AFRICA: More fees, private tertiary education: UNESCO

Enrolment in tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 82% from the turn of the century to 2008, to more than 4.5 million students. But with demand soaring at all levels of education, resources scarce and tertiary costs high, many countries need to seriously consider raising the household contribution to and the role of the private sector in post-school education, says a new report from UNESCO.

Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Meeting the challenges of expansion, equity and quality was published last month by the Montreal-based UNESCO Institute for Statistics. While the report focuses on primary education, the costs and financing of secondary and tertiary education are also examined.

Writing in the foreword, UIS Director Hendrik van der Pol says the report presents new data highlighting the "tremendous financial commitment of African governments and the international community" to Education for All.

"Over the past 10 years, real expenditure on education has risen by 6% annually across Sub-Saharan Africa. It is often assumed that the resources were used to widen enrolment. Yet, recent data show that many countries also made significant investments to improve their educational services," says van der Pol.

As a result of increased investment, "remarkable progress" has been made in educational development and expansion across the region.

From 1970 to 2008, the number of children in primary school increased 5.5 times from 23 million to 129 million (including a 48% rise from 2000 to 2008), and secondary school enrolment grew 8.5 times from four million to 36 million.

Although it remains relatively small, the report says, tertiary enrolment "had the fastest growth rate among all levels of education over the four decades". It increased 22.3 times, from 200,000 students in 1970 to 4.5 million in 2008.

"This fast growth can be partly explained by the small enrolment size at the baseline year of 1970. As a result of this rapid increase, the share of tertiary students in the total student population in the region grew from 0.7% in 1970 to 2.5% in 2008."

The increase in the relative size of tertiary enrolment, the report continues, implies that Sub-Saharan African governments "have been compelled to secure sufficient resources to this level of education, unless financing has come from non-public sources".

Gross enrolment ratios - the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population - also grew. At the primary level it increased from 52.5% to 101.6%, at the secondary level from 11.3% to 34.1%, and tertiary GER increased from 0.8% to 6.1%."

Enrolment expansion has been accompanied by increased spending on education in most countries, and also increased commitments of national and international stakeholders, the report says.

Real spending on education has grown on average by 6.1% annually since 2000 among 26 Sub-Saharan African countries with available data. Overseas development assistance for education across the region grew from US$1.1 billion in 2002 to US$2.6 billion in 2008.

"Nonetheless, Sub-Saharan African countries continue to face the dilemma of how best to balance scarce available resources with growing demands for improving the region's education systems," says the report.

It notes that spending per student at the secondary and tertiary levels in many Sub-Saharan African countries is much higher than at the primary level. Many countries invest at least 10 times more for a tertiary student than for a primary pupil.

This ratio varies between countries. For instance, it was 2.2 in Mauritius while Lesotho spends 50 times more on a tertiary than a primary school student - a figure probably skewed by government providing study abroad scholarships for students. Other sources of financing, such as university income from fees, help to reduce public tertiary spending in some nations.

Household contributions represent around 25% of total education expenditure in 16 countries where data were available. On average, the proportion of household contributions is 29.2% at the primary education level, rising to around 45% in secondary education.

But the household contribution goes down to 22% at the tertiary level, the report reveals. Together with the high unit cost at the tertiary level, this implies very high public subsidies to tertiary students.

The report says there are important implications for policy-makers.

First, many countries still invest too little per student. Due to rapid enrolment growth in the past decade, while education expenditure has grown, real spending per primary pupil has declined in some countries and is still less than $100 (purchasing power parity) for much of the region.

"Second, expenditure is not balanced across levels of education." While globally it is common to find higher costs at higher levels of education when the enrolment ratio is low, "this will lead to inequity of resource allocation between those who can participate in the upper levels of education and those who cannot."

Considering the issue of equity in resource allocation, "this distribution pattern might warrant being reviewed by many Sub-Saharan African countries, since most students who can enrol in a higher education institution tend to have relatively wealthy families."

The report forecasts that demand for education will continue to grow, regardless of resource availability, including at the tertiary level. As more children complete schooling, more will want to enter higher education.

"While achieving Education for All is the priority that cannot be compromised, a more complex challenge in the region will be to design and implement appropriate policies for financing secondary, vocational-technical and higher education," the report finds.

"Policies of expanding upper levels of education must be considered in terms of balancing resource requirements and availability, social demands and economic needs for a more highly skilled labour force. Policy-makers should also consider to what extent the government is responsible for providing educational services to meet all the needs from society."

Policy-makers should think flexibly about diversifying funding sources for education, the report suggests. "There is room for reconsidering the role of the private sector in financing upper levels of education.

"Regulation of private education is important, but it should be of the right type, creating an enabling environment and encouraging both quality and equity. By allowing the private sector to finance upper levels of education, limited public resources for education can be effectively directed towards priority areas."

Policies regarding private and household spending in post-primary education, the report proposes, could include co-financing and co-management with industry of vocational and technical training, increased public sector fees, and loan and scholarship programmes in higher education.

It says there are no simple formulas for deciding how much to spend by level of education. As demand for secondary and tertiary education soars, countries will face difficult decisions.

"A critical policy question revolves around private expenditure on education," the report says. Without expanding private expenditure, including household spending, governments will not be able to meet social demands for education.

"Therefore, it is inevitable that policymakers consciously develop policies, with adequate oversight to ensure transparency, for the provision of private educational services. In particular, it is essential that these policies specifically address the equity issues that will accompany growth in the private education sector."

* The report was prepared by a team led by Shinsaku Nomura, under the guidance of Albert Motivans, Head of Education Indicators and Data Analysis at the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Its contributors are: Michael Bruneforth, Shinsaku Nomura, Saïd O Voffal, Borel Foko, Guillaume Husson and Serge Peano, with Laurence Wolff as a consultant and Yusuf Sayed as an advisor. Jean Claude Ndabananiye assisted in the presentation of data.