IFIs, Education Financing and Education Policy: Primary Education User Fees in Sub-Saharan AfricaBy Joshua Rosensweig

I – Introduction

The most identifiable moment for the galvanization of global support for education was the launch of the Education for All (EFA) initiative at the first EFA conference at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. The conference brought together delegates from 155 countries and over 150 organizations seeking to “universalize primary education and massively reduce illiteracy before the end of the decade”,1 produced a “World Declaration on Education for All” and a “Framework for Action”, and led to two subsequent conferences, at Amman in 1996, and Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. In the latter year, the United Nations released its “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG), a set of eight straightforward yet extraordinarily challenging development goals to which all UN members committed themselves to meeting by 2015. Education, and particularly primary education, was given a prominent role; the second MDG (the “Education MDG”) implored states to “ensure all boys and girls complete a full course of primary education”, while the third demanded the elimination of “gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.”2

By the end of the 1990’s, progress was mixed. The early goal of Jomtien, achievement of EFA by the end of the decade, had clearly not been met – but certain accomplishments had been made. The worldwide rate of primary school completion had risen from 73% in 1990 to 81% in 2000,3 a rate at which achievement of the Education MDG by 2015 did not seem out of reach. This global average “masks large regional differences in both the distance from the MDG and the progress made over the last decade”.4 While Eastern Europe and Latin America were on track, or nearly so, Sub-Saharan Africa seemed desperately and irreparably behind. Over the 10-year period from 1990 to 2000, the region had improved its Primary Completion Rate5 by only 5%, from 50% to 55%, or 0.5% per year.6 In order to achieve Universal Primary Completion (UPC) by 2015, it would have to increase its rate of improvement six-fold, from 0.5% to 3% per year. To put this challenge into perspective, the single most successful region since Jomtien, Latin American and the Caribbean, had improved its PCR by 10%, or 1% per

1 UNESCO EFA website, http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/background/world_conference_jomtien.shtml 2 MDG website, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ 3 Bruns, Barbara, Mingat, Alain and Rakotomalala, Ramahatra, Achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015: A Chance for Every Child (World Bank, 2003), 34 Bruns, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 35 “Primary completion rate is the number of students successfully completing the last year of (or graduating from) primary school in a given year, divided by the number of children of official graduation age in the population.” (http://devdata.worldbank.org/external/CPdefinition.asp?icode=SE.PRM.CMPT.ZS&ccode=CHN)6 Bruns, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3

year. Sub-Saharan Africa, facing the gravest education crisis in the world, needed to triple that success, and to maintain that rate for a full 15 years.

Facing this sizeable challenge, education policymakers began to focus increasingly on the one policy decision that, by past experience, had proven to produce results in enrollment to the order demanded by EFA and the MDG’s: the abolition of user fees. Experiments in Malawi and Uganda held out the promise of radical results. The 1994 abolition of fees in Malawi lead to the sudden arrival at primary school of 1.4 million new students, while a similar decision in Uganda in 1997 boosted enrollment by nearly 3 million.7 At the same time, policymakers were well acquainted with the dangers of hurried and radical solutions. In both countries, “[c]lassrooms became seriously over-crowded, teachers and textbooks were in chronically short supply, and, initially, schools lost an important source of revenue.”8 UNESCO reports that quality problems following the institution of Free Primary Education (FPE) in Uganda eventually began to cannibalize gains in enrollment. The Net Enrollment Ratio (NER)9, having increased to 84% upon abolition of fees, dropped to 76% by 2000. As UNESCO explained, “[a]ll poor families appraised were theoretically willing to pay slightly more for what was seen to be ‘good’ education. On the contrary, when standards are not up to expectations, parents stop making sacrifices to cover the costs.”10

Both governments and IFIs have frequently cited these kinds of quality concerns in response to demands for the immediate abolition of fees. They are, however, shared by many activists. According to Mary Pigozzi, Director of UNESCO’s Division for the Promotion of Quality Education, “[t]here is a common misunderstanding that access to education must always precede attention to quality…We must get schools up and running as soon as possible. But we need to do so with a vision of the future needs and expectations of students.”11 In a similar vein, former UN Special Rapporteur for Education Katarina Tomasevski has warned against equating the right to education merely with the provision of education, concerned that the focus on quantitative targets has lead to an obsession with the cost-effectiveness of education, and a dilution of the conception of education as a human right.12

With these significant pressures on both access and quality, and with broader economic challenges facing the entire sub-continent, external aid has become a central element of the drive towards EFA and every attempt at the abolition of fees. With the demand for external aid, however, comes an entirely different, and perhaps more complicated (if not necessarily more challenging) set of issues. Donors have sought to 7 Oxfam, Education Charges: A Tax on Human Development (Oxfam Briefing Paper, November 2001), 128 Oxfam, supra note Error: Reference source not found9 “Enrollment of the official age-group for a given level of education expressed as a percentage of the corresponding population… Divide the number of pupils (or students) enrolled who are of the official age-group for a given level of education by the population for the same age-group and multiply the result by 100.” (http://devdata.worldbank.org/edstats/RegionalIndicators/caribbean/definition.html) 10 UNESCO Newsletter, “The Price of School Fees”, online at (http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=32571&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html)11 Price of School Fees, supra note Error: Reference source not found12 Price of School Fees, supra note Error: Reference source not found

coordinate and ‘harmonize’ their efforts in an effort to provide more ‘efficient’ aid, as a result of which global financing of education has become increasingly centralized within the mandate of the World Bank. Donors have demanded detailed sector wide education plans (or ‘SWAp’s), and have judged domestic policies in an increasingly rigid and formalized manner. A myriad of administrative structures have been created to administer, monitor and evaluate both education plans and their implementation. Supporters laud improvements in accountability and efficiency. Detractors protest a perceived absence of actual resource mobilization, and cringe at the oversight undertaken by the Bank, ever mindful of the hated conditionalities of prior decades. In this context, facing these challenges, all future attempts to abolish user fees and universalize access will unfold.

Part II of this paper reviews briefly the undertakings of the developed world to ensure the achievement of EFA and the Education MDG’s. Part III tracks the shifting policies of the development community, principally the World Bank, on the question of user fees, and considers the extent to which the user fee phenomenon can be properly traced to IFI policy. Part IV examines just a few of the numerous issues associated with the abolition of user fees. First, it describes the structure, policies and procedures of the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), the principal World Bank vehicle for supporting EFA and the abolition of fees. Second, it reviews experiences with Free Primary Education in Tanzania and Zambia. Part V offers some concluding comments.

II – International Commitments to Free Education

Throughout the 1990’s, EFA conferences were the center of global rhetoric surrounding the guarantee of universal primary education. The World Declaration on Education for All, rooted in the right to education as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, pronounced that “every person - child, youth and adult - shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs.” Article III was labelled “Universalizing Access and Promoting Equity”, and reiterated that “basic education should be provided to all children, youth and adults”. Article IX, “Mobilizing Resources”, demanded “increased public sector support”, “attention to the efficiency of existing educational resources” and asserted that “protection for basic education will be required in countries undergoing structural adjustment and facing severe external debt burdens.”

In 1996, at the mid-decade meeting on EFA in Amman, Jordan, participants “rededicated” themselves to the “essential task” of bringing the benefits of educational to all.13 In 1997, the UN General Assembly approved its Resolution on Education for All.14 The Resolution reiterated the dual focus on both domestic and international support. Article 5 encouraged governments to “redouble their efforts to achieve their own goals of education”, while Article 6 appealed “to Governments and to economic and financial

13 Education for All: Achieving the goal: Amman Affirmation (Mid-Decade Meeting of the Consultative Forum of Education for All, Amman, Jordan, June 1996)14 A/C.3/52/L.II/Rev.1 / 29 October 1997

organizations and institutions, both national and international, to lend greater financial and material support” to education.

As Tomasevski notes, in none of these declarations was an express dedication to free education included.15 The turning point was the Dakar Framework for Action, the principal output of the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. Participants committed themselves to “ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.”16 This guarantee was to be more than merely formalistic. It explained that:

There must be an unequivocal commitment that education be free of tuition and other fees, and that everything possible be done to reduce or eliminate costs such as those for learning materials, uniforms, school meals and transport. Wider social policies, interventions and incentives should be used to mitigate indirect opportunity costs of attending school. No one should be denied the opportunity to complete a good quality primary education because it is unaffordable.17

To this end, the international community pledged to create “with immediate effect a global initiative aimed at developing the strategies and mobilizing the resources needed to provide effective support to national efforts.” Options included “increasing external finance for education, in particular basic education; ensuring greater predictability in the flow of external assistance…[and] providing earlier, more extensive and broader debt relief and/or debt cancellation for poverty reduction, with a strong commitment to basic education.”18 Specifically, participants pledged that if a “credible plan [is] in place, partner members of the international community undertake to work in a consistent, co-ordinated and coherent manner. Each partner will contribute according to its comparative advantage in support of the National EFA Plans to ensure that resource gaps are filled.”19

Finally, and most concretely, the Framework recognized that

Achieving Education for All will require additional financial support by countries and increased development assistance and debt relief for education by bilateral and multilateral donors, estimated to cost in the order of $8 billion a year. It is therefore essential that new, concrete financial commitments be made by national governments and also by bilateral and multilateral donors including the World Bank and the regional development banks, by civil society and by foundations.20

15 Price of School Fees, supra note Error: Reference source not found16 Dakar Framework for Action (adopted by the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, April 26-28, 2000), Article 7(ii)17 Expanded Commentary, Dakar Framework, paragraph 3218 Dakar Framework, Section 11(i, ii, v)19 Dakar Framework, Section 1720 Dakar Framework, Section 21

The most important element of the Dakar Framework is its clear and unequivocal causal association between domestic commitment to EFA and the provision of financial aid. The Framework plainly asserts that “[n]o countries seriously committed to Education for All will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by lack of resources… The key to releasing these resources is evidence of, or potential for, sustained political commitment; effective and transparent mechanisms for consultation with civil society organizations in developing, implementing and monitoring EFA plans; and a well-defined, consultative processes for sector planning and management.”21

The Dakar Framework remains the centerpiece of efforts to achieve EFA. Two statements since reaffirm this endorsement of free education and deserve brief comment. First is the October 2000 amendment by the United States to section 564 of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. Section 564 requires “the United States Executive Director at each international financial institution…and the International Monetary Fund to oppose any loan, grant, strategy or policy of these institutions that would require user fees or service charges on poor people for primary education or primary healthcare.” As the United States holds the most significant share of voting power, by far, at both the World Bank and the IMF, this legal undertaking is a significant one.

Second, the 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development at Monterrey, Mexico, provided the opportunity to “review the full range of financing options for providing international support to help developing countries meet the Millennium Development Goals.”22 While Monterrey did not speak to free education per se, the principal output of the Conference for these purposes, the Monterey Consensus, represented a broad call for increased aid. According to Koïchiro Matsuura, executive director of UNESCO, the Consensus was “an agreement by developed countries to boost their development assistance and an agreement by developing countries to strengthen their mechanisms of accountability and effectiveness”23; in this way, it reflected the quid pro quo of Dakar. In relevant part, the Consensus reaffirmed ODA as a “crucial instrument for supporting education, health, public infrastructure development, agriculture and rural development, and to enhance food security.”24

III – Imposition of Fees

The official relationship between the World Bank and user fees in primary education has been an uncertain one. Despite clear support for primary education user fees in the early and mid 1980’s, the Bank’s official position had begun to shift against user fees, and decisively so, as early as 1988. Clear opposition, however, has generally been manifested only with respect to direct tuition fees. While the Bank currently supports targeted bursaries for the poor, it is not necessarily in favour of abolishing all

21 Expanded Commentary, Dakar Framework, paragraph 4822 United Nations Development Program website on ICFD, http://www.undp.org/ffd/ 23 Address by Mr Koïchiro Matsuura Director-General of UNESCO to the Permanent Delegations on the occasion of the second anniversary of the World Education Forum, Dakar UNESCO, 26 April 2002, online at: http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/efa_week/address_by.shtml 24 Monterrey Consensus, A/CONF.198/1, 9

financial obstacles on a universal basis. Fees can therefore creep into Bank policy, both through indirect costs and various kinds of “community” contributions.

Historically, there are two ways in which IFIs could be said to have ‘caused’ the implementation of user fees in developing countries. The first is through specific conditionalities in “Sector Adjustment Programs” and individual project loans. In this kind of scenario, loans or grants destined specifically for the education sector required governments to implement user fees as a condition of the receipt of funds. User fees were seen as necessary in order to maintain quality, ensure sustainability by controlling costs, or both. In the second scenario, user fees were not imposed by IFIs as such, but were forced upon governments as a result of austerity programs undertaken under broader macroeconomic or “structural” adjustment. The unifying characteristic of structural adjustment for these purposes is a downward pressure on social sector expenditures combined with a substantially increased focus on debt servicing. Unable to support social sectors with sufficient public expenditure, governments (or underfunded schools) turned to the private sphere to supplement funding. A third avenue of support for ‘user fees’, which might be seen as subsumed within the first category, is direct support for programs which support ‘decentralized’ or privatized delivery of education. One example might be the creation of Social Funds, which provide support directly to communities to provide social services to its citizens.25 This kind of support may create access to education for poorer students and those in remote rural areas who might not otherwise have access to centralized public systems of education. Nevertheless, insofar as it supports the private delivery of education – which, inevitably, will have some sort of cost burden on households – it is still to be seen as a factor in total household expenditures on education.

