39153 Evaluation of the World Bank Assistance to Primary Education in Mali A Country Case Study Penelope Bender Abou Diarra Koffi Edoh Marc Ziegler Director-General, Independent Evaluation: Vinod Thomas Director, Independent Evaluation Group, World Bank: Ajay Chhibber Manager: Alain Barbu Task Manager: H. Dean Nielsen 2007 This paper is available upon request from IEG. The World Bank Washington, D.C. ENHANCING DEVELOPMENT EFFECTIVENESS THROUGH EXCELLENCE AND INDEPENDENCE IN EVALUATION The Independent Evaluation Group is an independent unit within the World Bank Group; it reports directly to the Bank's Board of Executive Directors. IEG assesses what works, and what does not; how a borrower plans to run and maintain a project; and the lasting contribution of the Bank to a country's overall development. The goals of evaluation are to learn from experience, to provide an objective basis for assessing the results of the Bank's work, and to provide accountability in the achievement of its objectives. It also improves Bank work by identifying and disseminating the lessons learned from experience and by framing recommendations drawn from evaluation findings. IEG Working Papers are an informal series to disseminate the findings of work in progress and to encourage the exchange of ideas about development effectiveness through evaluation. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply on the part of the World Bank any judgment of the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. ISBN-13: 978-1-60244-077-7 ISBN-10: 1-60244-077-8 Contact: Knowledge Programs and Evaluation Capacity Development Group (IEGKE) e-mail: eline@worldbank.org Telephone: 202-458-4497 Facsimile: 202-522-3125 http:/www.worldbank.org/ieg ii Case Study: Mali CURRENCY EQUIVALENTS Currency Unit=CFA Franc (CFAF) US$ 1= 531 CFAF (May 31, 2005) WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Metric System GoM FISCAL YEAR January 1-December 31 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS AE Education Academies Académies d'Enseignement AEEM Malian Student Association Assocation des élèves et étudiants du Mali AFD French Agency for Development Agence Française de Développement AfDB African Development Bank Banque Africaine de Développement APE Parents' Association Associations de Parents d'Elèves BPE Education Projects Office Bureau des projets éducation CAP Centers of Educational Support Centres d'Animation Pédagogique CGS School Management Committees Comités de Gestion Scolaire CIDA Canadian International Development Agence Canadienne pour le Agency Développement International CF French Cooperation Coopération Française CFAF CFA Franc Franc CFA CNEB Directorate for Basic Education Direction de l'Education de Base CNE National Education Center Centre National de l'Education DAF Administration and Finance Unit Div Administrative et Financière DRE Regional Directorates for Education Directions Régionales de l'Education EdSIP Education Sector Investment Program Programme d'Investissement Sectoriel (PISE) GER Gross Enrollment Rate Taux brut de scolarisation GIR Gross Intake Rate Taux brut d'admission GoM Government of Mali Gouvernment du Mali GTZ Gesellschaft für Tech. Zusammenarbeit Coopération Technique Allemande GRIP Grassroots Initiative Project Projet d'Assistance aux Initiatives de Base HIPC Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative Initiative pour alléger l'endettement des pays pauvres très endettés (PPTE) HDI Human Development Index Indicateurs du développement humain ICB International Competitive Bidding Appel d'Offres International IDA International Development Agency Agence Internationale de Développement IDB Islamic Development Bank Banque Islamique de Développement IEF Basic Education Inspectorate Inspections de l'enseignement fondamental IFM Teacher Training Institutes Instituts de Formation des Maîtres MEN Ministry of National Education Ministère de l'Enseignement Fondamental NCB National Competitive Bidding Appel d'Offres National NEF New Primary School Nouvelle Ecole Fondamentale NGO Non-Governmental Organization Organisation non-gouvernementale OPEC Org. of Pretroleum Exporting Countries Organisation des Pays Producteurs et Exportateurs de Pétrole PC Bilingual Education Pédagogie Convergente PCU Project Coordination Unit Unité de Coordination du Projet PISE Education Sector Investment Program Programme d'Investissement dans le Secteur de l'Education PRODEC Ten-year Education Devel. Program Programme Décennal pour le Déeloppement de l'Education PRSC Poverty Reduction Support Credits Crédit à l'appui de la réduction de la pauvreté iii Case Study: Mali PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Cadre stratégique de lutte contre la pauvreté SIDA Swedish Int'l Development Agency Agence Internationale de Coopération Suédoise UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific Organisation des Nations Unies pour and Cultural Organization l'Education, la Science et la Culture UNICEF UN Children's Fund Fonds des Nations Unies pour l'Enfance UNDP United Nations Development Program Programmes des Nations Unies pour le Développement USAID United States Agency for Int'l Dev't Agence des Etats-Unis pour le Développement International WPF World Food Program Programme Alimentaire Mondial v Case Study: Mali Table of Contents Page Preface vii Executive Summary ix 1. Introduction and Analytic Framework 1 2. Primary Education in the National Context 6 Recent economic, political and social developments affecting primary 6 education policies and programs National goals for primary education before and after 1990 9 3. Summary of recent changes in Mali's Education Sector, 1990-2005 10 Government policies and capacity related to primary education 10 Changes in critical components of primary education 14 Issues affecting the delivery of primary education 22 Household demand for education 24 Changes in primary education outputs and outcomes 25 4. World Bank support for expanding and improving primary education 27 5. Contribution from other donors to the education sector 31 6. World Bank's contribution 34 Contribution to changes in policies 34 Contribution to changes in capacity 35 Contribution to changes in services 35 Relevance and efficacy of Bank assistance 36 Efficiency and Sustainability of Changes Supported by the Bank 37 7. Lessons Learned 39 Bank support 39 The expansion of education: issues of quality and quantity 40 8. Conclusions 42 Development effectiveness of Bank support 42 Improving the effectiveness of future Bank support 43 9. References 45 Annexes 1. Timeline of events and development assistance 52 2. Inventory of development assistance from World Bank and other 56 3. Trends in public expenditure for education 59 4. Trends in major basic education development indicators 61 5. Schools Visited 65 6. People interviewed 66 7. Interview guidance for Malian and World Bank staff 69 8. School Level Data Collection 71 9. Classroom observations 73 10. Other country information 75 vii Case Study: Mali Preface From 1990, the year of the World Conference on Education for All (EFA), through mid-2005, the World Bank committed approximately $12.5 billion in support of the expansion and improvement of primary education in developing countries. By the early years of the current century support to primary education was nearly half of the Bank's lending portfolio in education. Sector studies and Bank strategies have emphasized the critical role of primary education --especially the basic knowledge and skills it provides. Expansion and improvement of primary education are often at the center of a country's poverty reduction efforts. In 2006, the Independent Evaluation Group issued From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda, which assessed the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance to improve countries' knowledge and skills base through the provision of quality primary education to all children, especially since 1990. The evaluation drew on many sources of information, including desk reviews of the portfolio of primary education lending and analytic work, in-depth project evaluations and country case studies. The country case studies assessed the overall cumulative support of the Bank (lending and non- lending) to primary education in the context of historical and concurrent factors that impinged upon and shaped them. In particular, they addressed three questions: (a) What changes have taken place in primary education service delivery and outcomes since 1990? (b) To what extent have Bank efforts (though lending and non-lending channels) contributed to those changes? and (c) To what extent would the changes have taken place in the absence of Bank support? The four case study countries ­ Mali, Pakistan, Peru, and Romania -- were selected based on their performance (strong or weak) in improving learning outcomes and their per capita income, from among those countries that had received at least US$100 million in support from the World Bank for primary education. Each case study was undertaken by a team of 4 members, 2 educator-researchers from outside the country and 2 from within. The studies were reviewed both by the headquarters evaluation team and by World Bank project and sector managers for the