilateral and bilateral donor agencies at the World Bank had given about Sh4 billion to kick-start the programme in 2003.
Uganda experienced a rise from about 3 million to 5.3 million children after the introduction of the Universal Primary Education (UPE), an indication that over two million children were out of school before the programme.
The influx of pupils put a lot of pressure on the school infrastructure, but the government rapidly developed systems to cope with it. For instance, the number of schools rose from 8,531 in 1997 to 13,353 by 2003.
Before UPE, only 60% of the school going age children (six to 12 year old) were in school; currently the number has increased to 90%.
The programme substantially raised girls' enrollment. Currently, boys and girls are almost at par.
Girls constitute 47% of the Primary six enrolment and 43% at Primary 7. But this is still better than the 1992 figures when girls constituted only 41% at Primary 6 and 38% at Primary 7.
Despite education being free, the dropout rate is still exceptionally high, averaging 5% a year. A 2003 study discovered that monetary costs still accounted for as high as 55% of the dropout cases, 43.1% fell out due to lack of interest, 14.6% due to family responsibilities, 11.6% sickness, 3.5% marriage, 2.1% pregnancies, 0.7% dismissal while 12.7% left school for unknown reasons.
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