Revised Education Sector Strategic Plan 2007-2015

Abstract

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Education Sector Strategic Plan 2004-2015 The Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP) 2004-2015 was prepared in 2003 to provide a framework for policy analysis and budgeting. It was aimed at addressing three critical concerns: Primary schools were not providing many Ugandan children with literacy, numeracy and basic life skills. • Secondary schools were not producing graduates with the skills and knowledge required to enter the workforce or pursue tertiary education. • Universities and technical institutes were neither affording students from disadvantaged backgrounds access to tertiary education nor responding adequately to the aspirations of a growing number of qualified secondary school graduates. The ESSP 2004-2015 was underpinned by a mathematical model of the education system that produced internally consistent estimates of enrollments, resource requirements and Investment needs. The model followed each cohort of children from birth until its last member left the education system as either a dropout or graduate. The total population to be served was determined by demographic forces - the total population, birth rates and survival rates and by policies regarding access to education. Targets for the ratio of students to classrooms, teachers and instructional materials defined total input requirements. A perpetual inventory of available inputs was maintained by estimating losses to the stock of inputs due to physical depreciation, mortality or retirement, and additions through investment and training. The difference between the number of inputs required (classrooms, teachers, textbooks, etc) and the stock available then represented targets for further investment. The re-costing of this ESSP has been necessitated by recent key and critical policy reforms in the sector. The REVISED ESSP 2007-2015 The decision to re-cost and update the strategic plan was prompted by the addition of six items to Uganda's education policy agenda since the launch of the ESSP 2004- 2015: 1. Bringing the ESSP into full conformance with EFA FTI goals (the ESSP 2004- 2015 had been designed to fit within financial constraints). 2. Improving the quality of primary education through introduction of local language instruction and a simplified thematic curriculum. 3. Ensuring that all pupils successfully completing Primary 7 have access to either academic secondary education or BTVET. 4. Strengthening science and technology education by providing science laboratories, ICT laboratory rooms, and well-stocked libraries to secondary schools. 5. Increasing participation in tertiary education in order to ensure that Uganda meets its needs for high-level work force. 6.Increasing the attractiveness of the teaching profession through the introduction of a scheme of service that creates a career ladder for teachers and school administrators and differentiates salaries in recognition of career status. In addition, a number of less far-reaching reforms have been introduced. The Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES) plans to improve the provision of instructional materials at all levels of the education system, to strengthen the training and in-service support to teachers, and supply housing for teachers in rural areas and for a head teacher, a senior woman teacher and a senior man teacher in every primary school to make them resident and enhance school-level supervision in a bid to minimize absenteeism of head teachers, teachers and pupils. It has also sought to strengthen cross cutting programs in AIDS education, counseling and guidance, peace studies, refugee education and gender equity. While these latter activities are very important, they have a modest impact on the aggregate budget of the education system and therefore do not feature prominently in efforts to model the budgetary implications of policy reforms. The micro-simulation that was constructed in 2003 in order to assess the effects and costs of the ESSP 2004-2015 has been revised to reflect both recent history and the changes in goals and requirements implied by the new policy agenda. The projections generated earlier have been compared with statistics about actual experience wherever possible. Major Issues in the Revised ESSP 2007-2015 The results of the modeling exercise point not only to the enormous cost implications of the reforms that are under discussion and implementation, but also to the urgent need to consider the effectiveness of these initiatives in meeting Uganda's educational objectives. The revised ESSP is projected to cost 23,591 billion Ug. Shs.over the period 2007-2015. This is 8,893billion Ug. Shs. more than envisaged in the ESSP 2004-2015- an increase of 61 percent. Approximately three-quarters of that cost would be borne by Government (18,253billion Ug. Shs.) and a quarter by the private sector, Including households, enterprises and charitable organizations. Under the revised ESSP the number of student-years of instruction (in the entire Uganda's education system) increases by 20.62 million over projections in the ESSP 2004-2015 for the period 2007-2015 - an increase of about 26 percent. This increase is due principally to a projected decline in the dropout rate in primary schools. The total number of dropouts from P2 through P7 is expected to fall by 72 percent from the projections produced in the ESSP 2004-2015. If the number of pupils in P1 continues to exceed by a very large amount the number in the appropriate age group, then the second largest source of increases in enrollment will be due to the high rate of withdrawal and re-entry at this point. The number of students successfully completing P7 increases by 43 percent over the entire period and by 67 percent in the final year (In both instances over the ESSP 2004-2015 benchmark). The full impact of primary reforms on secondary enrollment is delayed, because the surge in the number of students successfully completing P7 must thread their way from S1 to S6. The new policy agenda leads to a 22 percent increase in enrollment in academic secondary schools. However, the increase in enrollment in the final year (1.e. 2015) of the sector strategy is 40 percent. Growth in academic secondary enrollment will continue to outstrip population growth for several years beyond 2015 as the enrollment pipeline continues to fill. Only about 14 percent of the increase in secondary school enrollment is traceable to policies aimed at expanding participation in secondary schools over what had been intended in the ESSP 2004-2015. A much greater relative increase in enrollment occurs in post-primary BTVET. Total enrollment between 2007 and 2015 is expected to increase by 199 percent over what had been anticipated in the ESSP 2004-2015. Enrollment in 2014-2015 the final year of the revised strategic plan is projected to reach 638,000 students or 1.8 times the number anticipated in 2006-07. The impact of this growth on the budget is especially significant since the unit cost of BTVET is four to five times the cost of providing academic secondary education and up to 32 times the cost per student of providing primary education. The revised reform agenda will have a relatively small impact on enrollment in tertiary education because of the delayed effects on secondary enrollments levels and completion rates. The enrollment bulge in primary education that is created by higher output will not reach the universities and higher technical institutes before the end of the plan. Nonetheless, beginning in 2012 the number of students leaving S6 will rise very sharply (as a consequence of reforms adopted in 2003 and 2006), reaching an annual rate of increase of 43 percent in 2013 before beginning to taper off. Even in the absence of a shift in policy regarding access to tertiary education, enrollment would be expected to double over the five years from 2013 to 2018. The budgetary effects of increases in enrollment vary greatly by sub sector. The total expenditure per year of instruction is five times as great for secondary as for primary schools and more than twenty times as great for BTVET. A student-year of tertiary education requires three times as much expenditure as one year of primary school instruction. Therefore, percentage increases in expenditures (over the ESSP 2004- 2015) are greatest in the secondary education and BTVET sub sectors. The growth in expenditure due to the recent reforms (over the ESSP 2004-2015 benchmark) for the BTVET sub sector is 260 percent, while it is 145 percent for the academic secondary sub sector. Tertiary education experiences a respectable 39 percent increase in expenditures over what had been planned in 2003.