Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Developing Post-Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa : Assessing the Financial Sustainability of Alternative Pathways
ISBN: 9780821382363
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / World Bank Publications
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Education;

Because of the remarkable progress that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have made toward universalizing primary school completion (a Millennium Development Goal), many young Africans are completing primary schooling and many more will do so in the coming years. As they seek opportunities for further education, the pressure to expand places in secondary and tertiary education, already strong at present, can be expected to intensify in the future. Finding a sustainable path for expansion is thus a challenge that all countries in the region are grappling with. This study seeks to provide African policy makers and their development partners a factual basis for developing a mutual understanding of the nature of the challenge and its implications for alternative options for expanding opportunities in post-primary education. It was first prepared as a background study for the 2008 Biennale of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) whose theme was OC Beyond Primary Education: Challenges of and Approaches to Expanding Learning Opportunities in Africa.OCO. Given the diversity across African countries, the study naturally offers no generic policy fix. It is rather intended as an analytical tool for use by national leaders and their development partners to inform discussion and debate about alternative options in light of country circumstances. The simulation scenarios it presents therefore serve an illustrative function, to draw attention to such options as raising the share of education in the national budget, reforming the service delivery arrangements to manage costs, diversifying the student flow beyond lower secondary education, enlarging the role of private funding, particularly in post-primary education, and so on. Helpfully, the study captures the nature of the policy choices by presenting alternative packages of policies, using them to clarify the affordability of what the authors characterize as spartan and generous choices. The simulation modelOCOs flexibility can be exploited to adapt the package of policies to suit national contexts. This feature is perhaps one of the studyOCOs most valuable contributions."