Expanded access to secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: key planning and finance issues

This paper makes the case for managed expansion of secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa. The great majority of secondary age African children remain excluded from access to good quality secondary schooling. Increasing numbers are graduating from primary schools where enrolments are rapidly growing as a result of successful Education for All programmes. The knowledge and skill that secondary schools can provide is central to closing the gap between Sub Saharan Africa and the rest of the world in the capabilities in the labour force that can sustain growth. The analyses undertaken for the Secondary Education in Africa (SEIA) programme of the World Bank have explored many dimensions of the challenges ahead. This paper complements this work and offers new insights into necessary reforms of policy and practice. It outlines the current status and structure of secondary provision, and the demographic issues that will influence expanded access. It then elaborates some of the key issues facing governments and development partners, and reviews the resources that would be needed to reach different levels of participation. It offers a set of policy options and strategies that can be used to shape managed growth within sustainable financial frameworks. The analysis indicates that budget shares between educational levels and overall spending on secondary education need to be revisited if higher participation is to be achieved. More than 3.0% of gross national product (GNP) would be needed to achieve gross enrolment rates of 60% at lower secondary and 30% at upper secondary in low enrolment countries with existing cost structures. The costs per pupil have to fall if expanded access is to be sustainable. No countries with ratios of secondary to primary unit costs of more than 3:1 succeed in universalising access to secondary schooling but many countries remain above these levels. New balances will have to struck between rates of expansion towards enrolment targets at primary, lower and upper secondary levels. Structural changes are needed that can facilitate higher secondary enrolment rates at affordable costs and diminish gender inequities. Better management of the flow of pupils could increase completion rates and lower costs per successful completer. Improved teacher deployment will be critical to successful expansion. Much more access could be provided if norms for pupil-teacher ratios (e.g. 35:1 at lower secondary, and 25:1 at upper secondary) could be applied and if class teacher ratios at secondary level fell from 3:1 to less than 2:1. Trained teachers will be critical to secondary expansion. Where demand is greatest, and initial training lengthy and expensive, alternative methods will have to be considered which lower costs of training and increase supply. So also will be changes in school management that can provide some incentives to manage human and physical resources efficiently. Secondary expansion without curriculum reform risks irrelevance and wastage. New populations of school children require curricula that address their needs, respond to changing social and economic circumstances, and recognise resource constraints. Alongside this physical capacity needs planned expansion in ways that optimise increased access. Expanded secondary access will benefit greatly from successful mechanisms to generate support from the communities that schools serve. There are many possible methods of cost-sharing and cost-recovery that can and should be facilitated. These need to be linked to the capacity of households to support fees and contributions so that they do not become exclusionary. Partnerships with non-government providers can make some contribution to expanded access. However, they are most likely to play a complementary role since they are unlikely to be the providers of last resort to those otherwise excluded by location, household income, or low achievement

Long term planning for EFA and the MDGs: modes and mechanisms

This discussion paper provides an overview and analytic guide to long term planning of education systems in the context of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. Long term gains in educational access depend on anticipating future financial and non-financial constraints on growth and on successful implementation of plans which support growth that can be sustained. Some recent expansion of primary schooling has failed to take a sufficiently long term approach to growth and has risked the creation of resource bottlenecks, poor trade offs between quality and quantity, and dependence on uncertain financing. The paper first outlines three different styles of long term planning – Planning Lite, Framework National Planning, and Participatory Planning. It distinguishes between aspirational and target-generating approaches. It then describes the processes and tools that are needed to develop long term plans for expanded access that can reconcile goals and targets with realistic resource envelopes. These processes are designed to include mechanisms to promote consensus and build commitment. The nature of Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEF) is then explored as a necessary tool to manage implementation. Appendix 1 provides more detailed discussion of the three approaches to planning. Appendix 2 elaborates on aspirational planning and gradients of achievement. Appendix 3 explores issues concerned with targets and indicators of performance. Appendix 4 contains a selected list of source materials

