Gender and Development

Community-Based Basic Education Improvement Project

In 2003-2004, the percentage of children receiving primary education in Ethiopia stood at 68.4%. The fact that so many school-age children are still unable to access primary education is attributable to an imbalance between supply and demand. Growth in the number of schools and teachers has not kept pace with dramatic growth in the number of children.

An absolute shortage of schools prevents over 30% of school-age children from attending school. Coupled with this lack of access is the problem of overcrowding—those children who can attend school are packed into classrooms containing 80 to 100 students.

Other problems include shortages of teaching resources, such as textbooks and laboratory equipment. These factors constitute serious barriers to the processes of learning and understanding. Moreover, there are still regional and gender disparities in school attendance, and girls in rural areas tend to be most seriously deprived of opportunities to receive primary education.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to ensure that all school-age boys and girls receive primary education by 2015. As a first step toward the achievement of this goal, the Ethiopian government is working with other countries to expand and improve primary education. It has formulated an education sector development program in which low-cost, non-formal education based on flexible teaching hours and curricula is identified as an important tool that can be used alongside formal school education to bring Ethiopia closer to its goal. This approach has been defined as a priority measure to ensure that as many children as possible are able to receive primary education.

The aim of this project is to establish a model for community-based primary schools in selected woreda (districts), through collaboration with education administrators and local people, and through the improvement of the planning and implementation capacity of regional government officials. It is hoped that the project will help education officials to understand the basic educational needs of children with different lifestyles, so that they can formulate and implement flexible basic education plans that will allow all school-age children in the region to attend school.

As part of efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in relation to primary education, the social gender perspective has been incorporated into various facets of this project. The target region for the projects is Oromia Province, where the alleviation of gender disparities is an important goal in addition to the improvement of overall school attendance rates for all school-age children.

For this reason, the criteria under which districts are selected for the project include not only educational needs, but also the existence of gender disparities in access to primary education. The project policy calls for a prioritized approach, starting in districts with serious disparities.

The approach adopted for the project is to establish new schools in order to facilitate attendance by reducing the distances over which children must travel to and from school. One of the aims of this approach is to reduce not only the dangers associated with poor road infrastructure, including the need to cross muddy rivers and negotiate paths that become muddy and slippery in the rain, but also social risks affecting girls, including rape, forced marriage, and kidnapping by traffickers.

The project aims to ensure that all school-age boys and girls are able to receive primary education, and in this sense it adds a gender perspective to the Millennium Development Goals. To maintain the benefits achieved by working toward this goal, it will be necessary to strengthen the rights of women to make decisions on all aspects of life, and to expand the range of decisions made by women.

At the school level, this project will be operated independently by school management committees. In relation to electing committee members, JICA is making prioritized efforts to promote community recognition that (1) female participation in village meetings to elect committee members is essential and (2) men and women must have equal opportunities to be elected to committees.

Project Outline

Title: Community-Based Basic Education Improvement Project in Ethiopia
Period: November 2003-November 2007