country. The Mali case study was based upon a two week mission to Mali in March 2005 and extensive interviews and research in Mali and Washington. The evaluation team consisted of Penelope Bender, Koffi Edoh, Marc Ziegler and Abou Diarra. The team would like to thank the Government of the Republic of Mali, members of civil society, school staff, students and community members for their willingness to discuss World Bank programs and education in their country more generally. The team also thanks the World Bank Resident Mission staff in Bamako for their technical and logistical assistance, and staff of other technical and financial partners for their willingness to share information and discuss the evolution of the Malian education sector. The story of World Bank assistance in Mali from 1990 to 2005 is marked by a tremendous increase in access to education and perhaps equally important missed opportunities in improving educational quality. The authors hope that lessons will be learned from this study that will create a renewed focus on improving student learning and consequently a focus on classroom-level support for students and teachers. The potential for this clearly exists: Mali stands out from other countries in the Sahel for its willingness to experiment with improved instructional policies, and has inspired attempts at reform in other parts of the West Africa region. ix Case Study: Mali EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Introduction This case study examines the impact of World Bank assistance to the education sector in Mali from 1990-2005. It also examines the ways in which government, donors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society have responded to the enormous challenges in the sector, and suggests a variety of ways in which the support from all actors, and particularly the Bank, can be improved. Malian children are among the poorest in the world. In 2001, 239 children per 1,000 died before reaching age five; 83% of children had anemia. Those children who make it to school are confronted with a system ill suited to their needs. There are not enough chairs, books, pencils or teachers, let alone more modern teaching materials. For most children, instruction is given in a language they scarcely understand. Not surprisingly, a very high percentage of children in the Malian school system fail. Repetition rates averaged 19% per year in 2002. The pass rate for the sixth grade primary school exam is about 50%; sixth grade students are frequently incapable of decoding even a single sentence in their textbooks. Significant investments over the past 30 years have improved the technical functioning of the sector. Services such as statistics, curriculum development, and in-service teacher education have clearly improved, and there is a healthy policy dialogue about substantive issues such as teacher hiring, public-private partnerships for service delivery, the use of national languages, curriculum reform, and textbook policy. However, the basic story of Malian education over the past thirty years is the triumph of form over function, of expansion over quality, of inertia over reform. Neither the Government of Mali (GoM) nor the donors active in the sector have succeeded in bringing either access or achievement to acceptable levels. The World Bank was very active in Mali during this time, approving a total of 78 IDA credits. Assistance to education was continuous and provided through three distinct approaches: (i) financial assistance, including structural adjustment credits, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country trust fund (HIPC), and Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSC); (ii) education policy initiatives ranging from home-grown policies such as ruralization, the "New Primary School" program (Nouvelle Ecole Fondamentale (NEF)), and the Ten-Year Education Development Program (Programme Décennal de l'Education (PRODEC)) to international initiatives such as Education For All (EFA); and (iii) direct investment in discrete elements such as teachers, curriculum, infrastructure and textbooks. 2. Case Study Organization The study team reviewed progress in quantitative expansion, educational outcomes and equity (regional, rural/urban, economic and gender). Data on student achievement were limited, as were data on links between schooling and other outcomes such as employment, fertility, and productivity. These are cited and discussed where possible. The team attempted to contact all World Bank staff involved with the Malian education sector since 1990, as well as all Ministers of Education and Ministers from other critical ministries (primarily Finance and Planning) from the same time period. The team met with at least one central-level representative from all critical technical areas, such as textbooks, teacher education x Case Study: Mali and school construction, and with numerous staff at all decentralized levels. Donor and NGO interview lists were constructed based on interventions during the case study time period. The team also met with members of Parliament, parents' organization representatives, a former leader of the student union movement, other union leaders, and leaders of private school organizations. The case study team visited eighteen schools. 3. World Bank Support for Expanding and Improving Primary Education Early World Bank support. World Bank lending to the education sector in Mali started in 1973 with support for nonformal education. The Third Education Project in 1984 provided support for the first time to formal education through teacher education for primary school teachers, along with support for non-formal adult programs. The implementation of the Third Education Project occurred in a difficult economic context (see Section 2), with the country undergoing a series of adjustment and stabilization programs. These programs dominated Bank assistance to Mali in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The conditionalities these programs contained still affect the education sector and are still negatively perceived by Malians. One of the most disliked measures was the "voluntary departure program," through which about 1,000 teachers left the sector, representing about 12.5% of the teaching force. World Bank Support from 1990 to 2005. World Bank assistance to the education sector during this period included policy dialogue, analytic work, lending, technical assistance and capacity building. The Country Assistance Strategies (CAS) of 1994, 1998, and 2003 cite education as a key poverty alleviation strategy, and there was continued emphasis on policy dialogue and funding for the sector during this time. The fourth education project (Education Sector Consolidation Project, US$25 million) opened in 1989, followed in 1995 by the Education Sector Adjustment Project (ESAP, US$50 million), 1995), in 2000 by the Learning and Innovation Loan (LIL, US$3.8 million), and in 2001 by the Education Sector Investment Program (EdSIP, US$45 million). The Education Sector Consolidation Project consisted of an adjustment component of US$3 million and an investment component of US$22 million. The investment component aimed at increasing primary enrollment in three regions and improving quality nationwide. Enrollment targets were met and classroom construction exceeded targets, but the adjustment component was unsuccessful and two-thirds of the adjustment funding was cancelled. The Education Sector Adjustment Project (ESAP) was a repackaging of the adjustment conditions set forth in the Education Sector Consolidation Project (ESCP). It achieved most of its objectives. Sustainability seemed likely for the less controversial reforms, but a few, including the ceiling on scholarship expenditures, were reversed prior to the credit closing date. Concurrently with the implementation of these latter projects, the GoM, with Bank assistance, was preparing its ten-year education strategy. During program preparation, the Improving Learning in Primary Schools Learning and Innovation Loan (LIL) was approved. Under this project, the number of pédagogie convergente (bilingual) classrooms increased from 300 to 2,056. In 2001, the Education Sector Investment Program (EdSIP) launched with the support of the Bank and 15 other donors and a total cost of over US$0.5 billion (IDA financing US$45 million). xi Case Study: Mali Activities included: (i) increasing the gross enrollment rate (GER) from 56 percent in 1999-2000 to 70 percent by 2003-04 through school construction, pre-service teacher education and increasing the involvement of communities and the private sector in school financing and management; (ii) improving educational quality by expanding pédagogie convergente, increasing expenditure on textbooks and other learning materials, and decentralization of personnel and budget management; and (iii) making the education system more cost-effective by hiring public school teachers outside the civil service to reduce wage costs, and redirecting scholarship resources for secondary students towards activities that would improve learning conditions at the secondary school level. The EdSIP started slowly. In March 2004, disbursement was only 45% and the credit's closing date was extended from December 2004 to December 2005. HIPC and PRSP. The Bank's support to the education sector in Mali continued with collaboration of the education and economic teams on the HIPC and PRSP initiatives. Mali became eligible for HIPC in 1999 due to its external debt burden1, its vulnerability to external shocks, and its good track record of adjustment. The preparation of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) began in 1998. The PRSP was to be Mali's medium-term framework for poverty reduction policies and strategies. Human development, including education, was one of three priority areas. The PRSP is partially financed by HIPC funds, which totaled an estimated CFAF 75 billion in 2002-2004. Forty-five percent of this amount was allocated to education and adult literacy. 