There are significant ambiguities in establishing causal relationships between IFI intervention and the imposition of user fees in relation to both principal elements of financing programs. With respect to user fee conditionalities, the problem is essentially evidentiary. The only direct evidence of conditionalities is to be found in the various project documents generally maintained by the Bank in the course of its relationships with borrower states. While the Bank maintains an extensive public database of all programs, project documents are generally absent before the late 1990’s. Numerous commentators refer to the general phenomenon, few give specific examples, and fewer still support examples by reference to hard documentation. Difficulties relating to structural adjustment are more profound and more complex. Downward pressures on government budgets through the period of structural adjustment flowed not only from structural adjustment but from the underlying economic crises that spurred interest in structural adjustment to begin with. 26 Defenders of structural adjustment are fond of observing that without a counterfactual – the ‘control set’ Africa, without structural adjustment – the true impact of those interventions can never be known. Exacerbating this ambiguity, conditionalities underlying SAP’s and PRSP’s have not always been very transparent. While “Performance Criteria” and “Structural Benchmarks” have generally

25 Alexander, Nancy C. Paying for Education: How the World Bank & IMF Influence Education in Developing Countries (Global Challenge Initiative, December 1998 Updated 2002), 18-23.26 Id., 13

been clearly identified as conditions for the release of successive tranches, negotiations for approval of the initial tranche have not necessarily been revealed.27

A – Policy Papers: Shifting World Bank Positions on User Fees

The most express support for user fees in primary education emanating from the World Bank came in its analyses of the education sector in Malawi in the early 1980’s. In 1983, a World Bank Staff Working Paper was published by Mateen Thobani, a Bank economist who was heavily concerned with the tradeoffs between access and quality. While increasing access to education was a laudable goal, any such increase would be marked by a concomitant decrease in quality. The goal of the government, he argued, should be to find an appropriate balance between the quality and ‘quantity’ of education offered. Finding that the quality level in primary education was below the ‘optimal’ level, Thobani proposed the institution of user fees. Thobani recognized that his plan would be likely to exclude students from school (indeed, this seems to have been the point), but he denied that such exclusion would target poorer students disproportionately. In families with greater farming assets, he argued, the value of child labour was greater and the opportunity costs were higher.28 The argument for user fees was reiterated in similar terms by Alain Mingat the following year, in 1984.29 According to Pauline Rose, Malawi soon became the first in a line of SSA countries to adopt user fees.30

In a 1987 report, the World Bank view on fees was more ambiguous. While the report was strongly supportive of fees at the secondary and particularly tertiary levels, it was silent on the question of fees at the primary level. Moreover, one of its primary justifications for fees at higher levels of education was their impact on the availability of public expenditure for primary education. It explained that “[e]xpanding primary education through increased private contributions in higher education would enable those who are now denied even basic education to acquire literacy and basic mathematic skills. Equality in the distribution of public expenditures on education would improve

27 Id., 35. Adjustment programs are released in instalments, or “tranches”. During negotiations, borrowing countries and the Bank agree on the preconditions for initiation of the program and the release of the first tranche, as well as the progress required for the release of future tranches. These latter conditions are called “Performance Criteria”; the former are called “Prior Conditions” and, according to Alexander, are “seldom documented”. 28 Mateen Thobani, Charging user fees for social services: the case of education in Malawi (World Bank Staff Working Paper, 1983); Thobani’s paper was never formally endorsed by the Bank. Nevertheless, it provides an insight into thought that may have been prevalent among Bank economists of the time.29 Tan, J., Mingat, A., Lee, K., User charges for Education: The Ability and Willingness to Pay in Malawi (Washington, DC:World Bank, 1984)30 Rose, Pauline, From the Washington to the post-Washington Consensus: the influence of international agendas on education policy and practice in Malawi 1:1 Globalisation, Societies and Education 67, 74; Thobani’s thesis has undergone significant criticism. For instance, Klees argues that Thobani’s assumption that poorer children would not be disproportionately affected was contradicted by the evidence (Klees, S. The need for a political economy of educational finance: a response to Thobani (1984)). Rose observes that at the time of publication of Thobani’s paper, the Bank had already issued, the previous year, a report advocating the inclusion of user fees in Malawi’s upcoming Structural Adjustment Program. Thobani’s paper, Rose suggests, was merely an ex post rationalization of “a decision that had already been made.” (Rose, supra, 74)

dramatically.”31 This view is consistent with a broader focus, found throughout the report, on the importance of public expenditures on education generally and primary education specifically. The report argues that “returns to investment in education justify further increases in the resources devoted to education”, and similarly that “social rates of return…suggest that in most developing countries primary education should receive the highest investment priority, followed by secondary education.”32

In a 1988 report, Bank policy on user fees in primary education began to crystallize. In a critical excerpt it suggested that

[a]lthough charging primary pupils for instruction should generally be discouraged, there may be situations in which the judicious use of fees might be used for the explicit purpose of increasing accountability in education. For example, a purchase fee or rental charge for textbooks and other materials that are crucial to high levels of pupil achievement would help to ensure that these inputs are not eliminated from the budget in times of fiscal austerity. Another efficiency-increasing mechanism would be for parental groups to ‘top up’ primary teachers’ salaries in proportion to the time that teachers actually spend in the classroom.33

Two key strands of thought, central to Bank policy on the subject to this day, are clearly evident here. First, echoing Thobani, is a concern for an appropriate balance between quality and quantity. Maintaining a generally pessimistic attitude about the potential to increase total funds available to education, the Bank was (and is) leery of radical solutions posing a threat to the integrity of the system of education. Second, in light of this first focus, is a willingness to tolerate indirect fees where necessary. The reference to contributions from parents to “top up” teacher salaries is especially interesting, as it foreshadows the significant role of “decentralization” and “community” financing in future policy and discourse.

In 1995, the official World Bank position supported “free public basic education, combined with targeted stipends for households that cannot afford to enrol their children and with cost-sharing with communities.”34 These “targeted stipends” were to be used to overcome costs such as “buying books or losing production around the home”, while cost-sharing with communities was to be “normally the only exception to free basic education.”35 A subsequent report clarifies that “cost-sharing with communities” means cost-sharing with respect to school construction and maintenance.36 In 1999, the Bank’s

31 World Bank, Financing Education in Developing Countries: An exploration of policy options (Washington, 1987), 2332 Id, 9; Pauline Rose argues that the rhetorical focus on “human capital” in Bank publications is representative of an instrumentalist conception of education, leading to an overemphasis on the cost-effectiveness of education. The justification for public expenditure is framed in terms of rates of return and efficiency rather than rights or entitlement. (Rose, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 68-72)33 World Bank, Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies for Adjustment, Revitalization and Expansion (Washington, 1988), 5334 World Bank, Priorities and Strategies in Education (Washington, 1995), 10435 Id, 10536 Adams, Avril and Hartnett, Teresa, Cost Sharing in the Social Sectors of Sub-Saharan Africa: Impact of the poor (World Bank, Washington, 1996), 8

Education Sector Strategy reiterated the focus on “free basic education sometimes combined with targeted support” in order to assist with textbooks, uniforms and opportunity costs.37 In 2004, the Bank referred to the 1999 document as reflecting its current policy on primacy education.38

The reference to cost-sharing with communities in these excerpts has been articulated more clearly elsewhere as a central element of Bank philosophy on education. For instance, in a 1996 report on the key characteristics of effective schools, the Bank identified three principal inputs necessary for an effective system. The first key input was labelled “Strong Parent and Community Support”, which broke down further into five characteristics: “(i) children come to school prepared to learn; (ii) the community provides financial and material support to the school; (iii) communication between the school and parents and community is frequent; (iv) the community has a meaningful role in school governance; and (v) community members and parents assist with instruction.”39 This definition is consistent with the above, insofar as it seems to presume financial and material support from “communities” but not from parents directly. Later on in the report, however, apparently intending merely to restate these five factors, the second is recast as “parents provide financial and material support”.40 At the risk of engaging in semantics, this casual slide from ‘communities’ to parents may suggest that the two tend to conflate.

While the Bank has been the foremost supporter of international education, the view of the IMF is also instructive. In 2004, two IMF analysts published a paper manifesting a tolerance for user fees that seems two decades behind that of the Bank. While the authors accept the various threats posed by user fees to poorer students and concede that “user payments for basic education should never be more than a temporary solution”, they maintain that fees may in certain circumstances have a role to play. Specifically, where the major causes of low enrolment are supply-side, such as an absence of government ability or willingness to support public education, “user payments may be the only means by which parents in low-income countries can provide their children with an education until governments become willing or able to assume responsibility”. This argument, essentially that user fees may be necessary to increase access, echoes strongly Thobani’s thesis of 1983.41

B – Role of IFIs in Imposition of Fees: Tangible Evidence

In a 1996 paper, the Bank argued that the concern surrounding cost sharing in structural adjustment was overblown. Of 33 structural adjustment programs supported between 1990 and 1996, it observed, only one (in Burundi) included a condition requiring cost sharing in social sectors such as health or education. Moreover, the Bank argued, in 17 of those 33 programs, conditions were included seeking to protect expenditures on

37 World Bank, Education Sector Strategy (Washington, 1999), 55-5638 Kattan, Raja Bentaouet and Burnett, Nicholas, User Fees in Primary Education (World Bank, 2004), 2039 Heneveld, Ward and Craig, Helen, Schools Count: World Bank Project Designs and the Quality of Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington: World Bank, 1996), 40 Henevald and Craig, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3041 Hillman, Arye and Jenkner, Eva, Educating Children in Poor Countries (Economic Issues No. 33, IMF, 2004)

health and education in national budgets. Nevertheless, it recognized that while cost sharing might not necessarily be a condition for tranche release, it may “in some cases” have been “recommended” within adjustment lending.

While cost sharing may not have been a frequently used conditionality for the release of tranches, the more dangerous element of structural adjustment for education may, as noted above, have been in its impact on government expenditures. In spite of the Bank’s claim to have taken steps to ensure consistent spending on social sectors, estimates of the effects of adjustment on social sector expenditures vary wildly. In one 1995 study, Frances Stewart finds that from 1981 to 1990, expenditures on Health and Education increased in 23% of adjusting countries and 50% of non-adjusting countries. Over the same period, expenditures in Health and Education dropped by 3.4% in average adjusting countries against 0.4% in non-adjusting countries. “Other” expenditures, including interest payments, increased by 6.62% in average adjusting countries, and decreased by 5.15% in non-adjusting countries.42 In another study, Fernando Reimers finds that from 1980 to 1988, education as a percentage of GNP in sub-Saharan Africa decreased in 67% of adjusting countries and only 14% of non-adjusting countries. Similarly, real education expenditures declined in 44% of adjusting countries, and 22% of non-adjusting countries.43 Reimers also finds a negative correlation between adjustment and net enrolment rates, as NER fell in 36% of adjusting and 14% of non-adjusting Sub-Saharan-African countries.44 Nancy Alexander finds that of 3000 policy conditions attached to the many World Bank SAP’s from 1980-1993, in only six instances were expenditures on education expressly protected. While she finds such protections, termed ‘social conditionalities’, have more recently become “the rule rather than the exception…social conditions are often discretionary”, or non-binding.45

In project-lending, the Bank concedes that cost-sharing has been more prevalent. Of 169 education-related projects from 1963 through 1994, 29 (17%) included a cost-sharing component. Of 37 then-active education projects, 15 contained “some form of community participation” in the construction of schools. Among others, these 15 projects included initiatives in Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Of 18 education-related projects involving the provision of textbooks, 7 included an element of cost-sharing – “in all seven cases, however, rental schemes are used and books are loaned out at a small, sometimes symbolic fee. The importance of the fee is in the sense of ownership it provides leading to better care for the books.”46 A 1996 World Bank study, focussed on more recent projects, finds that of twenty-six projects studied, twenty involved support from communities. Thirteen of the projects involved support for “school construction, rehabilitation and maintenance.”47

42 Stewart, Frances, Adjustment and Poverty: Options and Choices (London: Routledge, 1995), 62-343 Reimers, Fernando, Education and Structural Adjustment in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa [1994] 14:2 Int. J. Educational Development 119, 12344 Reimers, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 12645 Alexander, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 746 Adams and Hartnett, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 1747 Heneveld and Craig, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 30

In another similar analysis, Philip Jones finds far more extreme results. The percentage of Bank projects “involved with” privatization of education “rose from 33% in FY 1980 to 100% in FY 1990.” The number of projects aimed at reducing recurrent costs in 1990 stood at 78%, 67% relied at least partially on community contributions for construction costs, and 56% included tuition raises.48 These estimates, particularly this last one, must, however, be taken with caution, because they do not appear to separate primary education from other levels of education. Given the Bank’s strong focus in this era on raising tuition fees in tertiary education, this estimate is likely to be significantly skewed.

i – Tanzania

At independence in 1961, the primary education system in Tanzania performed poorly, and Oxfam reports that primary school enrolment stood at about 50%.49 The provision of education thus became an important goal, and a significant point of pride, for the new government.50 In 1969, the Government embarked on a program seeking to achieve UPE by 1977. Enrollment grew steadily, and by 1978, had reached 93% in Standard 1. This was a dramatic increase, up from 26% only four years earlier.51

Despite these successes, the government had difficulty dealing with the sharp increases in enrolment. Not only were there far more children to educate, but the increased demand coincided with both the 1978 Ugandan war and the beginning of a period of broad economic collapse. Real GDP growth in the period from 1980-1985 dropped 81% compared with the period from 1970-1979, from 5.9% to 1.1% per annum. Growth in exports during this same period fell to 0.4%, compared with 0.1% throughout the 1970s, 7.8% from 1986-1992, and 18.6% from 1993-1997.52 The government struggled “to build additional classrooms, to train and pay additional teachers, and to provide adequate learning materials”, and as a result, dropouts increased and enrolment dropped.53

