By Addissu Admas
Recently, Ethiopia’s Minister of Education, Prof. Berhanu Nega has been the subject of withering criticisms, most of which, I would contend, were unfair and unjustified. I have no reason to believe that the good professor was moved by anything other than by good intentions, and by what he was convinced were the best remedies for Ethiopia’s dismal educational outcomes. Rather than joining the chorus of critics, I think it more productive to offer my two cents towards the effort of changing the current state of education in Ethiopia.
It is an undeniable fact in Ethiopia’s modern history of education that we have gone from focusing on quality to focusing on quantity in the design and implementation of our educational policies. This was due primarily to the explosive demographic change, the uncertain economy and changing ideologies; not to mention the often ill-advised so-called educational reforms pushed upon us by International Agencies. Prof. Berhanu should not be excoriated for being the bearer of bad tidings, and for offering his considered solutions. He is dealing with dysfunctions that have been accumulating for the past 50 years. Just a quick glance at the state of education in Ethiopia is enough to discourage even the bravest of souls.
With a population of around 130 million, Ethiopia’s literacy rate hovers around 50%. This is vastly higher than it had been during the imperial regime, but it is far below the Sub-Saharan average of 64%. Just for comparison, Zimbabwe has a literacy rate of nearly 90%. What happened to one of the great revolutionary objectives of becoming a literate nation? Why does the effort seem to have fizzled out? Why is there not a comprehensive, well-funded and well-organized continuous campaign of literacy? I think the same effort must be put in it as much as we put in trying to eradicate the various infectious diseases. The fact is that illiteracy hurts as much!
On paper, the number of primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in Ethiopia is quite impressive. Currently, if we are to trust the statistics provided by some international organizations (e.g. the World Bank), Ethiopia has some 15.5 million primary school pupils, 5.5 million secondary school students, and approximately 1.3 million higher education students in some 38 thousand schools (including those damaged and destroyed during the Tigray war), 45 public universities and at least 300 other privately owned colleges and universities. However, these educational institutions are far from being funded and staffed adequately. Just as a matter of comparison, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is similar in population to Ethiopia, and has suffered equally devastating civil wars in the past thirty years, allocates more funds to education than Ethiopia, even though it has fewer educational institutions. In terms of budget, Ethiopia has only dedicated 3.7% of its GDP or USD 4.7 billion to Congo’s 4.4% of GDP but varying in terms of actual USD allocated because of its wildly changing oil revenue. Both countries are far below what international standards require. Ethiopia is fairing even worse than the DRC.
The consequences of allocating such a low percentage of Ethiopia’s GDP to education are many. These are in the order of importance: a) An insufficient number of teachers. Currently the teacher-student ratio is over 1:47 for primary schools, 1:43 for secondary schools. This is of course unacceptable. Indeed, it is even dismal by African standards b) The inadequate preparation and compensation of teachers, administrators, at every level c) A higher education that is equally plagued by the same problems that primary and secondary education suffer. In terms of the number of colleges and universities, Ethiopia is only second to Nigeria. But in terms of quality, she is dishearteningly even below her poorer peers.
The solution proposed by prof. Berhanu to improve the quality of Ethiopia’s schools at every level is typically one proposed by international organizations. Its success has been, to put it charitably, checkered. Rather than “going along” with what these organizations devise for us, we need to draw a few good lessons from countries that continue to deliver exceptional educational results for their citizens. These countries are Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. They will provide us with a pathway to conducting our educational reforms. What are in fact their distinguishing characteristics? Let’s consider them one by one.
These countries have, by unanimous estimation, the best primary and secondary schools in the world. Their universities, though not as well-known as their English-speaking counterparts, deliver education of the highest quality. All, in fact, share five distinctive features that are worth our consideration 1) Most of them allocate a high percentage of their considerable GDPs to education 2) They attach prestige to the teaching profession 3) The way they achieve this is by providing teachers with very good salaries worthy of highly skilled professionals 4) They maintain the idea of teaching as a very noble mission and a service to the country 5) They provide, mostly for free, continuous professional development to teachers, as is often required for most other professions.