4. Contributions from other donors to the education sector Many other donors have been involved in Mali's educational system over the past 15 years, including through co-financing World Bank-led projects. A range of national and international NGOs have also contributed to sector development, either with their own resources or as implementing agencies for donor programs. Save the Children (USA and UK), Care International, World Vision, World Education and Plan International are the largest NGOs working in Mali. Many smaller NGOs have supported the sector: Santé Sud has built community schools, Paul Gérin Lajoie has supported school management committees, Action Mopti works with schools, and the Groupement des Retraités Educateurs sans Frontières conducts teacher education. EdSIP. EdSIP, linked to the country's ten year education development plan (PRODEC), marked a new beginning for coordinated donor financing. Most donors participate today, making donor participation far more coherent and reducing the administrative burden on GoM. Because the EdSIP is sufficiently descriptive and includes a clear list of short-term activities, donors can now better direct their support. The program has improved Ministry of Education leadership, although it has not resulted in uniform implementation procedures. 5. The World Bank's contribution In a context where partners had unequal power, it is difficult to separate Bank policy from Malian policy. In some areas (higher education reforms), the Bank influence was so strong that the GoM agreed to policy reforms despite a lack of institutional commitment to carrying them 1In 1998 the Net Present Value (NPV) of the debt was 1.325 million USD, equivalent to 221 percent of export (IMF and IDA, 1998). xii Case Study: Mali out. Indeed the GoM need for funding was so great that it often complied with reforms until finances were released and then rescinded them. The Bank often guided policy development through the offering and withholding of resources along with continuous policy advice. The adjustment projects stressed increasing resources for the education sector, and especially for basic education. The Bank took the lead among donors in policy dialogue with the GoM, raising issues such as scholarships, enrollment in upper secondary and higher education, and budget increases and reallocations. Education's current budget as a percentage of the national current budget rose from 20% in 1991 to 30% in 2005 (MEN, 2005) and the budget for basic education as a percentage of the education budget rose from 36% in 1993 to 65% in 2004 (MEN, 2005). To improve educational quality, the Bank supported teacher education (pre-service and professional development), textbooks, and, since 2000, the expansion of pédagogie convergente. The Bank has also been a consistent supporter of gender equity in access to education, and of decentralization. The case study mission found evidence to suggest that the education sector has been in the forefront of decentralization in Mali. The Bank has supported a variety of capacity building activities since 1990, including training in school mapping, information and communications technology, procurement, budgeting, the use of software for educational planning and modeling, and a variety of technical areas such as curriculum and textbook development. However, capacity as measured by impact on the sector continues to be low. From 1990 until 1998, Bank-financed projects were implemented by the Bureau des projets éducation (BPE), an independent unit housed in the MEN and staffed with civil servants relieved from their usual responsibilities. The dismantling of the BPE in 2001 forced the administration to be more involved in policy dialogue and program implementation. 6. Efficiency and sustainability of changes supported by the Bank. Bank support had a strong effect on Mali's GER, which increased from 26% in 1990 to 71% in 2004. The most important activities were the: (i) creation of the FAEF (Basic Education Support Fund, Cr. 2054); (ii) introduction of double shift teaching; (iii) redeployment of teachers from administrative positions to classroom teaching positions; and (iv) emphasis on the recruitment of contract teachers. In addition, the Bank's leadership of policy dialogue in the mid 1990s encouraged new donors to contribute to the sector. Prior to the beginning of PRODEC, the Bank was minimally involved in educational quality issues, other than its emphasis on resources for teaching and learning materials and the recruitment of pedagogic advisors. Since1998, the Bank has contributed to improving educational quality by (i) financing textbooks, (ii) recruiting pedagogic advisors from among experienced teachers, (iii) supporting curriculum reform and associated teacher professional development, and (iv) supporting the expansion of the bilingual education reform. The Bank's interventions have not been effective at improving classroom-level conditions or student learning. Investments were made in very relevant areas (textbooks, teacher education, school health), but procurement delays and the focus on the central level rather than the service delivery level have kept these investments from having a substantial impact. The efficacy of Bank support was also lessened by contradictions in policy recommendations and project- financed activities. Structural adjustment measures reduced the number of teachers in the sector. Recruitment of contract teachers was poorly organized and their training was scarcely supported by the Bank. The Bank advised the GoM to introduce double shift teaching, which permitted rapid increases in enrollment but decreased instructional time per student, which is a major factor xiii Case Study: Mali in student achievement. In the early 1990s, the Bank pressed the GoM to limit access to teacher education to high school graduates, but the reluctance of graduates to enter teaching resulted in the near closure of the teacher education program. The GoM recruited contract teachers with little pre-service teacher education and struggled without Bank support to provide them with short-term training. This decreased salary expenditures, but had a major negative impact on educational quality. Lastly, the use of national languages as a medium of instruction was supported by the World Bank in the mid-70s and then dropped until 2000. Similarly, pre-service teacher education, initially supported heavily by the Bank, went through a long period of neglect and hostility that resulted in the closing of much of the country's pre-service teacher education program. Only under the EdSIP did the Bank begin to rethink its decisive earlier move away from pre-service teacher education; no significant reform has yet occurred. The education system will be dependent on donor aid for the long term. This has been exacerbated by the decision in the 1970s by the GoM and World Bank to shift away from low cost nonformal education programs and, since the 1990s, to move towards high tech programs, such computerized operations at all administrative levels, planned "technology centers" in teacher education institutions, and other costly programs. The functioning of some services within the Ministry has improved as a result of such investments, but none of it will be sustainable without further external support. The counterfactual is impossible to know fully. If the Bank had not provided resources, the economy could have collapsed, resulting in violence and chaos. However, the adjustment program had a very negative and pervasive effect on the opinions of Malians towards the Bank. Based on the results of the case study, the most useful question at this point in the development of the sector is "how can the Bank make better choices and provide better support?" 