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Free education at the expense of quality? Public education spending in Malawi

In 1994 Malawi abolished primary school fees. How pro-poor was this education reform? What has been the effect on enrolment and drop-out rates? What should Malawi do to raise the quality of education?

A World Bank report assesses the impact free provision of primary education has had on Malawi’s poor. Data on public spending per student is combined with household consumption and enrolment data to examine the impact fee abolition has had on the distribution of government spending. In particular, to what extent has government spending become pro-poor. It finds that Malawi’s education reforms have been pro-poor but that more must be done to ensure quality and to help poor children – especially girls – to get more than a few year’s schooling.

The distribution of public education expenditure has shifted towards the poor. Education’s share of the total government budget rose from 13 per cent in 1994/95 to 20 per cent in 1997/98. This increase was captured disproportionately by poorer income groups.

Enrolment rates have dramatically increased at both primary and secondary levels particularly for poorer socio-economic groups. However, the paper shows that a smaller proportion of poor pupils reached the last four standards of primary. Great gains in access to primary school for poorer socio-economic groups are thus unlikely to be matched in terms of primary school completion. Though secondary education has also become more accessible this is largely due to the expansion of Distance Education Centres (DECs) which offer schooling of poorer quality than conventional secondary schools. It is likely that poorer socio-economic groups are more concentrated in these lower quality secondary schools.

The report notes that:

In 1990-91 the secondary school gross enrolment ratio for the richest fifth of the population was over seven times that of the poorest fifth, but by 1997-98 the figure had dropped to a factor of 2.5.
Girls’ enrolment rates in secondary education show a large difference between richer and poorer households.
In response to large increases in enrolment the government recruited some 18 000 untrained primary school teachers: the ratio of students to qualified teachers in 1997 thus fell to 120:1 with adverse implications for the quality of education.
Commonly cited reasons for primary school drop-out are the costs (direct and indirect) of schooling, illness of family members and lack of interest in school.
As government funding of DECs is limited to paying teachers salaries, DEC fees are substantially higher than mainstream secondary schools.

The World Bank argues that if the early gains in pro-poor access are to be sustained in Malawi then the reforms of abolishing fees at primary and expanding the provision of secondary education need to be helped by:

curbing the widespread practice of charging informal fees and contributions in primary schools
boosting secondary school funding, particularly for DECs
improving the quality of primary and secondary education by greater financing of teaching and learning materials, community involvement in school management, strengthening the curriculum, restructuring the examination system and improving teacher training
reducing current regional disparities in education expenditure.

Source(s):
‘The Changing Distribution of Public Education Expenditure in Malawi’, Africa Region Working Paper Series No. 29, World Bank, by S. Al-Samarrai and H. Zaman, 2002 Full document.

Funded by: World Bank

id21 Research Highlight: 28 April, 2003

Further Information:
Samer Al-Samarrai
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton
Sussex BNI 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 606261
Fax: +44 (0) 1273 621202 or 691647
Contact the contributor: s.al-samarrai@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies

Hassan Zaman
AFTP1
The World Bank
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433
USA

Tel: +1 202 473-1000
Fax: +1 202) 477-6391
Contact the contributor: hzaman@worldbank.org

World Bank

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