EDUCATION: Secondary Schools, the Weakest Link in Africa

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brahima Ouedraogo

KAMPALA , Jun 23 2003 (IPS) - Ugandan Joshua Byabashaija has no idea what he will be doing after completing his secondary school in five months.

”It’s almost the end of my secondary programme. I have no idea what the future holds for me,” says a worried Byabashaija. ”I could become a teacher, because that’s what my parents did, but I’m not all that interested in teaching.”

The fears of Joshua, who participated in the first African conference on secondary education held in Kampala, Uganda, from Jun. 9 to Jun. 13, reflect the wider problems facing secondary schools in Africa.

”The situation is worrisome. We’re not getting worse, but we’re experiencing a lag in relation to the rest of the world,” explains Senegalese Mamadou Ndoye of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).

According to him, the preparation of young Africans for the challenges of the outside world falls short of the continent’s expectations.

”We’re advocating that a broader system of access to secondary education be established, and that African governments and their development partners . respond urgently and adequately to avoid creating shortages of teachers, tension and conflicts,” Ndoye emphasises.

The gross rate of secondary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa was around 24 percent between 1998 and 1999. In Southeast Asia the corresponding proportion was 52 percent and in the Arab countries of North Africa it was 60 percent.

The Kampala meeting hopes to improve sub-Saharan Africa’s secondary education – which has been the weakest link in the pipeline from primary to higher education.

In Uganda, primary education has received so much emphasis that, the eight million children who graduate each year cannot all be absorbed in secondary schools.

”The risks of exclusion are enormous and our reforms aim to avoid having young people find themselves out on the street. Parents will only send their children to primary school if they see that those who’ve already attended earn higher incomes, or if communities see the social and cultural benefits of schooling,” says Khiddu Makubuya, the minister of education.

Ndoye agrees. ”There has to be a link between secondary school and the world of work,” he says.

The education system inherited from colonial powers are now outmoded, teachers say. A study, presented in Kampala, says fewer than 21 percent of youth, aged between 20 and 29, have completed secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa.

”Education promotes good policies, work ethics and management skills. It is therefore the obligation of government to create the conditions for universal education to improve job opportunities,” says Francoise Caillod of the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Keith Lewin, an educationalist, says: ”Secondary education today is like an elephant which chases several rats at a time, in spite of its large size. It finishes by not catching any of them”.

Lewin warns African countries that they will perform poorly economically and will not reach their millennium development and universal education goals if they do not reform their educational systems.

”Big reforms need to occur; the problem is their acceptance – before any money is shelled out. Some parents and certain groups, who have fixed ideas of what education should look like, will resist change,” Ndoye says.

Penina Mlama of the Forum of African Female Educators (FAWE) says reforms must include training men and teachers to empower girls. The current education system, she says, discriminates against the girl child.

”Girls are still more at-risk, because they are still subjected to prejudices and social pressures,” she explains.

HIV/AIDS is also having its toll on education. A World Bank report released last year said that in the worst-hit countries, teachers were "dying faster than they can be replaced".

Teachers’ deaths deprived an estimated 860,000 children of educators in 1999, according to the report.

The World Bank – which is pushing for achieving the targets for Education for All by 2015 – says less than one-third of Sub-Saharan Africa youth attend secondary schools.

The numbers of teachers required in secondary schools has been increasing. Between 1980 and 1995 the numbers increased from 1.7 million to almost 3 million, according to UNESCO.

But more still need to be attracted to the profession, it says.(