7. Lessons Learned The story of the World Bank's support to the Malian education sector over the past fifteen years is a cautionary tale about the fragility of policy dialogue. It underscores how challenging it is to establish and sustain a partnership whose members are unequal in strength and change frequently. In addition to a number of country-specific lessons, the Mali experience highlights the need for evidence-based dialogue that incorporates country perspectives while maintaining core principles about the importance of educational quality, equity, and access. Country-specific policy dialogue in education must receive sustained attention from World Bank sector managers, country directors, and regional management. During the case study period, the Bank was too often dismissive of flawed but promising reform initiatives championed by GoM that could have been the beginning of country-led systemic change, and failed to provide a consistent evidence-based argument for its own recommended program of reform. The Bank also appeared indifferent to fundamentally important programs of other donor partners, including most notably, the NGO-managed community schools program which was the cornerstone of USAID support through the late 90's and early 00's. Donor coordination. Ultimately, donor coordination may be less important than donor coherence. Over the past ten years, donors in Mali have taken advantage of frequent consultations and dialogue to improve the coherence of their interventions. While harmonization of procedures has proven elusive, the increased cooperation among donors has led to a far greater sense of shared purpose and goals among donors and government. xiv Case Study: Mali Quality at exit. Much is made of the importance of project design ("quality at entry"). Similar attention must be given to quality at exit. As projects or programs come to an end, how will policy dialogue be continued? How can children be made less vulnerable to changing priorities? For example, when USAID pulled back from its community school intervention, an absolutely critical program of support in largely rural areas of the country over the past decade, there had been little discussion among the donors, including the World Bank, about how to mitigate the potential negative impact among the most marginalized children in the education system. Participation and ownership. The approach used by the Bank and other donors while preparing the EdSIP significantly contributed to the development of Mali's capacity in policy design. Malians developed the ten-year education policy largely by themselves, with external funding. The process ended with the presentation and defense of the program to the National Assembly, which was a learning and legitimizing experience for the sector. 8. Conclusions The Bank has been a major contributor to educational finance and policy change since 1990. Without the Bank's involvement, system expansion would not have occurred as rapidly as it did, and educational policy may have remained incoherent and based on disparate, donor-driven interventions. Nevertheless, the quality of Bank intervention has been inconsistent and has also had negative effects. The Bank has generally been unsuccessful in leveraging its lending program into direct impact on student experiences at the classroom level. Bank support to Mali's educational sector would be enhanced by, inter alia: a more careful choice of approaches, based on strong in-country and regional analytic work, the application of findings of recent, peer-reviewed education literature and successful programs in similar settings; the use of impact analysis; and achievement-focused incentive systems for teachers, technicians and administrators In addition, in the medium term, an authentically two-way policy dialogue, the widespread adoption of policy initiatives such as the bilingual education program, and a significant increase in resource availability at the classroom level are the only avenues likely to lead to significant change in the Malian educational context. 1 Case Study: Mali 1. INTRODUCTION AND ANALYTIC FRAMEWORK Background Malian children are among the poorest in the world. In 2004, their country ranked 174th of 177 on UNDP's Human Development Index (UNDP, 2004). Ninety-one percent of Malians lived on under $2 per day, even though economic growth averaged 5% between 1994 and 2002 (UNDP, 2004; World Bank, 2003). Poverty takes a terrible toll on the youngest. In 2001, 239 Malian children per 1,000 died before reaching age five. In the same year, 38% of children under five were stunted in height, 33% were underweight and 83% had anemia. Only 31% of children under two received the standard package of childhood vaccinations (all data from World Bank, 2001). Child labor is another constraint to school enrollment. With 70-80% of the population living in rural areas and dependent on agriculture (World Bank, 2003), children's labor is valuable. Allowing children time off to attend school carries high opportunity costs, in addition to the direct costs charged by many schools. Opportunity costs are higher in most parts of the country for girls, resulting in wide gender disparities in enrollment. Even in families that do participate in schooling, some children may be excluded as parents allocate scarce resources and make choices among their children to maximize family-level economic and social benefits (interview data, 2005). A fourth constraint is that most children have parents who attended school only briefly, if at all. The 2004 UNDP Human Development Report found that only 19% of all Malians aged 15 and above were literate, and only 12% of women (UNDP, 2004). As parental, especially maternal, levels of education are highly correlated with children's school enrollment and persistence, the legacy of illiteracy and low achievement persists across generations. Malian children who do reach school age and are enrolled are confronted with a system that lacks all of the basic elements of modern schooling. There are not enough chairs to seat them, books for them to read, pencils for them to use, or teachers to teach them (Ministry of National Education, (MEN) 2005). Other learning materials are close to nonexistent, parents rarely interact with teachers, and, perhaps most importantly, almost all instruction is in a language that children scarcely understand (case study data, 2005). In the United States and other developed countries, children who enter school with the health, poverty and linguistic background of Malian students would receive a variety of supplemental support services. In Mali, these children are all the children. Mali supplies no support services, and almost all the children fail. Although the system expanded tremendously between 1990 and 2005, the period covered by this case study, the gross intake rate (GIR) into first grade was only 64 in 2003 (MEN, 2005). Repetition rates averaged 19% per year in 2002 (MEN, 2005). Mali does not have a system for monitoring student achievement, but the pass rate for the sixth grade primary school exam was just over 50% in 2000, the last year for which national data are available (MEN, 2005). Anecdotal evidence (interviews conducted during the case study) shows that many sixth graders are incapable of decoding single sentences in their textbooks (case study data, 2005). Mali's postcolonial history has also been a factor in sector development. Mali became independent from France in 1960. In 1971, the GER was 20% (World Bank, 1973). There were 1,730 students enrolled in higher education in the entire country (World Bank 1973). When the World Bank began investing in the sector in 2 Case Study: Mali 1973, the Ministry of Education was so lacking in personnel that the Bank suggested the government hire recent university graduates to fill posts and request on-the-job training for them from the International Labor Organization (ILO) (World Bank, 1973). On the positive side, there has been considerable investment in the sector over the past 30 years. The Government of Mali (GoM) and a large group of donors have devoted considerable resources to the education sector over the past 10 years. Many of the system's technical services, such as statistics, curriculum development and in-service teacher education are operating more effectively than in the past. Administrative decentralization has increased the proximity of education administrators and supervisors to schools. Policy dialogue has expanded as well, with debates on teacher hiring, use of national languages, curriculum reform and textbook policy. However, the basic story of Malian education over the past thirty years is of the expansion of a system focused more on form than on function; that is, more on maintaining appearances than on improving substance. For the vast majority of students, the system has not changed in any significant way. The 1973 Staff Appraisal report said: "The instruction is theoretical and divided into the traditional long list of unintegrated subjects. This curriculum . . . using a medium unfamiliar to the majority of rural students, is largely responsible for the poor internal efficiency of the system. The teachers, themselves the product of 11 years of blackboard and oral education, prove a major barrier to the adaptation of the curriculum . . ." (World Bank, 1973, p.38). In 2005, the curriculum remains similar (for almost all students), most students are still taught in a language they scarcely understand, and most teachers still use methods based on copying and memorization. Dismal exam pass rates and the few other student achievement indicators for which data exist show that neither the GoM nor the donors active in the sector have succeeded in bringing student achievement to an acceptable level, nor in increasing access to anywhere near 100%. This case study explores the ways in which a variety of donors, parents, local associations and the GoM have responded