Education and Training in Ethiopia An Evaluation of Approaching EFA Goals

5 RESULTSEducation has been a development priority on the national agenda since the formation ofthe Transitional Government that was in power until 1995, when the Democratic FederalRepublic of Ethiopia was established. In 1994 the Government developed an Educationand Training Policy (ETP) and an Education Sector Strategy (Transitional Government ofEthiopia, 1994). Most of the Ethiopian population is still illiterate. According to theEthiopian Government and UNICEF statistics (FDRE & UNICEF, 2001), the illiteracy rate isapproximately 73 per cent for females and 50 per cent for males.The goals, strategies and programmes of Ethiopian educational policy are addressingthe problems of access, equity, quality and relevance in education. Education and traininghave particular significance for the reduction of poverty and for strategies of gender equitybecause they stress the dimensions of opportunities, skills, human resources developmentand empowerment. However, an emphasis on developing TVET and skills was introducedin Ethiopia only at the turn of the 21 st century.5.1 Indicators of the Education Sector Development ProgrammeThe Government of Ethiopia has sought to expand equitable access to primary educationand, to some extent, to vocational education in order to meet the needs of the country andthe economy. The objectives for the first phase of the ESDP have been (ESDP, 1998a):• increasing access to primary education by expanding enrolments from 3.1million to 7 million;• promoting equity by expanding schools in rural areas and increasing theproportion of female students from 38 to 45 per cent;• improving the quality of education by providing each child with a textbook ineach core subject, and by improving teacher training;• improving relevance by reforming the curricula;• increasing efficiency by reducing dropout and repetition rates; and• supporting educational financing by raising public spending to 19 per cent ofthe government budget, and encouraging private-sector and communityfinancing.This research report investigates the achievement of the ESDP objectives: increasingaccess, promoting equity (with focus on gender) and improving the quality and efficiency34