Fall 2006, Volume 11 Number 3

Table of Contents

In the year 2000, 189 nations at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit agreed upon the Millennium Declaration, a document containing actions and targets that were necessary to address global poverty.  From these targets grew the Millennium Development Goals, eight ambitious goals that the nations of the world agreed to meet by the year 2015.  Two of these grand goals relate to equal access to education

Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary EducationGoal
     3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

Unfortunately, neither of these goals is achievable as long as one of the most significant impediments to their fulfillment remains in place: school fees.  Instead of universal access to education in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions in the developing world, parents must pay a fee for their children to attend school.  This policy was first instituted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s as part of these organizations’ Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs).  SAPs involved conditional lending, meaning countries would receive loans only if their governments adopted policies that the international financial institutions prescribed. Cutting social spending was among these policies, and funds for education were frequently among the social services that were cut.  School fees were usually instituted to replace funds for education that had been previously provided by the federal government.

The problem, of course, is that parents often cannot afford these fees, which in some countries may amount to nearly one-third of the family’s income.  Families are forced to choose which children they can afford to send to school, and if they have to choose between a son and daughter, it is the boy who gets to receive an education.  In this way, school fees not only prohibit millions of children from going to school, they also play a major role in reinforcing gender inequality.

When school fees are abolished, the benefits extend far beyond universal access to education and gender equality in education.  When students are educated, their job prospects and future incomes increase.  AIDS orphans are more likely to be adopted once school fees are abolished because these fees are a major disincentive to adopt orphans.  Educated girls have healthier children as rates of malnutrition and HIV infection decrease, due in part to the fact that women and girls no longer risk HIV infection from being forced to work as prostitutes to pay the fees for themselves, their children, or their siblings. 

Zambia and Uganda provide evidence of the connection between health and education: in both countries, the rate of HIV infection among women with a primary school education was half the rate among uneducated women.  Among Ugandan women who had also received a secondary school education, the HIV infection rate was one-fourth the rate of women with no education.

How effective is the removal of school fees with regards to enrollment?  The dramatic results following the abolition of school fees speak for themselves:

When school fees were abolished in Malawi, enrollment in primary school jumped from 1.9 million to 2.9 million students almost overnight.

When school fees were eliminated in Uganda, enrollment in primary school increased by 70%.

In Kenya, an additional 1.3 million children began to attend school within a few weeks after school fees were abolished.

In Cameroon, the primary school enrollment rate increased from 88% to 105% because adults who had never been able to afford school returned to receive an education for the first time.

The soaring enrollment rates carry a clear message: parents would like to send their children to school, and children would love that opportunity.  Ensheba Khareri, the principal at a Kenyan primary school whose student body increased by 66% when school fees were abolished, explained that universal access gave children “a priceless chance.”  They had a hunger to learn, you could see it in their eyes, and we were not about to let them down.

Yet simply replacing school fees with government funds is only the beginning of the solution to lack of educational access.  When school populations increase so suddenly and so drastically, schools do not have the teachers, space, or supplies to accommodate the new students, and the federal government does not have the administrative or financial capacity to deal with a crisis on this scale.  At Ms. Khareri’s school in Kenya, teachers were suddenly managing classes that had grown from 50 to 90 students.  In Burundi, class sizes in some areas of the country grew to 150 students, and children were taught in tents or even sent home because the school could not provide enough desks.  Students at schools across the developing world learn in crowded classrooms and share textbooks and other materials already in short supply.

To address the need for more teachers, classrooms, and supplies, foreign aid for education must be increased.  This year, U.S. Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) appropriated $15 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to supporting countries in elimination of school fees.  This is a step in the right direction, but we could do much more to help provide universal access.  Consider the United Kingdom’s commitment to education: in April of this year, the UK tripled its current spending in the area of education by announcing its plan to spend $15 billion over the course of the next ten years to help the developing world achieve universal education.   The U.S. can and should match the UK’s commitment, and you can make help make that happen

To learn what you can do, please visit the RESULTS site located at www.results.org.

Molly Zeff is a senior at Yale University, where she is majoring in Political Science.  This past summer, she worked as the Global Intern at RESULTS, a grassroots organization dedicated to fighting hunger and the worst aspects of poverty by lobbying for legislation that addresses poverty at the domestic and international level.  After graduation, Molly plans to attend law school and then spend her life working on poverty-related issues. in the field of international development.

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