to these challenges, and attempts to develop lessons for future policy and program change. Case Study Time Period The study covers the period 1990-2005, corresponding with Mali's years of transition from a military government to democracy. During this period, the country saw a violent overthrow of a dictatorship, the appointment of a President, elections and then a second round of elections, culminating in the peaceful transfer of power between two opposing parties. At the same time, educational policy shifted from restricting access to formal education (World Bank, 1973) to a push for Education For All (EFA). The system started to decentralize as parents, community members and elected delegates slowly began to demand an increased voice in school oversight. International pressure for educational equity opened more doors for girls, rural students and the very poor. Bank Assistance to the Education Sector The World Bank was very active in Mali during this time, with a total of 78 approved IDA credits. Assistance to education was continuous, and included adjustment, lending for sector operations and substantial technical and policy assistance. The story of Bank assistance to the sector consists of three parts: i) financial assistance beginning with a series of structural adjustment credits, followed by the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) 3 Case Study: Mali initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and now the upcoming Poverty Reduction Strategy Credits (PRSC); ii) education policy initiatives stemming from the Bank, the international community and Mali [Bank strategy documents, Jomtien and Education For All (EFA), the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), and Mali's series of policy initiatives, including ruralization, the "New Primary School" program (Nouvelle Ecole Fondamentale, NEF), and the Ten-Year Education Development Program (Programme Décennal de l'Education, PRODEC) and post-PRODEC sector investment programs (SIP); and iii) direct investment in the components of the education system such as teachers, curriculum, infrastructure and textbooks. Each of the parts has shaped the others, including economic measures to deliver more government resources to the sector and improve resource use, policy reform and direct donor investment designed to increase access, equity and quality. Education was a central part of Mali's Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), and related conflict with student and teacher unions resulted in violence, system-wide strikes and, in some cases, long-lasting enmity towards the Bank (interview data, 2005). Underlying these conflicts were the tensions inherent in donor and GoM attempts to modernize an educational system operating in an extremely resource-poor environment. The first Bank-financed education project in Mali supported attempts to "identify, explore and develop economically viable alternatives to the present system (World Bank, 1973)." This initiative was aimed at those not being served by the existing system, and was intended to pilot non-formal education approaches for the region and make the system affordable (with domestic resources) and relevant to the immediate needs of Malians This attempt failed for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the country, the region (and post-colonial countries around the world), and donors changed course and began to pursue a variant of a modern, formal education system, with conventional inputs (concrete classrooms, imported textbooks, civil service teachers), that could only be financed on a large scale with considerable external resources. Even in 1973, when the enrollment rate was very low, "almost all capital expenditures in the sector [were] underwritten by external sources (World Bank, 1973)." In choosing to go the conventional "schooling for all" route, government managers locked the country into a long period of dependency on donor assistance. Case Study Organization This case study is part of the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation of Bank assistance to primary education. The evaluation aims to improve the design and effectiveness of current and future Bank policies and programs. The study focuses on changes in access, equity and educational quality since the beginning of the Education for All (EFA) movement in 1990. Four countries were chosen by IEG for in-depth evaluation: Mali, Pakistan, Peru and Romania. The case studies review all types of Bank assistance: policy dialogue, technical assistance and capacity building, debt reduction, adjustment lending and investment lending. The effect of these interventions is evaluated relative to their impact on primary school access and learning outcomes, and in light of the countries' educational goals, policies and EFA plans; and economic, political and social conditions. The effectiveness of Bank assistance is also assessed by considering the counterfactual (what might have happened in the absence of Bank support). The case studies cover the period 1990-2005, although this Mali study includes some discussion of earlier events in order to frame national context and policy change. Similarly, although the study focuses on Bank impact on grades 1-6, called the first cycle of basic education in Mali, it includes discussion of events at higher levels of the system, as they have affected the early grades. 4 Case Study: Mali In order to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of Bank assistance, the study team considered progress in quantitative expansion (enrollment and completion rates), educational outcomes, and equity (regional, rural/urban, economic and gender). Although the terms of reference stressed a wider evaluation of educational outcomes, data collection in general, and data collection on student achievement in particular, is in its infancy in Mali. Data on links between schooling and other outcomes such as employment, fertility and productivity were similarly limited, but are cited and discussed where possible. The study attempts to answer the following questions: 1) What changes have taken place in Mali's education sector since 1990? 2) What has been the Bank's strategy in Mali in relation to primary education and what assistance has it provided? Were they relevant to country needs? 3) What other development agencies have been active in support of primary education during the period, what have their strategies been, and what have they financed? 4) To what extent have Bank efforts contributed to changes in the educational sector? 5) How efficient has Bank support been (have the changes been commensurate with the amount of money invested)? 6) How sustainable are the changes affected by the Bank? 7) To what extent would the changes have taken place in the absence of Bank support? 8) How have the changes in policy, institutional capacity, delivery of services, household demand, and outputs/outcomes been driven/influenced by changes in the wider political context? 9) What are the main features of the political processes of policy and program formulation? 10) What were the main challenges and obstacles to the implementation of programs for improving access and outcomes of primary education? Data Collection Data were collected from the following sources: (i) World Bank, GoM and other documents and reports; (ii) interviews with GoM officials, technicians and teachers; (iii) interviews with members of Malian civil society; (iv) interviews with staff of Malian nongovernmental organizations (NGO); (v) interviews with representatives of other donors; (vi) interviews with Bank staff; and (vii) classroom observations. In order to protect interviewees' identity, individuals and offices are generally not named. As there are few women working in the MEN, all pronouns are masculine, again to guard against any negative consequences of cooperating with the case study team. It must be noted that data quality in Mali varies depending on source and is often poor. 5 Case Study: Mali In selecting interviewees, the team attempted to contact all World Bank staff members who had been involved with projects in the Malian education sector since 1990. In Mali, the team attempted to contact all Ministers of Education and Ministers from other critical ministries (primarily Finance and Planning) from the same time period. The team also met with at least one central-level representative from all critical technical areas, such as textbooks, teacher education and school construction, and also with staff at all decentralized levels. Donor and NGO interview lists were constructed based on interventions during the case study time period. The team also met with members of Parliament, parents' organization representatives, a former leader of the student union movement, other union leaders and leaders of private school organizations. See Annexes 6-10 for lists of documents and interviewees, and for samples of data collection instruments. The case study team visited a total of eighteen schools. Schools were chosen on the basis of geographical, cultural and enrollment diversity. Schools in the north (8), the capital (4) and the south (6) were included, as were teacher education institutions in the north and south. School visits were