Gender and Education for All THE LEAP TO EQUALITY

Chapter 5 - From targets to reform: national strategies in action

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Evidence of national reform Education systems are highly complex and have to be planned. Yet a constant process of policy review and reform in the education sector is also a fact of life. Rarely do education systems have the chance to stabilize. This long-term activity is subject to the short-term imperatives of political cycles, which complicates the search to understand what really makes a difference (Martinic, 2003; Corrales, 1999). Here a largely descriptive approach is adopted, providing instances of reform at work in eight countries prior to a more detailed examination of three specific strategies: participation, decentralization and making primary education affordable to households. The brief country profiles that follow exemplify a set of generally accepted tenets about the prerequisites for improving education. As noted elsewhere in this report, a strong legislative base is necessary even if this does not in itself guarantee change. Leadership at the highest level makes a difference if the legal guarantees are to be met and, in the constant battle to secure resources for education, those which are available must be used efficiently and managed well, centrally and locally. The underpinning requirement is education grounded in professional competence and sound pedagogy. Many countries still benefit from the very strong impetus given to education in the immediate post-independence period. Algeria demonstrated this commitment between 1966 and 1977 by making major investments in education (Kateb, 2003). Its National Commission for Education Reform in 1970 stressed the democratization of education, leading to an expansion of primary-school enrolments from 47.2 NER in 1966 to 83.0 NER in 1998. But for Algeria – and many other countries –consolidating these early gains has proved problematic. Bangladesh has experienced a regular flow of policies and reforms for well over a decade. The enactment of the Compulsory Primary Education Act in 1991 and the introduction of a competency-based curriculum framework in 1994 laid the foundations for a major expansion in education provision that then faced the triple challenge of quantitative expansion, qualitative improvement and better management. In recent years the National Education Policy (2000), the Primary Education Development Programme and the National Plan of Action for Children (1997–2002) have all been constructed to address these challenges (Bangladesh National Commission for UNESCO, 2002). The education of girls has been made a priority and there has been innovation through greater dialogue with communities, through UNICEF’s Intensive District Approach to Education for All and as part of the Effective Schools Through Enhanced Management (ESTEEM) programme supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). In this progression of policy debate and development, education has remained a politically contentious issue, in a country with a strong and vocal non-government education sector. Some commentators argue that education needs to be depoliticized – however unlikely this is – if lasting achievements are to be sustained (Fransman et al., 2003). Successive Chilean governments have pursued education sector reform. A major efficiency-oriented reform, initiated in 1981 under an authoritarian regime, was for the most part preserved by a centre-left coalition government after the transition to democracy in 1990 and complemented with significant quality-oriented reforms and targeted support for schools in low-income and rural areas (Corrales, 1999). A specific concern has been to address the pedagogical issues acknowledged as contributing to discrimination against women (Avalos, 2003). These include the curriculum and textbooks, teacher-education programmes, school-based sex education and scholarship programmes for students attending the ‘poorest’ schools. Developing education in Mauritania starts from a low and difficult base. A process of government decentralization was initiated in 1986, a pluralist democracy was established in 1991 and an economic reform programme commenced in 1992. In education, the focus has been on expanding access to schooling and major gains have been made: primary gross enrolment for girls has risen from 47.2% in 1991 to 84% in 2001/02. In 1999 a sector reform was introduced to place education ‘at the heart of development’ and was soon followed by the National Development Programme for the Education Sector (NDPES – 2001–2010), developed through a year-long process of consultation. Improving access, improving quality, and the education of girls are its three pillars. In assessing the chances for success one writer has identified the steady application of political will, active participation across society, close attention to the monitoring of progress, and sustained support from the international community (Kamil Hamoud Abdel Wedoud, 2003). In Kiribati, strong and sustained political leadership led to the establishment of a junior secondary school on each of the twenty inhabited islands of the country, thereby giving all children the opportunity of a nine-year cycle of basic education. This was costly: the recurrent budget increased by US$2 million in 1998. Education’s share of the budget increased from 19% to 23% in one year. Even so the costs of financing the programme have almost certainly been underestimated. The focus now, as in so many countries, is on quality and on the investment needed to secure this (Mackenzie, 2003). Leadership at the highest level makes a difference if the legal guarantees are to be backed up. At the other end of the population scale, China’s underlying prescription for education is Essential Quality Oriented Education (EQO) which places nine years of universal, compulsory education and the eradication of illiteracy among young people as important priorities. Increasing attention is now being given to assisting the country’s most disadvantaged groups. There are plans to increase the level of transfer payments to the western and ethnic-minority areas, as low local investments in education represent the key constraint to better education for ethnic-minority groups. In addition, the use of local languages, the recruitment of local teachers and better parents’ education programmes will become accepted strategies. Multiple channels of educational opportunity are proposed for the disabled, especially in disadvantaged areas, and a target has been set of 95% primary-school enrolment for the children of rural-urban migrants by 2005. School-based programmes are planned to help address the spread of HIV/AIDS. Given the very strong growth of the Chinese economy in recent years, notably on its eastern seaboard, these objectives should not be out of reach (Maher and Ling, 2003). Cambodia is committed to universal access to, and completion of, primary and lower secondary education by 2010. It has instituted a rolling five-year Education Sector Support Programme (ESSP) 2001–2005, within which there are twelve Priority Action Programmes (PAPs) designed to promote equity, quality and efficiency of education governance and financing. These programmes include attention to in-school and out-of-school HIV/AIDS awareness, and scholarships and incentives for equitable access and efficiency at all levels of the system. While there have been considerable improvements in gender parity, efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning through the pursuit of gender equality goals has some way to go (Velasco, 2003). Ecuador went through a three-phase process of experimentation, assessment and diagnosis, and broad-based consultation and reform between 1991 and 1997. A pilot programme designed to increase school enrolment and community participation in rural schools was followed by a major baseline assessment of education policy involving a wide range of stakeholders, leading to the ten-year (1995–2005) Education Reform Plan (Plan Decenal de Reforma Educativa en Marcha) (World Bank, 2000). Decentralization has been one defining characteristic of the whole reform process. While these brief sketches have their limitations, they tend to confirm that reform in education is invariably part of wider reforms designed to promote poverty reduction, better governance and economic growth. Few, if any, of the reforms address the totality of EFA, and in many instances attention to access is followed by a concern for quality rather than both occurring in tandem.