• During the decade Educational Broadcasting Services (RBS) transmitted 31 school radio programmes, 13 for upper primary, 16 for secondary and two for teachers;

• The school radio programmes targeted grades 5 to 7;

• Two radio programmes were broadcast to improve teachers' competencies. Additionally, the government also introduced an in-service training face-to-face programme directed at teachers of English, Mathematics and Science. The programme was executed at nine provincial resource centres established throughout the country. At school level, teachers were also organised in self study groups;

• The Ministry for information with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) introduced a number of broadcasts aimed at Education for Better Living for the general public;
• There was increased use of new information technology following the introduction of Zambia Network (ZAMNET) a company that linked Zambia to the information highway on the internet. Internet connectivity increased flow of information as more and more people acquired access to computers and received training provided non-formally by private providers;

• In the second half of the decade, government liberalised the use of air waves and there was an increase in licensing of radio stations. Four private radio stations (Radio Icengelo, Phoenix, Radio Maria, Christian Voice) were licensed and all of them carried out some educational programmes aimed at Education for Better Living;

• During the decade the number of newspapers with educational columns emerged. At the beginning of the decade there were two dailies (Times and Daily Mail) one weekly (Sunday Times), one fortnightly (Mirror) and one monthly (Mining Mirror). In 1996 there were 15 newspapers including the Post. The increase in the number of newspapers was due to the change to democratic governance which granted freedom of the press. Articles were written to educate the general public on various aspects of governance including elections and human rights;

• Six local language newspapers with a total run of 60,000 copies per edition and carrying articles on health, civic education and obligations and rights of citizens were established. One privately owned Catholic local language newspaper Icengelo produced and circulated between 75,00- 80,000 copies per week and reached the largest audience than any other publication in the country. One English newspaper, Post News with focus on reproductive health, population and sustainable development, general health and environment and health was produced and targeted schools and teacher training centres.

• At the beginning of the decade there was no organization specifically registered to act as an umbrella body for theatre groups engaged in the promotion of education through theatre. In 1990, the Zambia Popular Theatre Alliance was registered and to it were affiliated over four hundred theatre groups that promoted education through the arts. The groups performed plays which carried educational messages. In 1994 through an act of parliament the government created a National Arts Council (NAC) which became the co-ordinative body for arts and culture. The NAC promotes Education for Better Living through theatre, music and paintings and organises awards for the arts. During the decade the NAC organised three major awards ceremonies. Above this the government through the Ministry for Community Development and Social Services promoted cultural ceremonies during which people participated in enjoyment of music and art related their own cultures.

• A number of national campaigns were carried out to increase public awareness and knowledge of preventable diseases. Anti-polio campaign was carried out four times (1997, 1998 and 1999) leading to immunization of 90% of the children; anti-cholera campaigns were carried out nine times from 1990 to 1998 and resulted into reduction in deaths arising from the outbreak of cholera, epidemic; anti-aids campaigns were carried out nine times and anti-measles one time. Other campaigns were anti diarrhoea diseases; use of Vitamin A and environmental awareness.

• In 1996 an information and media policy was articulated whose educational objectives were to promote civic education, create awareness of environment, population and gender issues and promote HIV/AIDS awareness in communities. The policy liberalized use of air waves and promoted establishment of independent media.

• Government ministries that used media for basic education included the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Sport, Youth and Child Development and the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. Other promoters of basic education included the Catholic Church through News papers, Radio and Television programmes.

6.5 Training in Essential Skills

The goal in the area of essential skills was to expand training provisions in essential skills required by youths and adults. Progress towards this goal was undertaken through various NGOs and government ministries. Under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Vocational Training the targeted population for the skills training under the Department of DTEVT were out-of-school Youths Grade 9 drop-outs and Grade 12 school leavers.

Training programmes for these groups were undertaken at Trades Training Institutes. Although there were institutions; 9 of them located in urban areas and 3 in rural areas.

Towards the end of the decade the department (Technical Education and Vocation and Entrepreneurship Training) formulated a policy which incorporated entrepreneural skills directed at the informal sector.

The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services provided essential skills training in the following areas:

• Vocational rehabilitation skills

• Skills training for women

The target population for the training were:

• Disabled persons

• The youth and adults

The Ministry of Sport, Youth and Child Development has provided training in agriculture, carpentry, tailoring, plumbing and others. The target population was female and out-of-school youths aged between 15 and 24 years.

Altogether there were 14 training centres under the Ministry. Over the decade the Ministry formulated a youth policy on out-of - school youths.

The Department for Continuing Education in the Ministry of Education provided training in carpentry, agriculture and vocational skills at 24 skills training centres. The target population was out-of-school youths and adults.