conducted to observe classroom- level changes in essential inputs such as curriculum, teacher education, textbooks and construction. Interviews with parents and school officials in these areas also allowed the study team to better understand the geographic, economic and cultural parameters of educational demand. Urban, peri-urban and rural schools were visited, including a number of schools "off the paved road," which frequently is a demarcation of privilege in Mali. Organization of the Report · Section 1: Case study objectives, methods and overview. · Section 2: The Malian context, including economic, political and social developments which have affected education sector policies and programs and Malian education sector goals before and after 1990 and the advent of the EFA movement. · Section 3: Recent changes in primary education in Mali, including changes in GoM policies and capacity, changes in the delivery of education, and primary education outputs and outcomes. Some discussion of household demand is included here, but data were very limited. · Section 4: World Bank support for expanding and improving primary education. · Section 5: Other donor support for expanding and improving primary education. · Section 6: The relative impact of World Bank contributions to changes in the areas discussed in Section 3. The relevance and efficacy (impact) of Bank assistance and the efficiency and sustainability of changes supported by the Bank. The counterfactual (i.e. would changes have occurred in absence of Bank support?). · Section 7: Lessons learned. · Section 8: Conclusions. The development effectiveness of Bank support and ways to improve that effectiveness in the future. Implications of the Bank's experience in Mali for other countries, especially other countries in the Region and the Sahel. 6 Case Study: Mali The report concludes with a set of annexes, intended to give the reader many of Mali's key education indicators, as well as information about the sources that were consulted during the writing of this report. 2. PRIMARY EDUCATION IN THE NATIONAL CONTEXT Recent economic, political and social developments affecting primary education policies and programs Economic developments prior to 1990. In 1960 the first President of Mali, Modibo Keita was elected. He developed close ties with the Soviet Union and China and immediately instituted (i) universal scholarships at the tertiary level; (ii) massive civil service recruitment; and (iii) a restructuring of the agricultural sector based on cooperatives (CAD, 2002). These policies did not produce economic growth, making it impossible to implement development plans (CAD, 2002). In 1968, General Moussa Traoré came to power through a coup d'état. He gradually began to liberalize Mali's economy (CAD, 2002), but achieved only limited results. The 1970s and early 1980s were characterized by poor management of national resources, which, coupled with an increase in fuel prices and a drop in export earnings, created serious macroeconomic disequilibria. The intense droughts of 1973-1974, followed by those of 1983-1984 and 1987-1988, seriously affected agricultural output (World Bank, 1994). This caused a humanitarian catastrophe and had serious economic consequences. In 1982, Mali became unable to pay its foreign debt or its wage bill. The national debt increased from US$ 356 million in 1975 to US$ 1.5 billion in 1985. Debt servicing rose from US$ 5 million to US$ 55 million during the same period. In 1982, the GoM launched a structural adjustment program to improve conditions for economic growth and restore macroeconomic equilibrium. The program included measures related to the development of a market economy and aimed to reduce budget deficits, wastage in public enterprises and the size of the administration (World Bank, 1996). Progress slowed in 1986 but accelerated again in 1988 through further macroeconomic measures and reforms in a variety of sectors, including transport, agriculture, education and health (World Bank, 1996). From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. Between 1988 and 1993, economic indicators improved. The annual inflation rate remained below 3%, the fiscal deficit dropped from 10.5% to 9.6 %, and the external account deficit (excluding official transfer) dropped from 14.4% in 1989 to 12.9% in 1993. The economic growth rate averaged 3%, but was still below the population growth rate of 3.1% (World Bank, 1996). Despite these improvements, Mali's economy remained very fragile. The cotton sector suffered a serious crisis as a result of the 30% drop in cotton prices in the world market between 1990 and 1992 and a resulting drop in GDP per capita from US$403 in 1991 to US$362 in 1992. During this period, public recurrent expenditures on personnel dropped, from 71.8% of the sector's recurrent budget in 1987 to 63.1% in 1992 (World Bank, 1995). The management of public finances improved: GoM revenue rose from CFAF 96.3 billion in 1991 to CFAF 384.3 billion in 2003. Project and budget aid increased from CFAF 61.4 billion in 1991 to CFAF 112.4 billion in 2003 (Minister of Finance, 2005). 7 Case Study: Mali From the mid 1990s to 2005. Since the devaluation of the CFAF in 1994, Mali's economy has grown at an average annual rate of 5%. However, due to unpredictable, adverse climate conditions and fluctuating global commodity prices, the agriculturally based economy is vulnerable (Ministry of Finance, 2005 and World Bank 1996). In this context, Mali cannot finance its national budget. External funds needed to finance recurrent public expenditures increased from 88.2 billion CFAF in 1991 to 129.6 billion CFAF in 2003. The impact of economic developments on the education sector. In the beginning of 1982, and especially from 19987- 1991, structural adjustment measures caused a decrease of recurrent expenditures in education and health sectors. Mali changes of recurrent expenditures (Education and health) 25 tntasnoc 20 15 FAFCno Education 10 Health illib 5 0 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 years Source: GoM records In 2002, the PRSP was approved and Mali began to receive funds from the HIPC initiative. Mali received CFAF 2.6 billion of debt relief in 2000, 23.1 billion in 2001, 27.5 billion in 2002 and 30.1 billion in 2003 (Ministries of Finance and Economics). The PRSP prioritized the development of human resources and policy measures were coherent with reforms in the social sectors. Forty-two percent of HIPC funds were allocated to the education sector from 2000 to 2005. Annual debt relief for 2004 and 2005 is estimated at 30.1 billion CFAF and 29.6 billion CFAF, with 30.3 billion (for both years) going to education, amounting to about 16.5% of the total education budget. Currently, more than 30% of annual education expenditures is financed by donors. Political Developments Prior to 1991, Mali was a one-party state, aligned with the Soviet Union and China. The government tightly controlled economic and public life, including educational administration. During the early 1980s, the economic decline discussed above began to affect the regime's ability to govern. There were delays in civil service salary payments and economic control hampered private initiatives. Soviet financing and financing provided by Western countries to counteract Soviet influence kept the country running (Médard, 1992). When the Soviet bloc crumbled in 1989-1990, Soviet assistance ended. The urban middle class, which had used its positions in the GoM and public enterprises to accumulate wealth in the preceding years, experienced big income losses (Médard, 1992). 8 Case Study: Mali Unrest began in earnest in 1991. In March of that year, the Malian Student Association (Association of Malian students, AEEM) and the Malian Workers' Union (Union national des travailleurs maliens, UNTM), aided by the Malian Human Rights Association (Association des maliens pour les droits de l'homme, AMDH) forced the collapse of the long-standing Traoré regime. Later that month, General Amani Toumani Touré seized power through a coup and supervised elections. In 1992, Alpha Oumar Konaré, a former teacher, became the first democratically elected president of Mali. The years 1991-1994 were characterized by strong social protests, led by the AEEM, and rebellion by the Touareg ethnic group in the northern part of the country. AEEM leaders demanded increases in student scholarships from 1992-94, calling violent strikes that closed the school system for months at a time and caused the 1994 school year to be cancelled. At the same time, teachers, who made up about fifty percent of civil servants, pressured the GoM for increased financial benefits. In 1994, a peace accord was signed between the GoM and Touareg leaders. From 1994 to 2002, the number of political parties gradually increased. Measures to reduce expenditures on secondary and higher education were gradually implemented, although student opposition and periodic violent strikes continued, occasionally closing the system. In 1997, President Konaré was elected to a second five-year term. From 1997 to 2002, Malian political life was characterized by slow administrative decentralization, the participation of opposition parties in local and national elections