Improving access, equity and transitions in education: creating a research agenda

The Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE), was established with DFID support in 2006. It is a partnership between research institutions in the UK, Bangladesh, India, Ghana and South Africa. This paper is the first in a series of CREATE publications which will be developed over the life of the consortium. The first part of this paper discusses why access issues remain at the centre of the problems of achieving Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. Many children remain unenrolled at primary level, many of those enrolled attend irregularly and learn little, and large numbers fail to make the transition to secondary schooling. After outlining the magnitude of the challenge of improving access to universal levels, the paper develops analytic frameworks to understand access issues in new ways, and generate empirical studies related to each of the zones of exclusion identified. The last part of the paper briefly outlines some of the empirical research that is being developed

Beyond universal access to elementary education in India: is it achievable at affordable costs?

Investment in secondary schooling in India has been neglected for many years. Since the 1990s most emphasis has been on universalising access to elementary schooling, a task that remains far from complete. Under the 11 th National Plan Rastriya Madhyamic Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) has been launched to increase access to grade nine and above. This research monograph explores some of the key issues in managing the growth of secondary schooling. These include the constraints on expansion that arise from current levels of elementary school graduation, the costs and affordability of secondary schooling, the infrastructure needs, and increased teacher supply. Policy dialogue around secondary school expansion is a central concern if India is to close the gap between itself and China and other rapidly developing countries in educating most of its population beyond the elementary level

Goals and Indicators for Education and Development: Consolidating the Architectures

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments related to the development of indicators of educational progress in the context of the Post 2015 deliberations to generate a new international architecture for educational investment through to 2030. There have been a plethora of suggestions and several parallel consultation processes since 2012 to revise and replace the goals for education and development agreed at the World Education Forum in Dakar (UNESCO, 2000) and enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2000). This process is now converging on the two frameworks that are the subject of this analysis

Education and Development: The Issues and the Evidence

Risk and Uncertainty,

Primary Teacher Education in Malawi: Insights Into Practice and Policy: Multi-Site Teacher Education Research Project (MUSTER), Country Report Three

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Financing education in Asia: profiling participation and financing towards 2030

This paper explores recent patterns of growth in participation in education across the Asian region. This illustrates how demand is changing and how varied the challenges of growth in access and attainment will be over the next fifteen years. The financial challenges can be assessed using a projection algorithm that interrelates public costs with the drivers of costs which are participation rates, unit costs per student, and the proportion of the population who are of school age. Projections of costs indicate some key issues for policy dialogue

Financement de l’éducation en Asie : perspectives de participation et de financement d’ici 2030

Ce texte explore les schémas de croissance récents, en termes de participation à l’éducation en Asie. Il illustre la manière dont la demande se modifie et dont les défis de l’amélioration de l’accès et des performances se diversifieront au cours des quinze prochaines années. Les défis financiers peuvent être évalués à partir d’un algorithme de projection qui lie les coûts publics à des déterminants tels que les niveaux de participation, les coûts unitaires par apprenant et la proportion d’enfants d’âge scolaire. Les projections de coûts pointent vers un certain nombre de questions-clé pour la concertation sur les politiques

The Efficiency of Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: EESSA Project The Case of Uganda

There is limited research on secondary education in sub-Saharan African context that explores the keyfactors that promote efficient and effective secondary schools. What there is includes IIEP studies byLewin and Caillods (2001), and the outputs from the World Bank's Secondary Education in Africa programme that includes analysis of costs and efficiency (Lewin 2008). Knowledge gaps remain withthe risk that African governments embarking on large scale reforms in secondary education may investin ways that fail to identify the components of the system and processes that drive efficient and effectivedelivery of secondary education, and therefore which areas to prioritize investment to achieve universalaccess. This large study of secondary school efficiency and effectiveness in Uganda responds to this gapand provides evidence to inform discussions about key reforms in secondary education to improve qualityand equitable access, especially for disadvantaged groups