A number of NGOs were involved in the provision of essential skills training for women, out-of-school youths, street children, orphans and other disadvantaged groups.

There was no clearly articulated strategy for realisation of the goal for essential skills training. Over the decade a number of efforts were made by a number of government ministries and NGOs to provide training in essential skills. These efforts remained isolated and unco-ordinated.

The goal of enrolling 11-15 year olds of the out-of-school children in literacy classes was not deliberately addressed by the Ministry of Community Development. Instead literacy training was provided for this group by the Department for Continuing Education in the Ministry of Education. It was provided through open learning centres and the National Correspondence College. The Ministry of Sport Youth and Child Development expressed interest in introducing functional literacy for the out-of-school youths but did not do anything. NGOs were also involved.

Altogether 46,000 youths and adults were catered for by the open learning centres and distance education over the 1990 – 1999 period.

• The national literacy campaign was launched in 1990 and its achievements were revision and reprinting of 95,000 primers, training of 1926 instructors, provision of instruction to 98,701 participants between 1992 and 1998. In terms of enrolment the national literacy campaign enroled, 73% women,

Figure 6-29

Highest enrolment figures in the national literacy campaign were recorded between 1996 and 1998. High levels of participation were recorded in rural areas because most of the efforts were directed at reaching rural women among whom levels of illiteracy were higher than any other group. The gender participation ratio was 1:2 in favour of women. Figure 6-11 shows the gender disparity in enrollments in literacy classes between men and women. More women were enrolled in literacy classes than men.

Participation of local government institutions in the provision of literacy was minimal and restricted to basic literacy. During the 1990- 1998 period few municipalities and city councils provided basic literacy. The capital city of Lusaka had a full time staff of 18 community development assistants who organised classes for literacy with enrolment of 2,000 participants who included both men and women.

Participation in the provision of literacy by NGOs and the private sector was limited but showed a trend to increased provision particularly in the second half of the decade. UNESCO sourced funding from the Korean Fund in Trust and the Arab Gulf Fund to carry out a needs assessment and produce instructional materials.

Table 6-29 Literacy Rates by sex and age group, (1990-1996)

Table 6-30 Literacy Rates by Provinces and age group, (1990-1996)

The data on literacy point to the following trends:

1. There were some gaps in literacy levels between males and females in certain provinces. Eastern province only registered a female literacy level of 34.7% The other provinces with low female literacy levels were North-western (43.5%), Western (49.3%) and Northern (49.9%)..
2. Literacy level in age group 15 –24 years was higher than in the entire adult population. It ranged between 47.8% in the Eastern province and 89.9% in Lusaka.
3. National literacy rates increased from 54.7% to 67.8%
4. Female literacy was higher in the age group 15 – 24 years and lower in the 25 and above age group.
5. Rural illiteracy was 50% of the rural population aged 15 years and above. This was an improvement over1990 levels of 62.1%.
6. Urban illiteracy of 16.9% in 1996 was a marked improvement above that of 1990 which was 31.5%. Thus illiteracy is more of a rural than urban problem and female than male problem.

Government funding to literacy increased minimally from K900,000 in 1990 to K1,000,000 in 1991 and then rose to K206,000,000 in 1997 . In 1997 it slumped to K100 million the level at which it has remained.

1. ECCED
2. The policy was not clear on who should do what in the area of ECCED in relation to monitoring standards and encouraging the establishment of ECCED centres The Ministry of Education did not have a structure to support the growth of ECCED

• The identified strategy of developing ECCED through communities did not identify an agency to effectively mobilize communities. The Ministry of Education aimed at providing professional resources by training teachers for pre-schools, developing curriculum materials, monitoring standards at pre-schools. and helping develop policy guidelines for early childhood education;

• The Ministry of Education however, only participated in training of teachers and inclusion of early childhood education in the Education Policy.

One major disadvantage was that little was done in letting children from disadvantaged groups gain access to pre-school education. Children from better off families benefited more.

Major developments made in advocacy for child survival care, protection and development were that the Department of Child Affairs in conjunction with Ministry of Health the Child-to-Child programme in schools and NGOs mounted national campaigns for the immunisation of children, and community sensitisation on the general health of children. These efforts have been frusted by high levels of child malnutrition and mortality.

The strategy in primary education centred on expansion of educational opportunities through decentralisation of the system of education and partnership in education provision. Some progress was made in the direction of decentralisation of the system through establishment of the Education Management Boards. This strategy is still being pursued as evident from the Ministry of Education’s policy on BESSIP. There has been significant development towards partnership in primary education provision, communities, for example, own and run their own schools. The number of schools owned by private individuals have increased since 1990.