and the decreasing but still considerable influence of the AEEM and teachers' unions. Irregular payment of stipends and scholarships, deteriorating teaching conditions and dormitories, and growing student enrollment (from 13,847 in 1998 to more than 37,000 in 2003) increased student unrest. In 2002, Mali elected its first president from the opposition, another step in its democratic transition. In May 2004, a second round of local elections was held and 63% of seats went to new candidates. Social Developments Mali is one of the world's poorest countries. In 2004, it ranked 174 of 177 countries on the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI) (UNDP, 2004). GNI per capita generally decreased over the case study period, from US$270 in 1990, to US$250 in 1995, US$230 in 2000 and 240 in 2002 (UNESCO, 2002). Social indicators have improved somewhat over the case study period, but are still far below developing country averages. Indicator\Year 1990 1995 2000 2002 ADC* Infant mortality 140 131 124 122 61 Life expectancy 45 44 42 41 65 Fertility rate 7 7 6 6 2.9 *All developing countries average, most recent. Source: UNESCO database, UNDP 2004. Great disparities exist between regions, between rural and urban areas and between male and female citizens. Using national definitions, 64% of the population was poor in 1998, ranging from 29% in Bamako to 62% in Kayes in eastern Mali, and 93% in Kidal in the far north. 9 Case Study: Mali Effects of poverty on education The drop in income in most households and generalized food shortages in the desert regions of Gao and Kidal and the Sahel regions of Mopti and Ségou make it difficult to send children to school (interview data, Mopti, 2005). Children are forced to work or look for food. In addition, malnutrition, which affects 27% of children in Mali (UNDP, 2001), directly affects educational participation (World Bank, 1996). The high dropout rates (8% in 2000 during a time of economic crisis versus 3.5% in 2004 (World Bank, 2002 and MEN, 2004)), illustrate the difficulties that parents, especially the poorest, have in financing education. The first signs of academic failure (poor results, repeating a grade) cause parents to withdraw their children from school. Only a steady rise in household income will increase the stability of school enrollment (interview data, 2005). (See Annex 11A for information on poverty incidence by region.) National goals for primary education before and after 1990 Prior to 1990 At independence, the GoM hoped to provide universal access to education. Four attempts at reform (1962, 1964, 1978 and 1989) stressed expansion of access and the improvement of quality (Diarra, 2005). The country was particularly focused on the expansion of the nonformal system, which was an early priority of the World Bank as well (World Bank, 1973). Mali also committed itself to the goals of the global literacy program in 1968 -1978. However, the fiscal and political constraints discussed above limited the ability of the GoM to design or implement reform. Post 1990 In 1991, after the fall of Moussa Traoré, Mali held a new round of policy forums: a round table on basic education and another National Education Forum. The conclusions of these forums included the recommendations of the Jomtien World Conference, at which the EFA declaration was signed. This became a turning point for Malian education: a decision was taken to abandon the dual approach of selective formal education for some children and less expensive nonformal approaches for most children, and to move ahead with the expansion of the formal system. While the country attempted to maintain vestiges of its nonformal system and to strengthen it as part of its "New Primary School" reform effort (Nouvelle Ecole Fondamentale ­ NEF), the nonformal system was not adequately financed by the GoM and was mostly ignored by donors until the advent of donor-financed community schools (see below). A Bank adjustment/investment hybrid project urged the GoM to develop ways of stimulating demand for education among underserved groups and to support quality improvements in primary education through the reallocation of resources from secondary and higher education. In the face of strong education unions, and the GoM's inability to develop effective, participatory communication strategies, violent protests ensued, and reform was implemented only gradually and partially. In 1992, with the GoM unable to implement reform and donors' increasing frustration at what they saw as government inaction (interview data, 2005), the GoM revised education laws to allow non-public actors, including parents' associations, non-governmental organizations (NGO) and private entrepreneurs, to open schools. 10 Case Study: Mali In 1995, Mali's President met with the President of the World Bank and requested the support of the Bank and other donors for the development of a long-term education reform program.2 The ten-year educational plan (PRODEC) was finalized in 1998. Its goals cover the period from 2001 to 2010. Its main objective is to increase the GER from 50% in 1998-1999 to 95% in 2010 and the first phase has the following sub-objectives: (i) improve educational quality; (ii) improve access; and (iii) improve decentralized management. The development of PRODEC involved heated debates over policy choices, especially the expansion of the bilingual program (pédagogie convergente) and intra-sectoral resource allocation. There were strong disagreements between the Minister of Basic Education and the Minister of Secondary Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research. The current Minister of Education was strongly opposed to PRODEC before taking office in 2002 and has not been a supporter of its key reforms since (interview data, 2005). 3. SUMMARY OF RECENT CHANGES IN MALI'S EDUCATION SECTOR, 1990-2005 Government policies and capacity related to primary Changes in education policy Since independence, Mali has tried to increase educational access and quality (see Section 2). The development of educational policy in Mali evolved significantly between 1990 and the preparation of the PRODEC. Between 1990 and 1997, national education policy was hindered by serious budgetary constraints. Between 1991 and 1994 the GoM used limited public resources to buy social stability from students and university staff, sometimes violating its structural adjustment conditions (World Bank, 1996). Internal resources were almost non-existent and few donors were willing to invest in such a difficult context. In addition, there was little political space in which to address issues such as the use of national languages and contract teachers. Improvements in the macroeconomic framework in the early 1990s opened up the possibility of longer term policy development later in the decade. In the mid-1990s, the government launched the NEF. A commission was set up by the Minister of Education to develop a wide-ranging reform program. When progress stalled, partly due to the non-participatory nature of the process (only MEN staff were involved) and partly due to the lack of capacity in the Ministry (interview data, 2005), the World Bank intervened in the production of PRODEC. PRODEC In 1996, the World Bank helped to appoint a technical team to take responsibility for long-term policy development using a highly participatory approach. The team was composed of high-level Ministry staff, released from their usual responsibilities and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Planning. It was hoped that this would increase the team's independence and ability to coordinate with other sectors. Team members were paid almost three times their Ministry salaries as a strategy to increase their motivation. Shortly after the establishment of the PRODEC team, the NEF commission was disbanded. The PRODEC team conducted a variety of activities aimed at wide national participation, involving a spectrum stakeholders from Ministers to parents, and worked to ensure coherence with trends in other areas such as 2This program was discussed in the 1994 CAS as a follow-up to the fourth education project. 