From 1978 to 1985, despite a slight increase in GDP, total social sector expenditures dropped by nearly 50% from TSh 1.8 billion to TSh 960 million. The decrease in expenditures on education was even more severe, from TSh 1.14 billion to

48 Jones, Philip W., World Bank Financing of Education: Lending, Learning and Development (London:Routledge, 1992), 17749 Education charges, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 650 “Access to basic education came to be regarded as a fundamental right of citizenship, requiring no further instrumental justification.” (Samoff, J. and Sumra, S., From Planning to Marketing: Making Education Policy in Tanzania in Samoff, J. (Ed.) Coping with Crisis. Austerity, Adjustment and Human Resources (London: Cassell, 1994), 134-172, 146)51 Education and Health Expenditure and Poverty Reduction in East Africa: Madagascar and Tanzania (Paris:OECD, 2002), 124. Oxfam reports that by 1976, “nearly universal enrollment was achieved.” (Education charges, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 6)52 Kweka Josaphat and Morissey, Oliver, Government Spending and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Tanzania (1965-1996) (University of Nottingham), 16. Online at http://www.devstud.org.uk/publications/papers/conf99/dsaconf99kweka.pdf 53 Education and Health Expenditure, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 124

TSh 517 million.54 Lugalla reports that these cuts took place under significant IMF pressure for macro-economic adjustment, but also that “the crisis [had] worsened to the extent that budgetary cuts had anyway became inevitable.”55

By the mid-1980s, the World Bank had begun to shift its approach in Tanzania “from support of macro-economic adjustment to supporting detailed policy reforms in specific sectors”.56 Lugalla identifies three types of policy initiatives undertaken by the Bank, the most significant of which he labels “Adjustment of educational provision”. Adjustment of educational provision involved “the diversification of sources of finance”, specifically the adoption of school fees combined with the liberalization of education provision. Public schools were therefore to charge school fees, while the provision of private education was to be encouraged. According to Frances Stewart, primary schools began charging “voluntary” fees in 1987.57 A 2002 report from the OECD suggests that primary school was free until the early 1990’s, but likely refers only to official tuition fees. The report finds that these early fees were very small, but grew throughout the 1990’s to 2000 TSh per pupil by 1999. More importantly, it finds, these fees represented a fraction of total household spending on education once expenditures for supplies, uniforms, and voluntary contributions for books and desks are considered. One study cited places total household spending on education at 30,000 TSh in 1998, another at 15,455 TSh in 1997,58 and a third in a range from 2,200 TSh to 19,300 TSh as household income increases.59 This first estimate is said to be “comparable to one month’s minimum wage and 1.5 times the annual cost per pupil cost of teachers.”60 UNESCO estimates total average household expenditures in Tanzania prior to the abolition of fees in 2002 in a range between TSh 7,000 and 10,600 per student.61

The combined impact of economic crisis, macroeconomic adjustment and “education adjustment” was disastrous. Enrollment fell from being nearly universal in 1977, to 66% in 1987, 62 the year that fees were first introduced, and remained below 70% through the mid-1990s.63 According to Lugalla, by the late 1980s, over half of primary schools in Dar es Salaam were overcrowded by at least 250%, and the city had approximately 85,000 desks for 135,000 students. Another region reports that from 1983 to 1992, the period of liberalization and adjustment, the number of available classrooms dropped from 1,884 to 1,271, and the number of desks fell from 26,868 to 9,026. These reductions represented an increase in shortages from 31.3 % to 49% for classrooms and

54 Lugalla, Joe, Structural Adjustment Policies and Education in Tanzania in Gibbon, Peter (ed.), Social Change and Economic Reform in Africa (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1993), 19655 Lugalla, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 19756 Lugalla, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 20757 Stewart, supra note Error: Reference source not found58 OECD, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 12759 OECD, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 14560 OECD, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 12761 UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/04: Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality, 21862 Stewart, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 16163 Education charges, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 6

35% to 77% for desks. Moreover, in 1986, 35% of Standard IV students failed examinations, while 12% “never attempted to answer the questions.”64

ii – Kenya

Kenya’s relationship with the IFIs began in 1978-79 when a balance of payments problem combined with oil shocks pushed the country towards a structural adjustment and stabilisation program with the IMF.65 At around the same time, the World Bank began to initiate a series of adjustment programs. In 1980 and 1982, Kenya entered into its first and second World Bank structural adjustment programs, and in 1986, 1988 and 1989, the Bank approved sector adjustment programs in agriculture, industry and finance.

According to Mwega and Kabubo, an adjustment program geared towards education and health was begun in 1988.66 Policies in the education initiative “included ‘cost sharing’ whereby the beneficiaries of these social services were to pay for them, either partially or fully. They also included a reduction in public expenditure, with more support funds to come from the private sector.”67 This private support would manifest itself in different ways. First, parents were to “pay fees and buy books, uniforms and so on. Second, parents were to contribute to the building of schools through harambee (self-help).”68 According to a recent study from the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, informal cost sharing for uniforms, textbooks and school maintenance had existed prior to the introduction of fees in 1988. The direct school fee, however, was new, and had been previously abolished.69

Mwega and Kabubo’s reference to a reduction in public expenditures is not satisfactorily reflected within even their own data. During the period from the beginning of adjustment at the end of the 1970’s until the first years of school fees in the early 1990’s, the makeup of government expenditures changed radically. The percentage of government expenditures spent on “Wages & salaries” fell from a high of 35.5% from 1969-1974 to 22.5% from 1974-79, and ultimately to 15.4% in 1990-1. This fall included a drop from 20.4% in 1987-8, just before the introduction of school fees, to 15.6% in 1990-1, immediately after.70 While the link to the education sector is not made expressly here, the vulnerability of the education sector to wage cuts is well known.71 During this

64 Lugalla, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 201-265 Mwega, F.M. and Kabubo, J.W., Kenya in Aderanti Adepoju, The impact of structural adjustment on the population of Africa: the implications for education, health and employment (London: James Currey, 1993), 27-866 According to the World Bank projects database, the only adjustment program relating to education initiated with Kenya in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s was a sector adjustment loan approved in 1991. At least one other source, however, confirms that user fees were introduced in 1988 (Bedi, Arjun S. et al, Decline in Primary School Enrollment in Kenya (Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, Discussion Paper No. 14), 9). It is not, therefore, clear which program Mwega and Kabubo are referring to.67 Mwega and Kabubo, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 2868 Mwega and Kabubo, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3469 Bedi et al, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 970 Mwega and Kabubo, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3171 “Stabilization and adjustment policies aimed at curbing domestic demand by decreasing the wage bill of the government…[T]he disproportionate cuts [to education] stems from the high wage composition of the

same period, “Debt & service” increased from 8.9% in the period from 1974-79 (the very beginning of adjustment) to 31.8% in 1990-1.72 Moreover, the percentage of government expenditure apportioned to “social services”, which include education, health, housing and welfare and defence, fell from approximately 40% in the late 1970’s to 32.9% in 1990-1.73 Nevertheless, in spite of these trends, government expenditures on education seem to have remained stable or increased on almost every measure. Total expenditures on education increased by approximately 50% from 1980-81 to 1984-85, and by a further 140% from 1984-85 to 1990-91. Expenditures on education as a percentage of the government budget remained stable over this first period, from 1979-1984, then grew from 29.8% in 1984-85 to 37.7% in 1987-88. It is not clear from this data whether it includes within government expenditures budget support provided by the World Bank.

According to the World Bank, a further educational initiative was undertaken in 1991 with the Education Sector Adjustment Credit. This program is something of an anomaly because there is a substantial World Bank project implementation document (Implementation Completion Report, or “ICR”) available. The objectives of the project are quite typical. The first three listed are: “(a) to reduce the rate of growth of the education recurrent budget; (b) to expand access to education and increase retention at the primary and secondary levels, especially for children from disadvantaged areas; (c) to enhance and improve the quality and relevance of education at all levels.”74

There is no direct support for user fees in primary education to be found within this document. There is also no consideration, however, of whether or how these various goals – improving quality while increasing access and reducing the budget – might conflict with one another. The Report claims success in “containing the growth of education’s recurrent budget”, identifying “slower growth in teacher numbers and in university enrollments” as the main cause for this success.75 With respect to the second objective of increased access, the Report recognizes a complete failure, pointing to “preliminary evidence that poor families found it difficult to meet direct and opportunity costs.”76 Aside from a component increasing expenditures on textbooks for disadvantaged students, however, there was no broad call for the elimination of user fees. Indeed, no real solutions are proposed for this “increasingly pressing problem”.77 There was also one interesting, though somewhat opaque reference to primary user fees in a memorandum prepared by the Kenyan government and appended to the report. Under the heading “Continuing the growth of the Education’s Recurrent Budget”, it remarks first that “institutions” are being “encouraged to look into ways of generating income, so that they do not have to rely wholly on meager allocations from the Exchequer.” It then boasts that the “cost-sharing spirit has taken effect and, though it has been difficult for poor

education budget, which made it particularly vulnerable to wage-reducing policies.” (Reimers, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 123) Teacher salaries invariably occupy the majority, sometimes over 90%, of recurrent budgets for education. (see note Error: Reference source not found, infra)72 Mwega and Kabubo, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3173 Id.74 Kenya Education Sector Adjustment Credit Implementation Completion Report (World Bank, 1995), i [Kenya ESAC ICR]75 Kenya ESAC ICR, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 376 Kenya ESAC ICR, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 177 Kenya ESAC ICR, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3

households to share the costs, the…concept has been accepted.” This is evident, the report concludes, “from the efforts parents and communities are making towards meeting the cost of education at all levels.”78

Inexplicably, Mwega and Kabubo, writing in 1993, found the user fee policy to have been a success because of a positive impact on quality, which resulted, they argue, “in a steady increase in enrolments in educational institutions from primary to university.”79 The evidence cited, however, is over the period from 1980-1989 – almost entirely before user fees took effect. Conversely, using data from the years following the institution of user fees, Figure 1 demonstrates starkly the intimate relationship between fees and enrolment.

One observation that could perhaps be made by way of contrast with Tanzania is that in Kenya, significant drops in enrolment seem to be temporally linked more to the initiation of sectoral adjustment by the World Bank in the late 1980’s than to structural adjustment programs initiated in conjunction with the IMF at the very end of the 1970’s. As noted above, the reverse is true in Tanzania, where enrolment fell from near universal in 1977 and 1978 to below 70% in the mid-1980’s, remaining at that level until the abolition of fees in 2002. It may, therefore, be relevant that the impact of early IMF adjustment on education expenditures is far clearer in Tanzania

Figure 1

78 Kenya ESAC ICR, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3779 Mwega and Kabubo, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 34

iii – Zambia

A case study on the imposition of fees in Zambia had not been planned. Zambia, however, is considered in the following section on the abolition of fees, and in the process an excerpt from a relatively recent World Bank project document was found that is of interest here. In the context of a 1999 program designed to support basic education, an annex on decentralization attached to the Project Appraisal Document stated:

In view of inadequate GRZ funding, schools are expected to source supplementary income through school fees paid by parents. User fees will be determined and agreed upon by the Boards and PTAs. Education Boards are requested to see to it that all charges payable to the school should be consolidated into one funds, since making piecemeal and ad-hoc charges creates inconvenience for parents. The amount of user fees agreed upon must be fair and affordable to parents.80

Given the Bank’s official position on user fees as of 1999, this straightforward support for direct fees is somewhat surprising. It is therefore of interest that the suggestion takes place in the context of a proposal for decentralization. One is left to wonder to what extent direct parental contributions are closely bound with plans for decentralization, even where not expressly stated. As also discussed in greater detail below, the plan to which this document attached projected an increase in enrollment of 4% per year, and achievement of UPE by 2005. By 2002, when fees were ultimately abolished, the

80 Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Program, Project Assessment Document (World Bank, 1999), Annex 13, 2

enrollment rate was lower than it had been three years earlier. For greater context, please see part IVB on the abolition of fees in Zambia.

IV – Abolition of Fees

The paper now turns to the abolition of user fees. It considers the issue in two segments. First, the Fast-Track Initiative, a World Bank mechanism for education financing, is discussed. Though the initiative is not a user fee issue as such, it is a key avenue of external financing for developing countries. Second, case studies in Tanzania and Zambia examine the very different experiences of each country with the abolition of user fees.

A – Fast-Track Initiative

The EFA Fast Track Initiative (FTI) is a World Bank-developed framework establishing policies and procedures for the international financing of primary education. Since its inception in 2002, FTI has increasingly become the dominant worldwide education-financing program.

