Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
9. Financing education. This is an area which requires some
more detailed work, including the development of new
frameworks to guide future planning and budgeting. Some
of the areas which require attention include:
9.1 Ensuring that education and training receive adequate
financing to be effective. A return to the allocation of about
22 per cent of the state budget to education and training
would be a first step.
9.2 Ensuring that teachers’ and lecturers’ salaries are not eroded
to the extent that they are not able to survive. This will stem
the loss of personnel to the diaspora and into petty trade.
Salaries should be in line with regional salaries.
9.3 Ensuring that the per capita grant for school materials is
commensurate with the cost of basic school materials.
9.4 Providing adequately for construction, maintenance, school
furniture and equipment. In particular a new framework
would be needed to enable the community-owned schools,
such as district council schools, to obtain fixed state subsidies
for this area, including for maintenance. At present, state
subsidies are limited to construction, and are painfully
inadequate. However, expensive white elephants should be
avoided. 7
9.5 Ensuring a better balance between investment into primary,
secondary and tertiary education. Analysis of recent budgets
appears to show some ad hoc variations, in particular with
greater emphasis on university education than on primary,
secondary, technical and vocational education. Whilst
university education is undoubtedly important, underinvestment
in other sectors will have a deleterious effect on
educational development as a whole.
9.6 Ensuring that focus on areas such as pre-primary and
non-formal education in terms of the budget is well
maintained.
9.7 Developing a pro-poor budgeting framework, so that the
disadvantaged and lower income communities are better
catered for than at present. In particular it is important that
funds reach the school and community level.
9.8 Financing an increased focus on decentralised support
for the school system by providing more resources and
decentralised decision-making responsibilities to provincial
and district levels.
9.9 Lowering the cost of administration as compared to the
cost of implementation. One important move will be to
have one Ministry of Education rather than two, to ensure
better coordination between sectors that need to work very
closely together. Moreover having two Ministries more than
doubles the administrative costs, and may account for the
increasing cost, which appears to be combined with lowered
efficiency rates.
10. The challenges of donor aid. Donor assistance played
an important role in the funding of education in the 1980s
and 1990s. At this stage the state receives little or no donor
assistance. Although there is some donor support directly
to schools, this is generally not coordinated. While the
direct provision of assistance at school level has important
advantages and should be maintained in the future, the lack
of planning and coordination means that such assistance
cannot be utilised to best effect. On the other hand, returning
to donor assistance to the state without carefully thought
out and agreed frameworks can be fraught with dangers.
With the likelihood that there will be many new decisionmakers,
both at the national political and bureaucratic levels,
as well as among donors, this additional funding needs to
be handled in such a way as to strengthen the system in
replicable ways. A framework for donor funding will need to
be devised that will ensure that the poorest sections of the
community can benefit, whilst also ensuring that the quality
of education is improved.
11. Research and development. There is a need for much
more work in this area, particularly in terms of providing
utilisable analysis which can help to improve the education
system. Some of the areas include:
11.1 Linking education and training to development needs,
including economic development needs and employment
creation.
11.2 Enabling data collected at school level to be utilised
expeditiously for school improvement. Presently data is
collected, but not utilised. Examination results can be
utilised to ensure that schools can aim at higher levels
of attainment within a planned programme for learning
achievement improvement.
11.3 There is room for closer monitoring and evaluation of all
levels of education, along the lines of the SACMEQ studies.
This will enable the Ministries to track quality deterioration
and take timely steps to ensure improvements.
11.4 Curriculum research, particularly into the needs of present
and emerging economic requirements, so as to ensure that
the curriculum is up-to-date and relevant. It will remain a
challenge to have curricula which bridge present with future
needs.
6.4 Stakeholders and priorities
In addition to identifying the main policy and strategy areas set
out above, it is also necessary to identify who will be responsible
for implementing these policies and strategies. The main players
and stakeholders include the state, in particular the Ministry of
Education (MOE), 8 the private sector, the parents and community,
and the donors.
The state
The state remains the key player in the rehabilitation of the
education system. Its role is critical: it can help to rehabilitate the
education system within a short period of time if it plays a visionary
and proactive role, and provides the much needed leadership
to all stakeholders. It must demonstrate unequivocally that it is
determined to prioritise education and to link it to the country’s
development strategies. It is the main funder of the education
and training systems. It must also put into place technically and
professionally sound policies and strategies that will benefit the
poor as well as the rich.
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