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Education Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 77
Addressing Quality, Capacity, and Resource Gaps
Despite rapid expansion, Ethiopia’s education sector faces four key
challenges:
• Access. Access to educational opportunities continues to be an obstacle,
especially for females and other “most vulnerable children,” poor
students, and those in rural areas.
• Quality. Improved access has not been accompanied by adequate
improvements in quality.
• Financing. The rapid expansion has left a considerable financing gap
between available funds and the anticipated cost of investments needed
to improve and maintain quality.
• Capacity. Some of the regional and woreda governments lack the capacity
to adequately plan, manage, and monitor the sector. This includes
the capacity to gather and report on key performance indicators on
time to manage and monitor effectively the implementation of education
reforms.
Ethiopia is currently implementing its second poverty reduction strategy,
known as the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to
End Poverty (PASDEP). PASDEP shows a strong vertical coordination of
sectoral strategies with the overall government strategy and is well integrated
with the budget through the Macroeconomic and Fiscal Framework
and the government-donor Joint Budget and Aid Review. PASDEP’s strategic
vision is one of rapid and sustained growth, being achieved primarily
through scaled-up development assistance and large domestic investments
targeted at eliminating the poverty traps that have hindered the
development of the country.
The government’s current vision for education development is
described in PASDEP. Although education remains a high priority, it is
evident from PASDEP that education has been receiving a smaller
share of the overall budget, the decline starting in 2004/05 (MOFED
2006). The overarching framework for education provision is the
ESDP. Currently in its third phase (ESDP III), this gives high priority
to quality improvement at all levels and to an increasingly important
role for the private sector in educational provision at all levels. Some
observers have noted, however, that PASDEP does not include policy
proposals which, by ensuring a level playing field, would permit the
private sector to enter the market with confidence (Austrian
Development Cooperation 2007).