As of yet, FTI has been of little relevance for much of Sub-Saharan Africa. The five major initiatives used to introduce free primary education (Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia), all occurred before FTI became operational, making a study of the abolition of user fees in the FTI context difficult. In neither of the case studies presented below does FTI play any role whatsoever. Nevertheless, with current estimates for the financing gap for achieving UPC in Africa estimated, at a minimum, at $1.9 billion each year until 2015,81 the importance of external funding cannot be overstated.82 Going forward, then, the policies and procedures of FTI will be increasingly important for any country hoping to abolish user fees and achieve EFA.

i - Background

As discussed above, in the aftermath of the World Forum at Dakar, both key donors and NGO’s were cognizant of the uphill struggle facing sub-Saharan Africa in its drive towards UPE. Just as the reality of this struggle spurred international consensus on the importance of free primary education, it encouraged all actors to develop a more focussed and coherent approach to international aid for education. The need for such an approach was reflected strongly in the Dakar Framework, for instance in its call for a

81 Bruns, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 10. UNESCO finds the World Bank estimate to be unduly optimistic, and predicts a worldwide financing gap nearly twice that projected by the World Bank. (Rose, Pauline, The Education Fast Track Initiative: A Global Campaign review of progress, and recommendations for reform (Global Campaign for Education, 2003), 35)82 “Given that the government has abolished school fees and other related contributions that provided additional resources to the funding of primary schools, the education sector has become increasingly reliant on grant funding and on donor-funded resources in particular. It is therefore questionable whether the government would be able to fully finance the primary education sub-sector if international donors were to withdraw their funding.” (Tanzania Local Government Fiscal Review 2004, (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, November 2004), 66)

“global initiative” for developing strategies and mobilizing resources for primary education.83 Given its broad experience in resource mobilization and, according to the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), the support it received from most stakeholders, the effort was undertaken by the World Bank. In 2002, the Bank published its Action Plan to Accelerate Progress towards Education for All (EFA), one element of which was the creation of a “Fast Track Initiative”.84

Lead by the World Bank, FTI was established later that year as a partnership of 22 donor states, multilateral development banks and international education organizations.85 The enterprise is premised on a two-way, reciprocal arrangement: “for the low-income countries to develop and implement sound education programs, and for donors to support such programs with finance and with enhanced efforts at harmonization, coordination, and acceleration”.86 From a review of FTI literature, 3 core recurring themes might be identified. First, the program dovetails with the oft-repeated vow made by the donor community at Dakar that no country with a credible plan to achieve the UPE MDG would fail for lack of resources. Second, it reflects a dominant focus on the dual importance of local ownership and local accountability, and on the related issue of development of ‘sound’ domestic education policy. Third, it seeks to achieve more efficient and effective funding, most importantly by harmonization and coordination of donors.

The initial purpose of the Fast Track Initiative, as conceived in the 2002 Action Plan, was to select a group of countries thought to have particularly strong prospects for the accomplishment of its EFA goals for “increased and immediate support”. The goal of the initiative was to create a “demonstration effect” for the benefit of the remainder of the developing world.87 To this end, FTI invited 18 countries to submit national education plans for review. Seven countries were accepted in this initial stage and a further six have been endorsed since – of these 13 countries, only two, Mozambique and Ethiopia, are within the geographic scope of this project.88 Within the remaining five countries invited but not yet endorsed are Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In 2004, FTI shifted away from the ‘demonstration effect’ policy, and was, in principle, made available to any state able to present a strategy to the satisfaction of FTI administration.89

Since 2002, three other branches of FTI have emerged. The Catalytic Fund (CF), championed by the Netherlands, was established in 2004 to provide short-term emergency assistance where needed. The Analytic Fast-Track (AFT) was established in order to incorporate into the program the five countries seen to be facing the largest and gravest educational crises, yet excluded from FTI due to the latter’s focus on comparatively advanced institutional capabilities. Of these five countries, two are

83 See note Error: Reference source not found, supra84 Global Campaign Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 6-885 Education for All Fast Track Initiative Framework Paper (World Bank, March 2004), 186 World Bank FTI website, http://www1.worldbank.org/education/efafti/ 87 Action Plan to Accelerate Progress Towards Education for All (EFA) (World Bank, 2002), 588 Of these 13 countries, a further six are African: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mauritinia and Niger (http://www1.worldbank.org/education/efafti/countries.asp) 89 FTI Secretariat, Education for All (EFA) – Fast Track Initiative (FTI): Status Report (Prepared for FTI Annual meeting, November 10-12, 2004), 4-5

African, including one, Nigeria, within the scope of this project. The Educational Program Development Fund (EPDF) was established to assist all other countries striving to achieve UPC by providing high-level technical planning support with the goal of formulating an acceptable education policy and ultimately participation in the broader FTI plan.

FTI has come under criticism on a number of fronts. First, beyond the calls for ‘partnerships’ between donors and developing states, it is not clear precisely what role is filled by the FTI scheme. FTI does not create a parallel source of funding by way of a global fund, a fact obscured in much of the FTI literature. Second, the criteria used by the FTI for evaluation have been attacked as both arbitrary and inflexible. In the same vein, the premise of the FTI – that states with stronger institutional capacity and a stronger likelihood of achieving UPC should be prioritized in the allocation of donor resources – has been attacked as ill-conceived, leading to the exclusion of those states most in need of funding and support. Third, the FTI has been assailed for its slow progress. Commentators argue that the geographic scope of the program has remained limited, and moreover, that even within the program’s relatively modest coverage, it has come far short of supplying states with the funds necessary to fill their external financing gaps.

Ii – Role: What precisely does the FTI do?

The Fast Track Initiative is a body of policies, rules and administrative entities that evaluates education sector policies of countries striving to achieve EFA, and endorses those it deems viable. The purpose of FTI endorsement is to “signal to all potential investors, whether international donors, private sector or public sectors, that the education sector plan is credible, sustainable and worthy of investment.”90

The initial impression created by FTI literature is that the initiative creates a source of funding to assist developing countries on the path to EFA. The World Bank reports that a number of countries undertook the FTI planning process under this misconception, prompting parallel planning processes for what they believed to be an independent source of funding.91 The uncertainty surrounding the specific role filled by FTI has led various groups to perceive the initiative in different ways. As GCE explains:

For some its main aim is to mobilize external resources, as an accelerated EFA financing modality to fulfill the Dakar pledge, at the same time as ensuring a more efficient use of available resources. Alternatively, it is seen, particularly by some NGOs, as a promising approach to involving civil society in the formulation and implementation of education policy, and of ensuring national ownership. For others, its prime purpose is to ensure intelligent targeting of aid flows to countries where aid is most needed and will make the biggest impact, as well as to intensify donor coordination at country level.92

90 Minutes of Meeting of FTI Steering Committee, July 23-24, 2004, Paris91 November 2004 Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 492 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 8-9

At present, FTI seems to have more specifically defined processes for the monitoring of education sector policies than for the actual provision of aid. In November 2003, GCE reported that “a cynical view that has been expressed by some NGOs is that the FTI is simply a public relations exercise for donors – with little evidence so far that they will actually come up with the necessary resources.”93

iii – Process and Criteria: How is a country included in FTI?

Countries wishing to join FTI are required to engage with the Bank in a significant process. See Annex A for a diagrammatic representation.

There are two country inputs into the FTI process. The first is the development of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, or PRSP. In the context of FTI, the PRSP is taken to signal the importance of country participation and ownership, and its completion demonstrates “that countries participating in the FTI are committed to poverty reduction.”94 The PRSP requirement also underscores the primary importance of the Bank in the FTI process. UNESCO has argued that the PRSP is a superfluous element of the process that delays progress in countries where education plans are near completion but the more extensive PRSP is years off.95 More fundamentally, the reality of the Bank’s conception of the role of the PRSP as the manifestation of country participation depends on the extent to which the PRSP actually occupies such a role. The focus on the PRSP in FTI is significant, and to the extent that the Bank retains effective control over the PRSP process in any single instance, it is hard to see how full recipient control in the education policy sphere could be maintained. Criticism of the PRSP process has been great, 96 but the question is complex and too large to be considered here. This complexity is a hindrance in appreciating the dynamic of the donor-recipient relationship under FTI.

The second principal input of the country into the FTI process is an ‘Education Sector Plan”. The plan is intended to sketch out the broad governmental approach to 93 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 1494 FTI Framework Paper, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 395 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 1596 Alexander argues that “the PRSP initiative has not changed basic things. As before, policy conditions for new loans or debt relief are negotiated in secret within a small elite group of IMF and World Bank officials and high-level officials of the finance ministries of borrowing countries…The promises of PRSP have not been realized. To the contrary, the IMF/World Bank have gained considerable power through the PRSP/HIPC programs. Now the institutions can influence a borrower’s entire national development strategy – not just the policies related to their loans.” (Alexander, supra note Error: Reference source not found). Oxfam finds that “PRSPs have been a step forwards. New spaces for dialogue on policy have been opened up in almost every country. Representatives of civil society have had access to policy debates that were hitherto entirely closed to them.” Nevertheless, it finds this progress limited and sometimes superficial. “‘Consultation’ is a more appropriate description than ‘participation’ in almost all cases. Important stakeholders, both powerful ones such as elected politicians and powerless ones such as rural women, have rarely been involved… Donors maintain far too much control over policy content, employing conditionality and ‘backstage’ negotiation to the detriment of participation processes.” In sum , Oxfam argues, “the glass is a quarter full”. (Oxfam, From ‘Donorship’ to Ownership? Moving Towards PRSP Round Two (January 2004))

achieving EFA, to identify potential obstacles and solutions, and to provide annual cost forecasts. Moreover, it is expected to demonstrate a strong domestic financial commitment to education.97 The plan is submitted to the ‘lead local donor’ or ‘coordinating agency’, the development agency responsible for coordinating FTI efforts in a given country. The coordinating agency is selected by “local agencies supporting the education sector in the country.”98

Review of the education plan is undertaken primarily by the local donor groups under supervision of the FTI Secretariat (which is managed by the World Bank). A number of different statements have been issued, most prominently by the World Bank and UNESCO, identifying the key lines across which education plans should be assessed. For the most part, these statements are made at a high level of generality and essentially restate the goals of FTI. For instance, in the 2004 FTI Framework Paper, the World Bank identifies seven broad areas to which local donor groups should direct their attention:

country ownership and consultation with key stakeholders;…feasibility of strategies, priority public actions, and investments;…specific strategies for addressing high priority issues, such as gender equality, rural access, HIV/AIDS prevention;…projected evolution of sector costs and financing;…strategies to support capacity enhancement;…adequacy of monitoring.99

UNESCO has developed a similar list of ten relevant factors. It includes among them political commitment; engagement of stakeholders; sustainable monitoring procedures; links to other development planning processes; and detailed budgeting of financial resources.100

It is not clear what specific role these broad policy statements play in evaluating actual national education plans. Where the ‘rubber hits the road’ is in the FTI Indicative Benchmarking analysis. Under the Indicative Benchmarking process, a set of education policy indicators such as pupil: teacher ratio and teacher salaries as a multiple of GDP per capita are collected for each applicant country and compared against a set of benchmarks developed by the World Bank. “In each country, a ‘credible EFA plan’ would define the process of reform that would bring its performance in line with these benchmarks.”101 This process has come under significant criticism. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) has expressed two central concerns about the Indicative Benchmarking process:

97 FTI Framework Paper, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 498 FTI Meeting Minutes, supra note Error: Reference source not found99 FTI Framework Paper, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 7100 UNESCO, Education For All: An international strategy to operationalise the Dakar Framework for Action on Education for All (EFA) (Paris, 2002) at 54. UNESCO has at least one other set of suggested criteria for use in assessment of national education plans. This set is divided into 15 “Political criteria” relating to issues such as ownership and accountability, and 20 “Technical Criteria” relating to questions of macro-economic planning and implementation. Online at: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=9307&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=-465.html 101 Action Plan, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 15

first, that the content of the Indicative Benchmarks has been too rigidly applied and risks becoming a new form of conditionality; and second, that the process by which the benchmarks were developed was unduly arbitrary.

The first concern is rooted in one of the primary criticisms traditionally leveled at SAPs of the 1980’s and 1990’s: the conditionalities were externally imposed and irresponsive to the preferences, requirements and political realities of individual countries. They have often been described, pejoratively, as ‘cookie-cutter’ approaches to development. This criticism is an important one to consider, as it stands directly at odds with the strong rhetoric of ownership that forms a cornerstone of the FTI approach. The Bank has responded to this criticism, maintaining that the analogy to conditionalities is false – in particular, it explains that while the benchmarks guide local donors in their assessments of national education plans, they are not meant as rigid pre-conditions. GCE acknowledges this point, but maintains that in practice, FTI proposals have been rejected where the benchmarks have not strictly been followed. As an example, it observes that the initial Ethiopian education plan was rejected in large part because teacher salaries as a percentage of GDP was more than double that prescribed by Bruns et al. GCE argues that this statistic was skewed by the especially low level of economic development in Ethiopia, as a result of which “teachers comprise the vast majority of the formal employment sector”.102 This is the kind of nuance, GCE argues, that is sometimes lost within the Indicative Benchmarking approach.

GCE maintains further that other countries, observing this trend, have tended to formulate policies artificially in step with FTI benchmarks.103 The case study of Tanzania presented below offers a possible instance of this effect. The Tanzanian government, which formulated its policy on primary education before FTI was established, had set a pupil: teacher ratio of 45:1. After the introduction of FTI, it changed its policy to 40:1, the applicable Indicative Benchmark.104 While there is no specific evidence that this policy shift was a reaction to FTI, it demonstrates at the very least the magnetic force of the benchmarks.