It does not take much digging to realize that almost none of these features are present in Ethiopia’s current educational system. Even though the current percentage of GDP allocated to education is around 3.7%, and it may be better on paper than many poorer nations, it remains far below what is required for providing an acceptable level of education to Ethiopia’s ever expanding younger generation. Most of the countries I mentioned as models of educational systems dedicate around 5% of their considerable GDPs to education. Obviously, Ethiopia can never compete with these countries in the present or near future since she still has to contend with ongoing wars, threats of other wars, famine and economic downturns. However, if Ethiopia’s present and future administrations want to prevent the country from falling even further, and becoming wholly dependent on foreign expertise for every conceivable sector of the economy, culture or politics, then they need not only conduct constant and more intense campaigns against illiteracy, but also make a serious push to improving the quality of education by increasing substantially its allocated budget. We need to remind ourselves that the more we fall behind in this age of AI, the more we fall not only behind the world but even our own African peers.
If we are honest with ourselves, our teachers have not been given the kind of social respect and financial compensation that they deserve. They have been considered, quite unjustly, as belonging to the lowest professional class with earnings to match. This has been the case for more than 50 years than during the pre-revolutionary era. Teachers and university lecturers of every level should be the top priority when it comes to increasing the compensation of public servants. Yet, they not only have never been a priority, but they have been waging a constant struggle to earn a living wage. No one is blind to the fact that Ethiopia is virtually conducting a constant civil war, and much of the federal expenditure is diverted to the military. Yet, the current administration cannot afford to ignore the plight of teachers without seriously jeopardizing the future of the country.
For many decades now, Ethiopia has relied on CTEs (College of Teachers Education), or what used to be called Teachers Training Colleges or Institutes (TTCs or TTIs) to train Ethiopia’s primary and secondary school teachers. Today, we have some 36 of these institutions. The academic requirements for entering them has always been lower than for entering the universities. This has inevitably led to populating them overwhelmingly with second tier students. The reasons for their creation may have been dictated more by pragmatism and desire for quick results. However, they have had unintended consequences. If we look closely at the model countries I selected above, they clearly opted for policies that are diametrically opposed. They were clearly designed with a long-term view. First, instead of having separate and dedicated institutions for training teachers, they simply integrated them with the universities of the country, and instead of requiring a lower entrance score, they required a higher than average score, or at least additional assessments and aptitude tests for training to become teachers. By doing so, they avoided the substantial budget required for running separate and independent CTEs and were able to attract at the same time top tier students.
It may have been a good idea to have CTEs in Ethiopia at one time, but now with 45 public universities suffering from chronic underfunding, it is well past due for the CTEs to merge with them. In other words, to make them become quite simply faculties, schools or institutes within universities. The benefits of this arrangement are going to be many and very tangible. First, instead of having to plan and allocate funds for two systems, there will be only one to be concerned with; and as a result, it will not only have more financial resources but will allow the teaching faculties/schools/institutes to benefit from the resources that universities usually possess at a higher level. It goes without saying that the score required for entering teaching faculties/schools/institutes will become at least as high as for the other faculties, or even as high as for the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) subjects. Indeed, we need to train our teachers with the same care that we ordinarily reserve for our STEM professionals and consequently demand that they score as high as the top tier students upon entering the university. Therefore, the first order of Ethiopia’s educational reform is not only injecting in the educational system much needed money, but providing our future teachers with the best education the country can afford.
Finally, like all known professions or trades, our teachers must undergo periodic re-training, updating and quality control throughout their career to ensure that they maintain a high level of competency. This should be encouraged by providing them with paid leave of various lengths to participate or attend seminars, conferences, courses, etc…. specifically designed for them.
Again, even though I do not question the good intentions of Prof. Berhanu, I do not believe that the exit exams that have been conceived, designed, proposed and implemented by his office with the goal of improving the quality of university and CTE students to be an effective tool for improving the quality of education in Ethiopia or of our graduates. What it ends up doing is simply selecting a small percentage of students, who through sheer natural gifts or because of their provenance from mostly good private schools manage to pass the exit exams. Exit exams neither improve students, nor the educational goals of the country. Rather than focusing on mass testing, the focus should be changing the very educational setup and its governing policies that have been the real problems for the country’s abysmal state of education.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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