EDUCATION-AFRICA: Spare the Plough, and School the Child

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Apr 10 2006 (IPS) - Delegates to a workshop held recently in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have highlighted concerns about how child labour is undermining efforts to achieve universal primary education.

“Child labour is a major obstacle to EFA (Education for All), and the elimination of child labour is key to realising the EFA,” said the World Bank’s Bob Prouty, who also told the gathering that 11 percent of children below 14 years in Africa are engaged in some form of labour. (‘Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments’ is a declaration that was adopted at the World Education Forum, held in the Senegalese capital of Dakar in 2000. Countries attending the forum pledged to achieve basic education of a good quality for all by 2015, or earlier.)

Poverty is the driving force behind child labour. Although the abolition of primary school fees in a number of African countries has enabled many parents to enrol their children, others still find that they need children to supplement the family income by working, instead of going to school.

In an effort to change this situation, Kenya has tried compensating parents for their children’s labour; the money is conditional on children attending school.

“We give a little incentive to very poor parents whose children have been working in plantations and other areas, as well as to orphans and vulnerable children,” Mary Njoroge, director of basic education at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, told IPS.

“We give between 500 to 1,000 Kenya shillings (about seven to 14 dollars) per month per child, and we have plans to increase this to a maximum of 3,000 Kenya shillings (about 43 dollars).”

There are nearly two million working children between the ages of five and 17 in Kenya, according to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. About a third of the children are in commercial agriculture and fisheries, 23.6 percent in subsistence agriculture, and almost 18 percent in the domestic sector.

Njoroge said the incentives had helped maintain school enrolment rates, which increased sharply after free primary education was introduced in Kenya in early 2003. According to government statistics, enrolment now stands at 7.6 million, up from 5.9 million in 2002.

However, there are fears that Kenyan schools were ill-equipped to deal with the influx, and that the quality of education pupils are receiving may have been compromised, as a result.

The East African country suffers from a serious shortage of teachers, for instance. In rural areas and urban informal settlements, an educator may have as many as 100 pupils in one class.

In addition, there are too few classrooms, prompting the introduction of shifts – with some children attending classes in the morning, and others later in the day. Shortages of textbooks and the like have also been reported.

While the education ministry consumes 28 percent of the national budget, a large portion of this money funds the free primary schooling initiative.

Neighbouring Tanzania, which eliminated primary school fees in 2001, faces similar challenges.

“Teacher distribution was very low particularly in the rural areas. Most teachers were concentrated in the urban areas, and we had to look for ways of motivating teachers to go to rural areas,” Oliver Mhaiki, the deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, told IPS at the Nairobi workshop.

“We are now building houses for teachers in the rural areas,” he added. In order to ease classroom congestion, communities have built new classrooms.

Malawi, where free primary schooling became available more than a decade ago, was also faced with the challenge of maintaining standards in the face of increased enrolment. This rose from 1.9 million to 3.2 million after the introduction of free schooling.

“This was a massive increase, and we straight away realised that we needed to recruit more teachers. We needed 53,000 but had only 27,000,” said Nelson Kaperemera, director of basic education at the Ministry of Education. As a result, the government began concerted efforts to train and recruit 26,000 additional teachers.

However, Mhaiki warned that a successful primary schooling initiative did not spell an end to the educational headaches of African countries; free secondary education might also have to be provided, if Africa was not to become a continent of primary school drop-outs.

“The majority of Africa’s population are poor, and that is why abolishing primary school fees aimed at ensuring that as many children as possible access basic education (makes sense). But it may not make sense if these children complete primary education and are unable to join secondary schools because they are unable to afford fees,” he noted.

“It is a complex issue which involves the economy of a country, but it needs to be addressed nonetheless,” added Mhaiki, noting that only 20 percent of last year’s primary school graduates in Tanzania had gone on to high school.

The three-day Nairobi workshop, which wrapped up on Friday, was organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund. About 200 education experts, policy makers and donors attended the meeting to discuss the progress of efforts to abolish school fees in Africa.

They also shared experiences on how to address the challenges faced in the countries that have embraced free primary education, including Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Burundi, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ghana.