It is worthwhile to emphasize the crucial linkage between this criticism and the role confusion surrounding FTI discussed earlier. Because FTI does not create an independent fund, its raison d’etre seems to relate to the approval by the donor community of domestic education policies. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because as many activists have observed, increasing aid without careful planning is unlikely to be fruitful. Nevertheless, it creates obvious potential for misuse. It has often been observed that IFI adjustment programs have acted as a kind of world credit rating – not only was receipt of IFI funds conditional on adherence to IFI policies, but bilateral donors were often reluctant to lend without the IFI stamp of approval. FTI, with its focus on ‘harmonization’ and ‘coordination’ of donors, formalizes – and strives towards – this effect. Rose observes that the Ethiopian “FTI proposal that was initially submitted assumed additional donor support independent of the sector planning process, and the 102 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 27103 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 27104 Joseph Mungai (Minister of Education and Culture), Post Dakar 2000 Achievement in Implementing Education For All (EFA) in Tanzania: 2000-2003 (Dar es Salaam, 2003), 7

FTI Secretariat responded that this was at odds with the fundamental FTI objective of assuring coherent support for the overall sector plan.”105

The second criticism offered by GCE is that the benchmarks were developed in an arbitrary fashion. The World Bank established these benchmarks primarily through a 2003 empirical study that sought to identify best practices in education policy. The study collected a wide range of information about 49 target countries,106 dividing the countries into four groups based on their respective levels of EFA success. Group 1, or ‘success’ countries, were defined as those with a GER of 85% and PCR of 75% or above (10 countries)107; group 2, or ‘high inefficiency’ countries, have a GER of over 80% but a PCR below 60% (8 countries)108; group 3, or ‘low coverage’ countries are those in which both the GER and PCR were below 60% (7 countries)109; and group 4 included the remaining 24 countries.110 Having identified the ten ‘success’ countries, Bruns et al. collected a number of key education policy indicators and calculated the mean among the ten countries on each measure. This set of statistics became the basis of the “Indicative Benchmarks” against which FTI proposals are measured.

It is this process that is assailed by the GCE as arbitrary. To make its point, GCE constructs its own set of benchmarks by organizing the 49 countries into 3 groups based on a different set of criteria. While some of the resultant ‘alternative’ benchmarks remain essentially the same, some change significantly. For instance, under the GCE approach, the pupil: teacher ratio drops from 39:1 to 31.6:1.111 This 19% drop in the pupil: teacher ratio would demand a concomitant 23.4% increase in the budget for teacher salaries, a notoriously contentious point between donors and borrower countries. Since teacher salaries invariably represent the principal element of recurrent expenditures on education in SSA – sometimes upwards of 90%112 - this one factor alone could cause wide discrepancies in budget estimates. GCE agrees that its groupings are not “any less arbitrary” than those defined by the Bank; this, however, is precisely the point, as it “aims to highlight the fragility of the benchmarks.”113

As an interesting historical footnote, one of the authors of the indicative benchmarking study, Alain Mingat, was also one of the three authors of the 1984 staff working paper on education in Malawi, one of the strongest pieces of advocacy in favour of user fees in primary education ever produced by the Bank.114 If nothing else, a certain

105 Rose, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 17106 Of these 49 countries, 10 were within the geographic scope of this project. The target group was defined as those eligible for IDA funding (GDP per capita below $885 USD in 2001) with a population over 1 million This definition encompassed 55 countries; six other countries, none of which were African, were excluded for various reasons (Bruns, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 144-5).107 Group 1 includes Lesotho, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe108 Group 2 includes Rwanda109 Group 3 includes Ethiopia110 Group 4 includes Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania111 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 24-6112 See note Error: Reference source not found, infra113 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 26-7114 See note Error: Reference source not found, supra.

irony rests in the fact that his work has become the cornerstone of the Bank’s approach to fulfilling the Education for All initiative.

iv – Ancillary Efforts: Catalytic Fund, NETF/EPDF and AFT

As mentioned briefly above, three ancillary mechanisms have been established alongside FTI. Because all three represent potential sources of funding for African countries within the FTI framework, their purposes and general policies are discussed here.

a – Catalytic Fund

Unlike FTI itself, the Catalytic Fund (as the name would suggest) is an actual fund, with identifiable donors, assets and disbursements. It was:

established in December 2003 by the FTI to help finance endorsed sector plans that mobilize insufficient resources due to an inadequate number of donors. It provides transitional grant financing over a maximum of two to three years to qualifying countries to scale up implementation and establish a track record that may leverage longer-term support. Given its transitional role, the CF is expected to remain small relative to support provided by the development partner community as a whole.115

As of its most recent status report in November 2004, the Fund has six contributors: the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Belgium, UK and Sweden. The Fund, which is managed by the FTI Secretariat (managed, in turn, by the Bank), has entered into an Administrative Agreement with each donor country specifying the terms of its contribution.116 Each agreement contains a set of “Standard Provisions Applicable to the Education for All Fast Track Initiative Catalytic Trust Fund” establishing the general purpose of the Fund, measures for financial reporting, and other elements of the relationship between the donor, the Bank and the Fund.117 The agreements also describe the “Trust Fund Strategy Committee”, the body responsible for decision-making regarding allocations and disbursements of funds. The Committee is composed of one member from each donor country with a commitment of $1 million or greater, and one representative of the Bank. Decisions are taken by consensus at annual meetings.118 Criteria for selection are predictable: existence of an endorsed Education Sector Plan; demonstrated domestic funding commitment; strong performance towards UPC; capacity; “exceptional limitations” in available external donor funding.119

115 November 2004 Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, Annex 3116 Agreements are available on the World Bank CF site at http://www1.worldbank.org/education/efafti/catalytic_fund.asp. No agreement is available for Sweden or the UK – it is not clear what governs their relationship with the Fund. 117 See, e.g., Annex 1 of the Agreement between the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association concerning the Education for All Fast Track Initiative Catalytic Trust Fund, January 2005118 Netherlands Agreement, supra note Error: Reference source not found, Annex 1, Attachment 1119 Netherlands Agreement, supra note Error: Reference source not found, Annex 1, Attachment 1A

The six CF donors have pledged $265 million from 2003-07, of which the large majority - $219 million – is from the Netherlands.120 In the greater educational context, where educational program costs for the 12 FTI endorsed countries (as of November 2004) alone is estimated at approximately $2.2 billion per year,121 the Catalytic Fund plays a relatively minor role, emphasizing its gap-filling function. Pledges for 2003 and 2004 totalled $45 million and have been fully received.122 By November 2004, this $45 million had been fully allocated and partially disbursed to six FTI countries, with a further $35 million allocated for 2005. Mozambique, the only FTI country as at November 2004 within the scope of this project, had not been allocated any funds from the CF.

b – Norway Educational Trust Fund (NETF)/Educational Program Development Fund (EPDF)

In 1998, the Norwegian government established the Norwegian Education Trust Fund (NETF) under the administration of the Africa region of the World Bank in order to assist African countries in strengthening “political, technical, and institutional capacities to prepare and implement high-quality, nationally owned, and financially sustainable education sector development programs.”123 The relationship between the Bank and the Norwegian government is governed by a framework agreement renewed annually following consultation between the parties. The Bank reports on its progress each year in an annual report. Funds are administered by a Bank “task team leader”, who identifies funding needs “jointly” with governments then formulates requests for funding. The approval process appears to be very informal and, according to the Bank, generally takes less than a week where funding is available.124 The ease of the process is probably facilitated by the fact that, unlike the Catalytic Fund, only two parties are involved.

Three kinds of NETF support are provided. First, the Fund provides “technical and analytical support to national teams.”125 This kind of support, which represents 43% of total NETF disbursements, is provided to assist governments in their attempts to create educational sector plans as a precursor to receiving external aid for education. Funds support workshops, the production of country reports, and other “highly technical work on the education management information systems. Second, the fund supports the production of regional studies designed to identify best practices in education policy from across Africa and around the world. Third, the Fund supports “Knowledge-sharing and capacity- and consensus-building activities at the national, sub-regional, and regional levels.”126

120 EFA-FTI Secretariat, Education for All (EFA) – Fast Track Initiative (FTI): Catalytic Fund Status Report (Prepared for FTI Annual meeting, November 10-12, 2004), 3121 November 2004 Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 19122 CF November 2004 Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 3123 NETF website, http://www.worldbank.org/afr/netf/index.htm 124 2004 Norwegian Education Trust Fund Annual Report (Seventh Annual Consultation, September 28-29, 2004, Bergen, Norway), 10, online at http://www.worldbank.org/afr/netf/pdf/netf_04_AR.pdf125 NETF 2004 Annual Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 4 126 NETF 2004 Annual Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 4

Total funding by the Norwegian government to NETF since inception was equal to $34.5 million as of July 2004, of which $29.4 million has been disbursed.127 NETF funding is projected at approximately $9 million across Africa for 2005.128 Countries receiving support in 2003 and 2004 include Ethiopia ($236K), Kenya ($499K), Malawi ($737K), Mozambique ($909K), Namibia ($223K), Nigeria ($1124K), Rwanda ($347K), Swaziland ($91K), Tanzania ($797K), Uganda ($650K), Zambia ($232K) and Zimbabwe ($27K) – all aggregate support for 2003 and 2004.129

The EPDF is a World Bank initiative modelled on the NETF and designed to provide similar support to the remainder of the developing world. The goals, administrative structure, and projected financial needs of the Fund were established in an October 2004 “Concept Note” published by the Bank.130 Disbursements to Africa are to remain within the ambit of the NETF.

c – Analytic Fast-Track (AFT)

The AFT was established at the insistence of DFID, which was concerned that the FTI selection process would exclude those countries most in need of external aid.131 Five countries were selected for inclusion in the AFT initiative, designed to include 50% of the world’s entire out of school child population. The five countries include DR Congo and Nigeria. Information about AFT is scant, but the point seems to be to assist these countries with high-level technical and analytic assistance in evaluating their educational systems. The structure of AFT appears to be more analogous to FTI than to the independent funds created by CF and EPDF.

v – Monies Provided, Monies Planned

As of the most recent FTI status report in November 2004, the estimated total cost of the education sector projects of the 12 countries then endorsed (of which only Mozambique is within the scope of this project) was equal to $2.09, $2.29 and $2.4 billion for 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively. Approximately 75% was to be funded by domestic governments, with the remaining 25% filled by a combination of ODA and the catalytic fund. To complement the $5.1 billion pledged by governments, developed nations pledged $1.05 billion in ODA and a further $80 million through the catalytic fund for 2003 through 2005. In Mozambique, $209 million was to come from the government and $116 million from ODA. 64.3% of total program financing was therefore domestically funded.

The November 2004 FTI status report divides all “FTI Potential” countries into four groups. Twelve countries, including Mozambique, are listed as “FTI Endorsed”, and Ethiopia has since joined that group. The second category, “FTI Potential 2005”, defined

127 NETF 2004 Annual Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 2, 21128 November 2004 Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 43129 NETF 2004 Annual Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 21130 EFA-FTI Education Program Development Fund (EPDF) Concept Note (October 13, 2004), Online at http://www1.worldbank.org/education/efafti/documents/FPPConceptNote.pdf 131 GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 11

as countries not yet endorsed but with both a PRSP and education sector plan either completed or expected by 2005, lists 26 countries. It includes Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The third category lists those countries with potential to meet FTI by 2006 or later, while the fourth identifies 14 countries for which insufficient data exists. This latter group includes Nigeria.132

B – Country Case Studies

i - Tanzania

With the decision to remove user fees for primary education in 2002, Tanzania became one of the most recent countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to adopt a policy of free primary education. The Government of Tanzania (GoT) therefore proceeded with the benefit of earlier experiences in Malawi and Uganda. Issues of capacity, quality and revenues were considered at length, and a strategy for addressing expected obstacles was, at least in principle, carefully formulated. This case study proceeds in five steps. First, it reviews the policy framework within which the GoT adopted its current policy on education, including the abolition of user fees. Second, it identifies enrolment targets under its current education plan, and the role played by the abolition of user fees. Third, it discusses the GoT’s four primary sources of funding for education. Fourth, it describes various policy choices made to support expected increases in enrolment and how the financing sources identified in part three are to be disbursed. Finally, it discusses the preliminary results of the GoT approach.

a – Policy Framework and Documentation

In the years following its participation in the first EFA conference at Jomtien in 1990, the GoT began formulating its approach to education in a series of policy documents. As in other development programs, these documents were intended to set out broad governmental policy and to act as the basis for its relationship with donors.

The first major policy document, published in 1995, was the Education and Training Policy (ETP), establishing broad policy objectives for the entire educational and vocational sector. Predictably, its focus is on fundamental enhancements to the system of education and is broadly consistent with the goals of EFA; it seeks, for instance, to “achieve increased enrollments, equitable access, quality improvements, the expansion and optimum utilization of facilities, and operational efficiency throughout the system.”133 Following the ETP, the GoT initiated the Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP). The ESDP reiterates the policy objectives of the ETP, formulated at a lower level of specificity, and sets more specific goals for various levels of the educational system, including primary education. More importantly, perhaps, it seeks to avoid ad hoc and piecemeal approaches to education by centralizing planning efforts and 132 The remaining four countries in this study do not meet the criteria for FTI. Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland are all above the maximum wealth level, defined as those countries eligible for IDA assistance. Zimbabwe is ineligible because it is on track to achieve UPE.133 Education Sector Development Programme: Primary Education Development Plan (Basic Education Development Committee, 2001), 2, online at: http://www.imf.org/external/NP/prsp/2000/tza/02/

bringing the approach to educational development within a single framework. In October 2000, the GoT released its PRSP, in which it emphasized that “education is at the heart of development.”134 The PRSP is important generally because any sub-sector approach such as the ESDP is conceived as part of the more general approach to development as formulated in the PRSP – and specifically, in the case of education financing, because of the central focus placed on the PRSP in the FTI approval process.