Expansion in primary school places was however rather low. The average expansion in school places by 10,000 annually was far below the target of 120,000 school places per year.

The major observable achievements in primary education were:-

• General increase in access, extension of coverage to disadvantaged groups like girls and orphans, and reductions in the gap in education enrollments between children in rural and urban areas .

• Increase in the supply of teaching and learning materials particularly in schools located in urban and peri-urban areas.
• Opening of new schools and expansion of school infrastructure.
• General rehabilitation of school buildings throughout the country.
• Improvements in the provision of toilets, water and sanitation, and to a limited extent, supply of desks.
• Provision of full primary education in remote rural areas through multigrade teaching
• Articulation of affirmative policy on girl-child education as exemplified by programmes like PAGE and the advocacy activities of such NGOs as FAWEZA.
• Implementation of policy on children with special learning needs.
• Formulation of the Basic Education Sub Sector Investment Programme aimed at unversalising primary education by the year 2005 and achievement of nine years basic education by 2015.

The strategies that were adopted for adult literacy were:-

• Development of functional literacy programmes imparted through community-based programmes

• Use of adult literacy programmes as a basis for inculcating knowledge, skills and values.

These strategies were inadequate given the high levels of illiteracy especially among women. To address this inadequacy, the National Literacy campaign was adopted. This campaign lasted from 1991 to 1994.

The principle achievements were:-

• Increased production of learning and teaching materials, revision and production of new learning materials.

• Increase in training of literacy cadres

• High enrolment of female participants in the National Literacy Campaign.

• Development of a national curriculum for literacy.

Education for better living was not an isolated theme to be pursued separately. Though there were no goals and targets set in EFA for education for better living, government recognissed the importance of theatre, drama art, educational radio, television broadcasts, newspapers and magazines as channels for delivery of education for better living. In this regard, the government committed itself to improving the provision of facilities and resources.

In the first half of the decade, educational media did not play on effective role in the promotion of the EFA strategy, goals and programmes because EFA was not properly articulated within the context of media utilization in education. From 1996 some of goals related to EFA were achieved through television.

The key forms of communication (television, radio and drama) were effectively used to create public awareness on some of the problems that required nation wide attention (e.g. polio campaign, cholera campaign, anti AIDS and anti-measles). They were used as channels for communicating essential messages that would make the public aware.

The progress achieved in Education for Better Living was facilitated by the overall policy of liberalisation of both print and electronic. Main achievements were:-

• Increased utilisation of existing diverse channels of communication by individuals, government and NGOs for education and entertainment.

• A rise in access to radio, newspapers and television in both urban and rural areas. There was an increase in awareness of freedom of choice in sources of information.

7.5 Training for Essential Skills:

Notable achievements in this area were:

• Formulation of policies by participating ministries

• Establishment of TEVETA whose function will be to co-ordinate all skills training in the country. The new policy formulated by TEVETA aims at promoting entrepreneurship training relevant to the changing socio-economic order.

• The capacity of agencies such as the churches, and councils expected to spearhead ECCED was low. This low capacity manifested itself mostly in the lack of marginalised and disadvantaged children accessing pre-school education.

• Lack of EFA co-ordination after 1993 resulted in the difficulty of monitoring early childhood education activities.

• Inadequate funding to Curriculum Development Centre in particular, affected revision and production of materials for pre-school programmes.

• Inadequate funding to primary education in the public budget;

• High levels in poverty affected participation and ability to learn ;

• Negative impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic whose results were an increase in the numbers of orphans; rising mortality rates among teachers; low attendance among school children because of the demand of looking after sick parents/guardians;
• Impact of contextual or socio-economic problems such as drought, child malnutrition, mortality from malaria and poverty;

• Weak central capacity in planning and management of the educational system as evidenced by lack of up-to-date data.

• The Structural Adjustment Programme and debt-servicing which deprived the country of the funds to develop primary education.

• Low capacity among the literacy cadres to manage the National Literacy Campaign and other activities.

• Lack of co-ordination among providers

8.4 Training in Essential Skillls

• There was inadequate funding to most of the skills training centres

• Inadequate monitoring and evaluation of programmes in skills training especially those under NGOs.

• Insufficient data on skills training programmes

1. More partnership through involvement of communities, NGOs, the Private sector and individuals in educational provision;
2. National education campaigns for the education of girls through the Program for the Advancement of Girls’ Education (PAGE);
3. Increased utilisation of public and private media for raising public awareness to national problems like health epidemics and
4. Greater utilisation of research on critical problems relevant to EFA like the education of girls and other disadvantaged groups;
5. Improvements in access to basic education opportunities;
6. Visible reductions in gender and region disparities in basic education opportunities.