A greater concern is that approximately 84% of the education budget goes towards meeting administration costs. This leaves a paltry 16% for direct service delivery which has to be shared across all subsectors namely early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary and adult education.
While there are no immediate statistics available on the per capita cost of providing quality education in Zambia, there is no dispute that the current education budget is inadequate to enable the delivery of quality education. The picture becomes even more dire as the ZANEC research further reveals that releases against the education budget have mostly oscillated around 65% of the overall budget.
This means that, every year, about 35% of the education budget is never released by the Ministry of Finance thereby making it difficult for the Ministry to operate optimally. The low investment in education has manifested itself in the poor quality of education at all levels. Evidence from research has attributed the low learning achievement, among other factors, to inadequate funding which is below the internationally recommended standard.
Without adequate funding, school managements operate with limited teaching and learning materials especially following the revision of the
national curriculum. Unlike in the past when the main problem was the vertical and horizontal leakages in the movement of
funds from higher to lower levels, the current challenge is the low funding levels coupled with erratic and poor releases of budgeted funds by the Ministry of Finance. Thus, the challenge that lies before government and CSOs alike, is that of continuously examining the revenue side of the budget and finding opportunities that government can maximize to meet the planned funding levels as appropriated by the legislature. Until we can overcome this daunting task, Zambia’s dream of becoming a prosperous middle income country by 2030 remains a pipe dream. More so that, when the education sector loses its efficacy, it is the citizenry and the economy that suffer.
The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things-Jean Piaget
A race to the bottom with the Education Sector?
by George Hamusunga
Tigwepo - March, 2017 12