The substantial rhetoric of these three (and other) documents came into clearer focus with the adoption, in July 2001, of the Primary Education Development Plan (PEDP). The PEDP, a five-year plan, is seen as the first stage of implementation for the ESDP and, obviously, acts as the primary education wing of the larger educational effort. The PEDP identifies four specific goals for primary education: “(a) expanding enrollment; (b) improving the quality of teaching and learning processes; (c) building capacity within the education system and other public and private sectors with a stake in education provision; and (d) strengthening the institutional arrangements that support the planning and delivery of education services.”135

b – Enrollment Targets

The first major move to increase enrollment was taken by the GoT in 2000, before the initiation of PEDP. Under authority of a new law empowering governments to issue “directives” for the betterment of the educational system, a newly elected government ordered all schools to allow enrollment in Grade One in 2001 regardless of the payment of fees. The Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) reports an increase in Grade One enrollment of approximately 250,000 children in 2001 over 2000.136 This assertion is supported by UNESCO, which finds an increase in the Gross Intake Ratio from 82.3% to 103.62%, and a rise in total enrollment from 4.4 million to 4.88 million, from 2000 to 2001.137 It does not appear that this directive was accompanied by any systematic efforts to enhance capacity, which were undertaken primarily under PEDP. The impact on quality for this one year is not clear, perhaps because most of the subsequent focus is placed on PEDP initiatives.

The PEDP finds that at the time of publication, 4.8 million children were enrolled in primary school in Tanzania, with an estimated 3 million children between the ages of 7-13 not in school. The basic objective of the PEDP is to ensure that all children between the ages of 7 and 10 in 2002 are enrolled in Standard I by 2004, while maintaining full enrollment of all 7 year olds in each year from 2002 to 2006. The objectives of the Plan are laid out succinctly in the following table (expected new admissions in parentheses):

2002: Admit all 7-year-olds and as many as possible 8 year olds. (1.5 million)

134 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found135 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, v136 Joseph J.Mungai, Post Dakar Achievements in Implementing Education For All (EFA) in Tanzania: 2000-2003 (Speech delivered by Joseph Mungai, Minister of Education and Culture in Tanzania – specific date and location uncertain), 6 137 FTI Country Database, online at http://www1.worldbank.org/education/efafti/countries.asp

2003: Admit all 7-year-olds of 2003, all remaining 8 year olds of 2002, and as many as remaining 9 year olds of 2002 (now 9 and 10 years old). (1.6 million)

2004: Admit all 7-year-olds of 2004 and all remaining 9-10 year olds of 2002 (now 11-12 years old). (1.64 million)

2005 and 2006: Admit all 7-year-old children. (1.04 and 1.06 million respectively)138

The GoT, therefore, hoped to achieve UPE while avoiding the pitfalls of radical increases in enrollment by adopting a gradual, year-by-year approach to increasing enrollment.

The PEDP lists five strategies to be used in the move towards maximization of enrollment. The first strategy requires that the GoT “abolish school fees and all other mandatory parental contributions from January 2002 so that no child may be denied schooling.”139 The second strategy involves the establishment of “scholarships from the National Education Fund to pay for the education of disadvantaged children, including AIDS orphans.”140

c - Financing

Financing projections for achieving these goals were laid out in the PEDP in detail and are summarized in a spreadsheet in Annex B. The first two columns, under the heading Total Primary Education Expenditures, list the total expected cost of the PEDP plan. The left hand side column, “PEDP”, lists the cost projections as laid out in the PEDP converted into US dollars,141 while the right hand side column lists actual monies spent on primary education, again converted into USD. The value for 2004 is a “likely” amount, while that for 2005 is budgeted, both taken from the June 2004 budget for FY05. In referencing this spreadsheet, please keep in mind that the Tanzanian school year is from January to November, while the fiscal year begins on July 1st. Estimates from PEDP and budget allocations for a given year do not therefore map perfectly onto one another. Budget numbers listed in the spreadsheet for any given year are for the fiscal year ending in that calendar year (i.e. budget numbers for “2002” in the spreadsheet are actually for FY2001-02).

138 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 5-6139 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 5140 The remaining five strategies are: “3. A multi-media public Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign will be undertaken to sensitise parents, mtaa and village leadership, Councellors and Local Government Authority personnel at all levels about PEDP and its implications. 4. The standard teacher-to-pupil ratio is 1:45. 5. School capacity in terms of teacher supply and classroom space will be ensured through the increased use of teachers and classrooms for doubleshifts and multi-grade teaching, as a limited and interim measure.” (PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 5)141 The PEDP assumes a constant exchange rate of 900 TSh:1USD. The Tanzanian Shilling has depreciated considerably, and the exchange rate on January 1 of each year has been used. The Tanzanian fiscal year goes begins on June 1 of the prior year listed (i.e. FY 2002 = June 1, 2001 through May 31, 2002). January 1 is therefore an approximate midpoint.

There are four sources of funding for primary education under the PEDP: domestic revenues, general budget support under the Poverty Reduction program (or Poverty Reduction Budget Support, “PRBS”), debt relief under HIPC, and a pooled fund created specifically for primary education in Tanzania. PRBS and HIPC are not earmarked specifically for education, but rather provide support for the government’s general fiscal position. These amounts are incorporated into the general government budget and, to the extent that the government funds primary education within its general budgetary scheme, can be said to have supported primary education. Approval for both sources is tied closely to the PRSP, and both are associated with a set of institutional and reporting mechanisms intended to monitor disbursements and progress towards PRSP objectives. The fourth source, the Pooled Fund, was established in April 2002 by a group of 10 bilateral and multilateral donors on the strength of the PRSP, ESDP and PEDP. The parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which establishes a monitoring system including annual progress reports.142

It is difficult to isolate the user fee issue and identify the extent to which foreign funding has been used to “compensate” Tanzania for lost revenues and increased enrollment due to the abolition of user fees. The PEDP framework does not, understandably, separate the question of user fees from the rest of the system – rather, it assumes the abolition of user fees, predicts expected enrollment, sets a desired level of quality (for instance in terms of pupil: teacher and textbook: pupil ratios), and attempts to cost and finance the resultant system. Donor support to education could be compared pre-2002 and post-2002, but data is very hard to gather. While the levels of HIPC, PRBS and, in the past, SAP support through past years could likely be identified (and then compared to current levels), only approximately 14%143 of that funding would reach primary education. Bilateral support intended directly for education before the advent of the Pooled Fund was provided ad hoc, and no central repository of information seems to exist. Rose identifies a lack of information regarding existing support for education to be a significant problem.144 Available documentation from the GoT merely summarizes the total expenditures on education and the total loans and grants received from foreign sources. The most that can be said is that total expenditures on primary education nearly doubled between 1999 and 2002, the first year of the PEDP, and more than tripled under the FY05 budget, to over $313 million USD.145

142 Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Tanzania and Pooled Fund Partners Concerning the pooled funding of the Government of Tanzania Primary Education Development Programme (April 21, 2002), online at: http://www.netherlands-embassy.go.tz/bilateral.htm#pedp_docs 143 This value is calculated based on an average of the data from past years available from World Bank Public Expenditure Reviews and GoT budgets. See Annex B for details.144 “It is not possible to know whether existing external resources are sufficient to fill the funding gap for particular countries or, if not, what additional resources would be needed.” (GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 36)145 See Annex B. It could be estimated how much money was spend on education by households prior to the elimination of fees, then multiply that sum by total enrollment, but such estimates would be very hard to make. As reflected in part IIIB, supra, such estimates are difficult to make and vary greatly. Statistics presented by UNESCO in the 2003-04 Global Monitoring Report place total household investment in education at between 7600 and 10000 TSh per household before the abolition of fees. It also estimates, however, that after the abolition of fees, households still spent an average of 2000-8000 TSh. If the midpoint of these two ranges is taken, the average lost revenue to the government would be approximately 3800 TSh, or just over $20 million dollars for the entire system. (2003/04 GMR, 218)

d – Primary Education Disbursements

The cost projections discussed above are based on a set of assumptions such as the quality of education to be maintained, the level of salaries and the pace of acquisition of new inputs. There are three principal inputs in the PEDP, which constitute over 65% of total projected costs for FY02: teacher salaries, textbooks, and classroom construction.146 Strategies relating to the provision of these three inputs constitute the bulk of the strategy proposed by the PEDP to cope with increased enrolments under the predicted in section (ii) above.

The most important cost factor in the budget, as in most education budgets,147 is teacher salaries, which constitute 58.3% of expected recurrent expenditures and 38.9% of expected total expenditures for the year 2002.148

The PEDP seeks to ensure sufficient teacher capacity by a combination of new teacher hires and double-shifting teachers across grades and subjects. The plan sets out a schedule of new teacher recruitments, estimate 9,047 in 2002, 11,651 in 2003, 10,563 in 2004, 7,286 in 2005 and 7,249 in 2006. Base teacher salaries are set at 20,633.74 TSh per teacher-student, but are then augmented by 40% for a group of 11% of teachers who, the PEDP expects, will be asked to teach either multiple grades in one classroom or multiple classes in one classroom in one day.149 Given this focus on classroom space, it seems from the PEDP that this decision may reflect a lack of adequate classroom space as much as a lack of teachers. This method allows the plan to enrol a larger number of students then the rate of new teacher training or new classroom construction would otherwise allow. The PEDP is not clear on whether this strategy is an efficiency increasing mechanism (i.e. whether it allows for an increase in enrolment greater than the 40% increase in costs), nor is there an express allusion to any quality implications.

The second key input is textbooks. The PEDP sets two goals with respect to textbooks: a ratio of 3 pupils per textbook for 2002, improving to a 1:1 ratio by 2006. The PEDP proposes to achieve this goal by creating a Capitation Grant of $10USD per student to be disbursed directly to schools. Of the $10, $4 would be reserved for textbooks, the mean textbook cost as estimated by the PEDP. The remaining $6 would be used for operating costs at the discretion of the school – a subsequent progress report suggests that $2 is to be used for facility repair, $2 for purchase of exercise books, chalk,

146 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 24-5 (21550 (“ST Wages”) + 4000 (Textbook portion of Capitation Grant) times 5,405,070 (enrollment) plus 57,551,000 (construction cost) divided by total PEDP cost for 2002)147 Pauline Rose reports that teacher salaries “comprise the vast majority of recurrent education spending in most countries (often over 90%).” (GCE Review of Progress, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 27)148 Cost per student is equal to 21550.79 TSh. Expected enrollment is 5405070. Total teacher expenditure was therefore set at 116,483.5 out of a recurrent expenditure budget of 199,831.6 and a total expenditure budget of 299,464.6 (000,000’s TSh). The significance of teacher salaries as a percentage of recurrent expenditures remains in a range between 53% and 56% for the five year period of the PEDP. The significance of teacher salaries as a percentage of total expenditures increases steadily to 48% by 2006, as non-recurrent expenditures decrease, mostly due to a levelling off of classroom construction after 2004.149 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 6-7

pens and pencils, $1 for administrative materials and $1 for the purchase of examination papers.150 Because the grant is used for materials that have a direct correlation to student populations (as opposed, for instance, to classroom construction or teacher salaries) and is tied to enrolment numbers, it ensures, if properly implemented, that adequate school supplies will be provided for the student population.

The third key input is classrooms. The PEDP places particular emphasis on the first three years of the program, 2002-2004, given the steep expected increases in enrolment in those years. The plan aims for the construction of thousands of new classrooms according to the following schedule:

2002: 13,868

2003: 13,396

2004: 14,203

2005: 6,795

2006: 5,832151

The new classroom constructions are to be funded by Development Grants (DG) of $3500 USD, disbursed on the decision of the PEDP administrative structure. The PEDP also allows for reconstruction of existing classrooms at the rate of 2-3% per year.

Beyond teacher salaries, textbooks and other materials and classroom construction, the PEDP conceives of a number of other programs and policies designed to absorb rapid increases in enrolment. These can be divided into two broad categories: teacher training, encompassing both the enhancement of qualifications of existing teachers and the training of new teachers; and administrative efforts, including the creation of monitoring mechanisms, information systems and administrative bodies designed to ensure financial and quality accountability. In economic terms, these initiatives represent a comparably smaller element of PEDP and are not discussed in further here. Details can be obtained from PEDP documentation.

e – Progress of PEDP

Not only has the PEDP program been in operation for only three years, but up to the minute information is not always available. Preliminary results can, however, be reported.

Cost of schooling to parents has dropped but not been eliminated. The 2003/04 UNESCO Global Monitoring Report finds that

150 PEDP Progress Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found151 PEDP, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 7

one year after the abolition of tuition fees for 7–10-year-olds…the average total outlay by parents for one child was now in the range of 2,000–8,000 Tanzanian shillings compared with 7,600–10,600 shillings prior to ‘free’ primary. Total costs, including a calculation to cover indirect costs, suggested that the cost of keeping one child in school for one year was still nearly 13,000 Tanzanian shillings.152

Financial support has been relatively consistent. As seen in Annex B, Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS) fell approximately 33% short of PEDP estimates for 2003, but was higher than expected for 2004, for a net shortfall of approximately $30 million. PRBS budgeted for 2005 in the June 2004 budget projected a surplus above PEDP estimates for the second consecutive year. HIPC support has been consistently higher than PEDP estimates. As with PRBS, the value for 2005 is the projected amount in the 2004-05 budget. The estimate for 2006 includes only World Bank and IMF projections, and may ultimately be higher once Paris Club and other bilateral debt relief are included. The remaining funding, to be provided through the Pooled Fund, is harder to estimate. For the year 2002-03, pooled funds were sufficient to recover nearly the entire PEDP shortfall. As of March 12, 2004, committed funds for 2003-04 were sufficient to cover the entire projected PEDP shortfall as well as the minor gap from the previous year. Approximately half of these funds had been disbursed into the Pooled Fund. Over 90% of the project shortfall had also already been committed for the 2004-05 year, yet no disbursements had, of course, been made. See Annex C for a donor-by-donor breakdown of these commitments and disbursements.

