Education for All, Namibia



Education for All in Namibia

Wezi Tjaronda, New Era, January 2006

WITH nine years to go before the deadline expires on Dakar, Namibia faces a host of challenges in achieving Education for All (EFA). To date, the Government has been consistent in allocating more than 20 percent of the total budget to the education sector. However this decision has not yielded visible benefits since the education system still does not contribute enough skilled human resources. As a draft working document of the Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (ETSIP) puts it, the key weakness of the education system is poor quality, which translates into high failure rates, low productivity, high levels of dropouts and repetition.

The Professional Development Coordinator of the Namibia National Teacher’s Union (NANTU), Havelinus Shemuketa says the Union has identified four main issues, which remain challenges in achieving education for all. These are enrolment of Grade One children, the survival rate from Grade 1 to Grade 12, the pre-primary stage of education and the adult literacy rate.

So far, the country has largely met its goals set under the National Development Plan I, in relation to the enrolment of 7-16 year olds, which stands at 93 percent. The primary school enrolment rate has increased from 60 percent at independence to over 90 percent in 2004. Meanwhile the adult literacy rate stood at 83 percent in 2004 as opposed to only 50 percent at independence. The survival rate in schools as of 2002 was 95 percent for females and 92 for males. “This is a concern because we have to find out why males are dropping out of school and find ways of keeping them in school,” said Shemuketa adding that children that are supposed to be in school but for other reasons are not also remains a concern.

In reaching the EFA goals, to which Namibia like other countries committed itself in 1990, the country faces problems in mobilising additional resources to implement programmes as articulated in the EFA Plan; the HIV and AIDS threat; gender parity; improvement in the quality of educational outcomes; access to education at all levels as well as inequalities and ensuring that all children have access to quality early childhood education.

A National Report: “Progress in Achieving Education for All Goals since Dakar” says that, although modest progress has been made in executing EFA activities, more resources are needed to implement the programmes. Namibia is classified as a Middle Income Country by virtue of its per capita income which is close to US$2,000. However the real situation is that the country has one of the most skewed income distributions in the world. Recently, Namibia became eligible for the Millennium Challenge Account, but largely, remains a non-priority country for many donor nations. “The ever changing priorities of cooperating partners will make resource mobilisation efforts extremely difficult,” notes the EFA progress report, released in 2004.

Apart from resources Namibia, like other Sub-Saharan countries, is hard hit by the HIV and AIDS pandemic, with a national prevalence rate of 19.7 percent. The pandemic has continued to kill the teaching population. Many infected teachers are bed-ridden for long periods and still others stay away from their jobs to care for or mourn and bury their loved ones.

A study sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year found that Namibia had an absenteeism rate of 24 percent, compared to others such as Zambia with 17 percent and Uganda 27 percent. The study, entitled “Roll Call non Teacher Absenteeism in Namibia” said that the implications of teachers getting sick and staying away from school for long periods led to many learners not completing their school. Conducted in six of the 13 political regions of Namibia, the study found that a total of 8,460 teachers from 612 schools were absent from their classes mainly from September to November 2004. Of these, the majority 3,826 were sick while 1,267 were on compassionate leave.

Stigma and lack of parental support lead to children dropping out of school. HIV and AIDS, says NANTU, cut across many other issues such as the quality of education delivered to learners, service delivery and school attendance. Access to education at all levels has also become a challenge in achieving the education for all goals. While access to education for special learning needs is a problem, children of marginalised groups are even harder to reach because of their nomadic lifestyle. Havelinus Shemuketa from NANTU says that even though mobile schools are provided, some children are still out of reach especially during times when they go deep in the bushes to herd livestock.

Even if Namibia succeeds in adopting all-inclusive education in mainstream schools, more of these schools will be needed, particularly to accommodate children with special needs, such as those with disabilities, which also requires the training of teachers in the mainstream schools.

In Namibia early childhood education has been left to private providers, making it unaffordable for most people. Around 60 percent of Namibians live below the poverty line. The Government only provides the policy framework, the curriculum and trains caregivers employed in early childhood care and education centers, while communities are expected to provide resources, including infrastructure and the payment of teacher’s salaries.

Another point worth considering is the quality of educational outcomes in Namibia. Critics have, on a number of occasions, leveled criticism against the system, which, they say, does not provide quality education to learners. This has led to high failure and repetition rates among learners. Recently, a Director of the Namibia College of Open Learning expressed concern about the quality of teachers, which led to poor throughput. She said not much had been done to improve the competencies of teachers.

Aside from this, NANTU says that many others issues should be considered when discussing the quality of education. The union notes that teachers, especially in rural areas, live in sub-standard housing that at most times does not have electricity. These teachers are supposed to do their work such as writing lesson plans by candle light.

Faced with a host of challenges at a time when Namibia aims at becoming an industrialised, knowledge-based economy , the Ministry of Education with the assistance of the World Bank carried out studies which found that since independence, the education system as it stands would not contribute to the level expected of it in providing skilled human resources.

Intensive planning and strategising arose from this. To remedy the weaknesses, the Ministry came up with a strategic plan for education improvement or “ETSIP”, which was approved in February 2005. The programme has five broad objectives namely: quality, equity, relevance and responsiveness, delivery and management and finance and efficiency.

Last year, the then two ministries of education held a roundtable meeting to discuss ETSIP and also to solicit funding for the programme, which will run as from this year, 2006 until 2020. Some of the financing sources include the European Commission, Sida, the Dutch Government and the Global Fund.

Amongst the areas of policy tackled by the Cabinet at the acceptance of the strategic plan were Early Childhood development, Teacher to learner ratio, textbooks, assessment, equity and quality. Still, as a way forward, the EFA Report suggests that at country level, Namibia should finalise the process of developing the ETSIP, which articulates strategies to improve the quality of educational outcomes in Namibia. In fact, the teacher’s union feels that the finalisation of ETSIP will ensure that the education system is revamped and improved to the nation’s expectations.

It will also embark on a nationwide campaign to encourage teachers and all other staff in the education sector to go for voluntary counseling and testing in order to access Anti Retroviral drugs (ARVs). The forum will also have to sustain efforts to encourage Namibian businesses and civil society organizations to continue to be involved in the EFA activities.

According to Shemuketa from NANTU, EFA remains a challenge and requires that the whole nation rises up and not just a few individuals in offices. Unless these challenges are addressed, the current education and training system is not able to rise up to the call of Vision 2030, and heighten its contribution to the realisation of the vision, and the realization of the national development goals.

Vision 2030, is the road map for Namibia’s development, which has set the year 2030 as the year when “The people of Namibia as well developed, prosperous, healthy and confident in an atmosphere of interpersonal harmony, peace and political stability; and as such, Namibia is a developed country to be reckoned with as a high achiever in the comity of nations.”

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