NAMIBIA: Government to overhaul education sector

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

WINDHOEK, 14 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - Namibia aims to transform its education system with a five-year Nam $23.4 billion (US $4 billion) plan.

A recent World Bank report on Namibia's education system, 'Namibia Human Capital and Knowledge Development for Economic Growth and Equity', found that it was not meeting the needs of the country's economy and was "ineffective".

Lack of early childhood development resulted in 80 percent of children entering Grade 1 "without the required level of learning readiness", while 60 percent of primary school teachers and 30 percent of secondary school teachers were unqualified, the researchers found.

According to the study, "Among the qualified teachers, a large proportion lacks essential competencies, such as mastery of their teaching subjects, good English proficiency, reading skills, curriculum interpretation and setting student tests."

Curricula were overloaded with too many subjects and lacked clear standards; there was a shortage of schoolbooks, and the fact that 21 percent of all schools had no permanent classrooms worsened the situation.

The methods used by teachers to assess pupil performance, and by school principals to assess teacher standards, were another weakness in the Namibian education system, the World Bank noted.

Repetition rates for grades 1 to 9 averaged 16 percent, while 10 percent of grade 8 and 9 pupils dropped out of school. At the end of the junior secondary level (Grade 10), as many as 38 percent of learners "are pushed out of the system, with virtually no opportunities for further education, training or direct employment".

The World Bank study found that just a third of children enrolled in Grade 1 eventually completed senior secondary school (Grade 12), commenting, "This level of wastage within the system undermines not only the high goal to rapidly develop an inclusive knowledge society, but also the goal to quickly reach a threshold of highly educated and skilled labour."

At a recent roundtable discussion held in Windhoek, Higher Education and Training Minister Nahas Angula said, "Although the government has invested around 8 percent of the GDP, or about 27 percent of the national budget annually on education since independence in 1990, the returns of knowledge and skills compared to the expenditure has been poor."

To achieve a knowledge-based economy and reduce unemployment, the World Bank report recommended that curricula focus on knowledge and skills required by the economic sector.

The government's strategic action plan for the education and training sector, based on the recommendations of the World Bank report, was presented at the roundtable.

The Namibian government will provide Nam $21.8 billion ($3.8 billion) for transforming the education system, leaving a gap of Nam $2 billion ($349 million), which government hopes will be filled by the donor community, development partners like the European Union and United Nations, "and possibly the private sector within Namibia", the minister added.

Various heads of diplomatic missions and development agencies have pledged their support, in principle, for the plan.

Namibia has about 19,000 teachers educating around 550,000 children in 1,550 schools. About 80 percent of the country's 1.9 million people are literate, and 90 percent of children of school-going age are enrolled in primary schools.

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