With respect to enrolments, discrepancies exist in the data as to the level of enrolment prior to the initiation of PEDP. As noted above, at the time of its publication in 2001, the PEDP estimated 3 million children were out of school. Current MoEC statistics, however, find that in 2001, 1.95 million children were out of school.153 UNESCO estimates are more in accord with the former.154 Estimates for 2002 and 2003 are available only from the MoEC, but it should be borne in mind that UNESCO estimates for the same period might, had they been available, have been substantially less optimistic.

The MoEC finds that with the abolition of user fees in 2002, enrolment in Grade One jumped from 1.14 million to 1.63 million children, slightly higher than the 1.5 million projected in the PEDP.155 The Net Intake Ratio was 93.8%, suggesting that the government had succeeded in enrolling almost all seven year olds, but still short of the PEDP goal of 100% Grade One enrolment that had formed the cornerstone of the government’s phased-in approach to enrolment. In 2003, Grade One enrolment stayed high at approximately 1.5 million,156 just below the PEDP estimate of 1.6 million. The

152 2003/04 GMR, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 218153 FTI Country Database, supra note Error: Reference source not found – MoEC estimate for 2001/02 is 1.9526 million children out of school.154 UNESCO Institute of Statistics, online at: http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev_en.php?ID=2867_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC 155 Mungai, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 6156 FTI Country Database; the database estimates a GIR of 142%. From the PEDP, it can be estimated that there are approximately 1.05 million seven year old children in Tanzania in any given year, suggesting that a GIR of 142% should equate to a Grade One enrollment of approximately 1.5 million children.

MoEC places total primary enrolment at 6.56 million in 2003, nearly a 50% increase over 2001 estimates.

These numbers, if accurate, are substantially in line with the PEDP. The most important goal of the PEDP was to ensure 100% enrolment of seven year olds into Grade One on a going-forward basis. Of the 3 million children then not in school, it sought to integrate them into Grade One gradually from 2002-04, by including approximately 600,000 students above the age of seven for each of those three years. Children above the age of 10 in 2001 were mostly disregarded by the plan. Both the Grade One intake rates, being close to 100%, and the total enrolment rates – again, if accurate – suggest that as of 2003, this plan was mostly on track. The 1.6 million student increase from 2001 to 2003 is consistent with an introduction of approximately 200,000 seven year olds plus approximately 500,000 8 to 10 year olds into Grade One each year for 2002 and 2003. The only troubling trend is a drop from 2002 to 2003 of 150,000 children in Grade One enrolment.157

New teacher hires as of 2003 stood at 17,853, just short of the 18,700 projected for the first two years of PEDP. These new hires fall significantly short, however, of the projected pupil: teacher ratio of 45:1 under the PEDP, translating into an 86:1 ratio for the approximately 1.6 million additional children absorbed by the system over the same two year period – before even considering the need to ameliorate the pre-existing ratio. This ratio tells only part of the story, however, because of the double-shifting strategy described above. It should not, therefore, be taken at face value. The progress report contains no information on the implementation success of double shifting of teachers.

The MoEC reports that by 2003, the textbook: pupil ratio had reached between 3:1 and 5:1. The PEDP objective had been set at 3:1 for 2002, improving gradually to 1:1 by 2006. The provision of textbooks was therefore slightly behind schedule, and might be explained by a slight lag in the disbursement of capitation grants, intended to be the primary source of revenues for the purchase of textbooks. As noted above, capitation grants are to be disbursed to schools in the amount of $10 per pupil per year, with a fixed 40% earmarked for textbooks. With enrolments of 5.98 and 6.56 million children in 2002 and 2003, total capitation grant disbursements should have equalled over $125 million. The 2004 Progress Report finds total disbursements of just over $76 million.158

The final input discussed above is the construction of classrooms. The PEDP projected the construction of just over 13,000 classrooms per year in each of 2002 and 2003. The 2004 Progress Report finds that 30,000 classrooms had been constructed through these first two years, suggesting that progress was ahead of schedule. The PEDP projects that classroom construction will be funded by “Development Grants” at $3500 each. The Progress Report finds that $92.8 million in Development Grants had been disbursed – while this would accord with the number of classrooms constructed, these grants are also used to build housing for teachers, of which the Report finds 7500 units

157 Mungai, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 12158 Mungai, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 7

had been built.159 The Report therefore suggests that development grants had been used far more ‘efficiently’ than previously envisioned – no mention is made of whether any quality issues have arisen with respect to this fast pace of construction.

ii – Zambia

User fees in Zambia have taken a number of different forms. While pure tuition fees do not appear to have been part of the primary education financing scheme over the past few years, parents have typically been required to pay “PTA” fees to support the operation of schools. Consistent, for instance, with the experience in Tanzania, a 2004 World Bank survey of household expenditures on education finds that PTA fees rose gradually throughout the 1990’s to a 2000 high of 10,554 Kwacha,160 or $3.66 USD at January 2000 exchange rates, against a GDP per capita of $362 USD.161 The survey finds further that as fees grew, schools became increasingly efficient in ensuring that those who could not afford PTA fees were denied primary education.162 Enrollment statistics through the 1990’s are ambiguous in supporting this latter claim, partially because of inconsistencies in the data. One report finds a drop in enrollment from 1993 to 1996, followed by a sharp increase between 1996 and 1998. This latter increase, however, is contradicted by subsequent data, which places the 1998 value more in line with 1996 enrollment, and finds that it continued to fall through 2001. In any case, 1993 highs in both the GER and NER of 104% and 73% respectively appear to have fallen to 78.8% and 66.0% by 2001.163

PTA fees were abolished by the government in April 2002.164 The World Bank household survey finds that contributions are still illegally collected, though average fees declined from K 10,554 to K 3,269, or $0.70 USD (at current rates), by the time of the survey in 2002. This finding is consistent with the July 2004 World Bank master report on user fees in primary education, which finds “Financial Contributions” are still

159 Mungai, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 7160 Jishnu Das et al., Public and Private Funding of Basic Education in Zambia: Implications of Budgetary Allocation for Service Delivery (World Bank, 2004), 51161 http://aol.countrywatch.com/includes/grank/gdpnumericcer.asp?TYPE=GRANK&TBL=NUMERICCER&vCOUNTRY=189 162 Das et al, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 51163 The 2000 EFA Country Report on Zambia (http://www2.unesco.org/wef/countryreports/zambia/contents.html) reports a slight increase in both GER and NER from 1991-1993, a drop from 1993-1996 (104% to 93% and 73% to 69% respectively), followed by a sharp increase from 1996 to 1998 (93% to 101% and 69% to 85%). This sharp increase coincides with a sharp drop in the Gross Intake Rate during the same 2-year period, from 111.2% to 94.2%, suggesting somehow that total enrollment increased while admission to the first year of primary school decreased. (EFA 2000 Assessment, Zambia Country Report, Part 6.2) More recent data on the same period contests the 1998 data found in the 2000 report. The 2005 EFA Global Monitoring Report places the 1998 GER at 81.2%, falling to 78.8% by 2001. Similarly, the 1998 NER is placed at 68.5%, down again to 66.0% in 2001. (Statistical Annex: Table 5 Participation in Primary Education in UNESCO, Education For All Global Monitoring Report 2005 – The Quality Imperative, 286-293, 292). Moreover, the FTI Country Database supports the decrease in the GIR identified in the 2000 report, finding a GIR of 84.2% in 1998-99 (a drop from the 1998 GIR of 94.2%, as reported in the 2000 Assessment), falling to 81.0% in 1999-00 and rebounding to 86.7% in 2000-01. 164 Das et al, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 51

collected in Zambia, though this latter report finds, without further elaboration, that such fees are collected legally.165 The survey is quick to emphasize, however, that total household expenditures on primary education are far larger when so-called “non-fee expenditures” are considered.166 There are wide variations between estimates on the precise extent of the burden borne by private households. The household survey finds that total household expenditures, depending on region, vary from K 10,914 ($2.33) to K 25,542 ($5.44). Elsewhere, the Bank presents very different numbers. In its 1999 Project Information Document for Zambia’s Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Program (BESSIP – discussed below in greater detail), the Bank estimates that private expenditures on primary education amount to an average of $17 per pupil, while public expenditures are equal to $22 per pupil.167 While this calculation was undertaken before the abolition of fees, the $3.70 PTA fee encompassed by the ban is only a fraction of the difference. A third study, commissioned by DFID, is more in line with the first Bank estimate, placing household expenditures on primary education at K 24,427 ($6.03) and K 27,190 ($6.72) for boys and girls respectively.168 The DFID study also notes the wide discrepancy in estimates of private expenditures, finding ranges as diverse as $5-$50 and $30-$60 in various studies. DFID maintains that these estimates are all valid, and depend on the sample adopted by the authors – its own study, for instance, purposely selected poorer households, thus explaining its comparatively lower estimates.

For these purposes, the foregoing data on private expenditures in primary education serves as background to the program adopted by the Zambian government to support the drive towards achieving EFA. In many ways, the Zambian story mirrors that in Tanzania. Following the 1990 EFA Conference in Jomtien, the government began a review of its education policies. In 1996, it published two critical documents: in March, Investing in Our People recognized the need for an integrated approach to education and laid out a general framework for an Education Sector Investment Programme (ESIP); in May, a national policy document entitled Educating Our Future: National Policy on Education placed express importance on the goal of UPE, setting 2005 as its target for achievement of that goal. The Ministry of Education established an ESIP office, and the name of the program changed to Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Programme (BESSIP) shortly thereafter. As in Tanzania, the country’s group of then independent, ad hoc donors began planning and negotiation towards an integrated approach involving a pooled resource to support the program.169

The first stage of the BESSIP program was intended to last for three years and cost $340 million. There were 3 sources of funding for this first stage of BESSIP – the 165 Bentaouet and Burnett, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 32166 The survey is not precisely clear on the inputs on which the non-fee component of these expenditures is spent, but mentions textbooks and uniforms (Das et al, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 53-4). On this point, the survey deviates from the World Bank report on user fees, which finds that private expenditures on both textbooks and uniforms have been eliminated (Bentaouet and Burnett, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 32).167 Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Program, Project Information Document (World Bank, 1999), 1168 Boyle, Siobhan et al, Reaching the Poor: The ‘costs’ of sending children to school (DFID, August 2002), 81169 Norwegian Summary, online at: http://www.lu.hio.no/lins/educaid/educaid99-4.htm#Basic%20Education%20Sub-Sector%20Investment%20Programme%20-

GRZ (Government of the Republic of Zambia) was to contribute $167 million; bilateral donors were to contribute $133 million; and the World Bank approved an IDA grant for the remaining $40 million.170 While the BESSIP intended to pool all bilateral funds through a single fund, that goal was only partially accomplished. Because of disagreements amongst donors as to the preferred method of disbursing funds, donors were classified into four different categories or “cases”. ‘Case I’ donors would contribute to a common pool controlled by the Ministry of Education and used as it saw fit. ‘Case II’ donors would contribute funds to be allocated at the discretion of the Ministry but traceable back to the country from which it was donated. ‘Case III’ funds would still be controlled by the Ministry, but would be earmarked specifically for a restricted number of potential uses and, obviously, would not enter into the pooled fund. Case IV funds would be administered on particular projects directly by donors themselves.171 As of 2002, donors were divided evenly throughout the 4 categories. Case I donors were Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom. The only Case II was the World Bank. Case III donors included Ireland, the Netherlands, the African Development Bank and OPEC. Case IV was composed of Denmark, Finland, Japan, the UK, the US, Red Barna (a Norwegian humanitarian organization) and UNICEF. BESSIP was considered to have 8 sub-components – Program Management,172 Basic School Infrastructure, Teacher Development, Education Materials, Equity Interventions, Health and Nutrition, Curriculum Development and Capacity Building and Decentralization – each of which was costed separately and in detail.173

The immediately curious characteristic of the BESSIP – evident merely from this list of sub-components – is the persistence of its focus on supply-side initiatives. Seven of the eight components, with the sole exception of “Equity Interventions”, are focused on improving the capacity or quality of the education system. Indeed, in an Annex to the Project Appraisal Document, the Bank attached a study conducted by researchers at the University of Zambia analyzing the factors affecting school attendance. While the second factor listed identified school fees and opportunity costs, the recommendations of the team included increasing supply through construction of schools, “restoring the magnetic force of the school” by quality improvement, providing adequate transport, raising teacher’s morale, and establishing school health programs.174 Only one fee-related measure was recommended – the provision of targeted bursaries for girls – and this recommendation seems to have become the key element of the aforementioned “Equity Intervention” component of BESSIP. In addition to these targeted bursaries, the equity component also supports the funding of community schools where required to more effectively reach the poor in rural areas.175 The paradigm reflected in the BESSIP – targeted bursaries combined with private delivery – is therefore directly opposed to a model of universal, free primary education.

170 BESSIP PID, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 2171 BESSIP PAD, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 13172 Includes “technical assistance for the financial management, procurement, and construction functions during the first two years, and related incremental operating costs to support management of BESSIP.” (Id., 10)173 Id., Table of Contents174 Id., Annex 4175 Id., Annex 11

As discussed in part IIIB, supra, the most alarming element of the BESSIP lies in its active support for the imposition of direct user fees. By the Bank’s own standards, this express support for direct fees seems out of place in a 1999 document. It had, by this point, been 11 years since the Bank declared that user fees “should generally be discouraged”176; it was the same year that the Education Sector Strategy supported both free basic education and targeted support for indirect costs177; it was only a year before the U.S. amendment to the Foreign Appropriations Act requiring official U.S. opposition to primary school fees; and only two years before a parallel process in Tanzania was constructed almost entirely on the premise that all financial barriers to education be removed. The impact of retaining user fees cannot, of course, be isolated – nevertheless, rather than increasing at a rate of 4% per year as projected in the BESSIP,178 the GER during this period fell slightly from 81% to 78%.179

To this point, this has been a poor case study of a country engaged in the abolition of user fees. This background on the first three years of the BESSIP is important, however, because the BESSIP represents, as did the PEDP in Tanzania, the major reformulation of the primary education sector. When PTA fees were finally abolished in April 2002, it was done within the BESSIP framework. Unlike the experience in Tanzania, the current model for education reform was not centred on the abolition of user fees – similarly, the abolition of user fees was not incorporated within a broad reconstruction of the financing and policies of the system.

In these circumstances, the expectation might be that system capacity would be unable to cope with steep increases in enrollment, i.e. that a situation similar to the experience in Malawi would ensue. To the contrary, however, increases in enrollment following the FPE announcement appear to have been minimal. Enrollment statistics beyond 2001-02 are not widely available, and enrollment therefore becomes difficult to track. Unlike the widely publicized, sharp increases in enrollment in Tanzania and Kenya, however, no such reports have emanated from Zambia – suggesting, very likely, that no dramatic increase occurred. One report completed in May 2003 indicates that Zambia is an outlier in this respect among the five SSA countries (Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya) to have adopted a policy of free primary education.180 A particularly telling indicator comes from a 2003 document from USAID describing the launch of a six-year financing project to begin in 2004. Among the performance indicators listed is that student enrollment “is expected to increase from 1,865,677 in 2002 to 2,202,048 by 2010”.181 The FTI country database lists 2001-02 primary school enrollments at 1.62 million, with 702,000 children out of school.182 The USAID goal of an increase in enrollment of 355,000 children by 2010 captures approximately half of the 176 see note Error: Reference source not found, supra177 see note Error: Reference source not found, supra178 BESSIP PAD, supra note Error: Reference source not found, Annex 12, 5179 2005 GMR, supra note Error: Reference source not found – this fall was recorded from 1998 to 2001.180 Riddell, Abby, The Introduction of Free Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (Commissioned for 2003/04 UNESCO Global Monitoring Report), 11, online at http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/file_download.php/f2055e1e3843e56bddf020ab7fe49ed1The+introduction+of+free+primary+education+in+sub-Saharan+Africa..doc 181 USAID, Data Sheet (Basic Education Program, 2004), 2, online at: http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2005/afr/pdf/611-006.pdf

number of out of school children as of 2001-02 – a significantly more modest goal than that of UPE by 2005 initially set by BESSIP in 1999. It is also a far cry from the enrollment rush experienced in most other SSA countries.

The precise reason for the failure of free primary education to provoke steep increases in enrollment is not clear. The most obvious suggestion might be that total household expenditures on education, while lower than they previously were, have remained relatively close to their pre-2002 levels. If the World Bank data discussed above is correct, the average household savings created by the abolition of fees is approximately K 7,200, while households continue to spend somewhere between K 11,000 and K 27,000, or more, per primary pupil. On this data, household expenditures following the institution of free primary education remained at 60% to 80% of its prior level, offering a potential rationale for the meek interest. On the other hand, other data offered above seems to suggest, at the very least, a correlation between the increase in PTA fees throughout the 1990’s and a steep drop in enrollment rates. Moreover, this same phenomenon, whereby the total household expenditures on education after the abolition of fees has remained at a significant level in relation to expenditures prior to the abolition of fees, has been observed in other countries where dramatic increases in enrollment have taken place. One possible explanation for this outcome could be that the abolition of fees, while seemingly minor against the average household cost, represents a substantial improvement in the cost burden facing poorer families. In one of the several studies tracking household expenditures on education in Tanzania, cited in part IIIB, supra, expenditures were found to vary widely with income, as the top decile spent just over TSh 19,000 per pupil per year while the bottom decile spent TSh 2,200. Another study placed parents’ ‘voluntary’ financial contributions’ at TSh 2,000.183 If these fees were mostly eliminated, a poor family previously paying TSh 2,200 might have seen a significant impact on the cost of education despite a minimal impact on average costs. Similarly, UNESCO estimates suggest that fees fell from a range of TSh 7,000 to 10,600 to between TSh 2,000 and 8,000.184 If the variances within these ranges are attributable to income differentials, the abolition of fees may have had a significantly disproportionate impact on poor families. In Zambia, conversely, if DFID is correct to say that its estimate of K 27,000 private expenditures per pupil is a reflection of the cost of primary education for a relatively poor subset of families, the K 7,200 reduction in costs brought on by the launch of FPE would have had a far weaker effect. These comparisons are sown together from different studies, likely with different methodologies, and cannot be accepted on their face. More data on this point would be interesting.

Because enrollment spikes have not occurred under BESSIP, an analysis of the way in which donor funding has been directed towards the challenges typically associated with the abolition of fees is not possible. The BESSIP program was initially intended to run until 2002, but appears to continue to operate. In 2001, a new element of BESSIP was launched directed specifically at HIV/AIDS. This branch of the program seeks to enhance the capacity of the school system to address the AIDS pandemic through measures such 182 The USAID estimate counts grades 1 through 9, while the FTI estimate only considers grades 1 through 7. The two estimates are therefore probably closer together than it appears.183 See notes Error: Reference source not found-Error: Reference source not found, supra184 See note Error: Reference source not found

as providing support and counseling for teachers and students and integrating HIV relevant issues into school curricula and teacher training.185 The November 2004 Status Report for FTI lists Zambia as a potential addition to FTI for 2005,186 consistent with the goal of the initiative to bring as much of education financing as possible within its ambit, suggesting that FTI is likely to be the most significant modality of external financing of education in Zambia in the coming years.

In sharp contrast with the experience in Tanzania, documentation on education in Zambia since the abolition of fees in 2002 is sparse. Commentary that has been made has noted the need to enhance access,187 but has paid curiously little attention to the user fee issue, sometimes lauding their removal but not considering the impact (or lack thereof) on enrolment.188 More information might be required about the precise reasons why enrolment has not increased at a more ambitious rate, but it seems at the very least that increased focus on the real impact of the FPE policy on both private expenditures and enrolment is warranted. This is particularly so for the World Bank, given it’s uncharacteristic support for direct fees as recently as 1999.

V – Conclusion

In his speech delivering the 2005 budget to the National Assembly on June 10, 2004, Tanzanian Minister of Finance Basil P. Mramba explained that “it is widely recognized that foreign aid is not the best way to develop a stable and sustainable economy. Nonetheless, during this period when we are implementing economic and social reforms to eradicate poverty, the contribution of development partners is an invaluable asset to our government.”189 This sentiment, which manifests both concern over an ongoing dependence on external assistance and a certain resignation to its inevitability, is echoed often in similar budget speeches throughout sub-Saharan African. In the context of the education sector, with the increasing influence of the Fast Track Initiative as a mediator of development funding, the problem posed is especially stark. If FTI is successful, education policy makers in developing countries may be increasingly unable to create flexible lending programs with individual donors.

As donors often observe, the tendency in education funding has tended to move more towards “general budget support” – such as the “Case I” and “Case II” type contributors to Zambia’s BESSIP, or the “Poverty Reduction Budget Support” in

185 HIV/AIDS Education Component Logical Framework (Minister of Education, Zambia, August 2002), online at: http://hivaidsclearinghouse.unesco.org/ev_en.php?ID=2344_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC . See Rosah Moonga Malambo, Teach Them While They Are Young, They Will Live to Remember: The views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of HIV/AIDS in basic education: A case study of Zambia’s Lusaka and Southern Provinces (2000) 3:1 CICE, online at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/rmm131.htm 186 FTI Status Report, supra note Error: Reference source not found, 39187 An easy look at Zambia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, 2002-2004 (Civil Society for Poverty Reduction), online at: http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000280/index.php 188 Kasonde-Ng’andu, Sophie, The Evolution of Education Policy in Zambian (2003) 10:1 DPMN Bulletin, online at: http://www.dpmf.org/bulletin-jan-03/evolution-edu-sophie.html 189 Speech by the Minister for Finance Hon. Basil P. Mramba (MP), Introducing to the National Assembly the Estimates of Government Revenue and Expenditure for the Financial Year 2004/05 on June 10, 2004

Tanzania – which in principle provides substantially greater freedom to recipient governments than project lending, under which a series of small contributions are provided for the implementation of specific projects. The approval of budget support, however, is conditional on sector-wide plans that are so specific in terms of annual enrolment targets, teacher hiring, teacher training, classroom construction, teacher salaries, textbook purchases, administrative structures and more, that one is left to question the level of freedom actually vested in recipient governments. While these plans are nominally prepared by recipient governments, the central role of the indicative benchmarking process in approval of the plans calls into doubt the extent to which preparation of the plan can be seen to reflect internal governmental procedures. Moreover, since SWAps prescribe detailed plans that encompass the entire government expenditure on education, the impact of the benchmarking process extends beyond merely tying donor money to particular projects and into a broad impact on educational policy.

However, analogies to conditionalities in structural adjustment programs should not be overstated. The locus of opposition to structural adjustment, insofar as its impact on education is concerned, lies in its tendency to suppress public expenditures on education in favour of increased debt servicing. If one element of policymaking under the Fast-Track Initiative has crystallized, it is that financial support of education sectors has become conditional on demonstrated domestic financial dedication to primary education. Moreover, structural adjustment programs were geared towards broad attempts at restructuring overall budgetary schemes in developing countries. Liberalization of markets, both within states and in international trade, was of primary importance, and comparatively little attention was paid to social sectors, as demonstrated by the paucity of social conditionalities included in adjustment programs until the early 1990s. Even in education sector adjustment programs, where IFI lending was focussed directly on improving the system of education – including, ostensibly, access to education – restraint on public expenditures often eclipsed ends such as access. This is reflected, for instance, in the Kenyan Implementation Completion Report discussed above. By contrast, the Fast Track Initiative develops against the background of Education for All and its strong rhetoric of universal access, rather than the strict market-orientation of structural adjustment. Conflict between IFIs and their detractors is more likely to come in the details of education policy, such as teacher salaries or pupil: teacher ratios, than in the general direction, for instance, of budgetary support for primary education.

A central educational policy goal for many sub-Saharan African countries could be to wean themselves off external education aid. The threat of the current trend towards EFA is that shortfalls between government capabilities and program costs are so large that EFA might achieve the opposite goal and entrench the IFI-state relationship. This is precisely the kind of tension implicit in Minister Mramba’s remarks. From the perspective of borrower countries, increasing latitude in policy making is therefore a key goal, as it has always been for recipients of foreign aid. In light of the domestic support for education demanded by FTI, it is not clear why elements of educational policy should be strictly mandated over and above that requirement – so long as a minimum

requirement is fulfilled, that it can be assured that funding actually supports education,190 a government guaranteeing financial commitment has demonstrated its good faith in revitalizing the education sector. One step might be to free, at the very least, domestic support for education from the strictures of FTI. This would be a difficult suggestion to implement, however, because the goal of the sector-wide approach is to define a coherent plan for education, which does not easily lend itself to divisions amongst specific sources of funding. Modifications within the FTI concept itself (such as shifting the indicative benchmarks to a higher level of generality that considers outcomes more than inputs) are challenging because, as discussed above, the functional purpose of FTI is to evaluate the specifics of education plans. The initial approach taken in Tanzania would be preferable because it allowed donors to coordinate the funding of education in a given country amongst themselves, while avoiding the generalization inherent in the bureaucratization of funding (as in FTI). The initial purpose of FTI, to create a demonstration effect, justified the co-ordination of donors across recipient countries because the goal was to select a subset of countries appropriate for creating such an effect. Following the widening of the FTI scope to act as a global mediator of foreign aid for education, the cross-country orientation begins to act merely as a standardizing instrument for global education policy. There is no apparent reason why such an effect is desirable.

Because FTI is so new, and has thus far involved few countries, it is hard to judge its performance empirically. If it continues in its current form, it is worth investigating whether the specifics of national education plans can be evaluated by an independent team of experts in the field on an ad hoc basis, with only high-level outcomes such as enrolment targets as their defining consideration. In such a scenario, insistence upon continued domestic financial commitment as well as high-level outcomes would represent legitimate demands on the part of IFIs, but most other concerns would fall within the consideration of independents. Such a system would maintain the coherence of the sector wide approach, guarantee good faith commitments on the part of governments through demonstrated financial support, permit borrower governments to propose honest projections and policies without the dictates of the pre-defined benchmarking system, and allow a legitimate evaluation acceptable to all parties by a recognized group.

190 The “fungibility” of aid, from the perspective of lenders, is a pervasive problem in which borrower countries can fulfill formally conditionalities by spending aid money as agreed but then diverting domestic funds otherwise destined for the same program elsewhere, thus eliminating the impact of aid for the particular program or sector. Foster, M. Accounting for Donor Contributions to Education for All: How should finance be provided? How should it be monitored? (Report to World Bank, 2004)