11 Case Study: Mali decentralization and the integration of international experience. Activities included research trips, a series of technical studies on topics such as textbooks and teacher education, and participatory workshops and roundtables with donors. The process lasted almost two years, ending in December 1997. In early 1998, the team was reintegrated into the MEN, Bank payment of salaries stopped, and work to ensure continuation of the reform by MEN staff began. PRODEC was unlike prior educational reforms in that it covered all levels of the education system. In addition, its proposals supported inter- and intra-sectoral coordination with the ministries of decentralization, health, training and employment. Lastly, it proposed a financing plan in keeping with the country's macro-economic indicators. PRODEC's goals are to achieve: · basic education for all; · technical and vocational education adapted to labor market needs; · reform of the secondary education system; · higher quality higher education, adapted to the country's priorities and finances; · use of national languages in public schools concomitantly with French; · an operational textbook and learning materials policy; · a consistent teacher education policy; · a true community partnership around schools; · structural reorganization as needed to implement the reforms; · a communication policy including all actors; and · financial policies that are sustainable and facilitate decentralization. These proposals reformulate many of the proposals of international forums and prior Malian reforms: quality education for all, teacher education and textbook policy. Thus, it is an attempt to build on Mali's prior experiences and international policy directions. It incorporates some earlier reforms: (i) the expansion of the use of national languages, which were introduced into nonformal programs in 1965 and formal programs in the early 1980s; (ii) decentralization, which has been an ongoing effort since 1991; and (iii) the continuation of intra-sectoral budget reallocations that began in 1982. Mali's policy development processes continue to be weakened by: (i) the departure of many of the most competent MEN staff to work for international organizations; (ii) poor human resource management (lack of hiring criteria, unclear career paths); and (iii) the evolving political context, which requires many party members/MEN officials to spend time on activities related to electoral politics. The continuing emphasis on quantitative expansion and the continued centralization of activities make it difficult to foresee long-term and wide-scale improvements in quality, despite the efforts of a plethora of donors. Changes in government capacity At independence, Mali was confronted with a severe shortage of qualified personnel to govern the country. The administration was initially drawn from graduates of French universities, but politics soon changed and the subsequent generation of students and civil servants studied in China and the Soviet Union (interview data, 2005). During the preparation of the first World Bank education project in 1973, the government agreed to recruit university graduates and give them on-the-job technical assistance, "complemented by ad hoc training (World Bank, 1973, p. 9)." Continued technical assistance, including long-term training, was used over the following two decades to create the modern Ministry. This has had a lasting impact on MEN capacity. 12 Case Study: Mali Changes in MEN administrative capacity over the past fifteen years have also been linked to political and economic change: (i) the 1991 change of government; (ii) structural adjustment; and (iii) the decentralization of the sector (interview data, 2005). The change of government in 1991 reduced political influence on education administration (Bayart, 1992), but did little to strengthen service delivery. Civil society and local authorities perceive the Ministry of Education as bureaucratic, corrupt and unproductive (interview data, 2005), greatly reducing the Ministry's ability to manage the educational system. The staff at the central level has been unable to influence or control the actions of teachers, local associations, or decentralized levels of administration (interview data, 2005). The current low level of the Ministry of Education's institutional capacity seems due less to technical factors and more to a dysfunctional system of incentives and sanctions, which has replaced institutional incentives. Hiring and promotion are based on social connections, not regulations or performance criteria (case study mission, 2005). Many Ministry employers are former teachers who no longer wanted to teach. Those with personal relationships in the Ministry are easily able to obtain transfers, even without any background in the area of the receiving department. Those without connections tend to have longer teaching careers (interview, March 2005). In addition, training is perceived more as a source of additional income than as a way to improve job performance (interview data, 2005). Changes in the delivery of education services Mali's GER increased from 26% in 1990 to 67% in 2003. Most of the expansion was due to growth in the three non-public systems: (i) private, for-profit schooling; (ii) madrassahs; and, especially, (iii) community schools. Each of these systems enrolls at least 10% of all students. The fastest growing system from 1990-2000 was the community school system, managed by communities with NGO assistance and USAID funding. The growth of these systems has slowed recently, with a decline in government, USAID and Bank funding. The madrassah system has had relatively flat enrollment. Its growth in numbers is largely a statistical artifact, since most madrassahs were not officially recognized prior to 1998. In 2003, enrollment was as follows (public schools include French-only and bilingual classrooms): School Type Schools Teachers Students Public 3,348 13,252 911,176 Private 513 2,678 118,087 Community 2,557 5,706 227,334 Madrassah 852 3,010 140,194 TOTAL 7,270 24,646 1,396,791 Source: Ministere de l'éducation nationale Some aspects of the system changed significantly during the case study time frame. The system began to decentralize, changed methods of teacher recruitment and strengthened the bilingual education (pédagogie convergente) system. This section first looks at the most important areas of change: (i) community schools, (ii) decentralization, and (iii) pédagogie convergente. It then looks more specifically at some critical issues of service delivery: (i) teachers; (ii) textbooks; (iii) construction; (iv) curriculum; (v) examination and testing; (vi) school health; (vii) the private sector; and (ix) statistics and education planning. Next, it looks at some of the major background issues in the sector: (i) higher education; (ii) donor coordination; and (iii) labor force issues. 13 Case Study: Mali Changes in the sector Community Schools. In the early 1990s, the MEN changed education laws to allow communities to open their own schools. Two NGOs, World Education and Save the Children USA, with USAID funding, were the major supporters of this effort. The number of community school teachers increased from 1,106 in 1996 to 5,808 in 2003. Donor support for community schools has now ended, as USAID decided to redirect financing towards enhancing services in all schools (interview data, 2005). Community schools increased access for the poor, reduced costs and increased quality through these additional expenditure on textbooks, teacher education, teacher supervision and community management. However, equity is a concern, as the GoM has focused its construction and other efforts on less rural areas, financing teachers for more affluent populations, while leaving more remote communities to finance their own schools (World Bank, 1998). In an attempt to reduce this unequal burden, donors and the GoM began to finance a stipend of CFAF 25,000 per community school teacher in 2000. This amount was intended to supplement community salary payments, but it may have replaced them in some areas (interview data, 2005). Decentralization and deconcentration. Mali's decentralization efforts consist of two parallel processes: decentralization and deconcentration. Decentralization refers to a political arrangement involving the devolution of specific powers and resources by the central GoM to lower levels of government. Deconcentration refers to administrative measures involving the transfer of management responsibilities and resources to agents of the central GoM located outside the central level (in regions and districts). (See Annex 11B for a summary of decentralized and deconcentrated responsibilities.) The decentralization of educational administration (outside the Ministry) was intended to increase the GoM's capacity and authority by bringing decision-making closer to the service delivery level. School management committees (Comités de gestion scolaire [CGS]) were instituted in 2005 as a way to improve school management. Each CGS consists of parents, teachers, NGOs, associations, and council representatives. Local authorities are responsible for the development of educational access, the recruitment and management of teachers and school management. As of 2005, these responsibilities were still being conducted jointly with the central level. The deconcentration of educational administration (inside the Ministry) was intended to improve teacher support and supervision. From 1990 to 1999, the supervision of basic education and the monitoring of teacher practice were conducted by the Inspections de l'enseignement fondamental (IEF). The number of IEFs increased from 35 in 1990 to 45 in 2001, but the inspector-to-teacher ratio was still too high for inspectors to support teachers in any meaningful way. Financial and logistical issues kept IEFs from their work and they "only served as a mail box" (interview data 2005). In response, one of PRODEC's priorities was to restructure and further decentralize education system management. The Inspections de l'enseignement fondamentale (IEF) or basic education inspectorates became Centers for Educational Support (Centres d'animation pedagogique, CAP). The regional directorates (Directions régionales de l'éducation, DRE) became Education Academies (Académies d'enseignement, AE), and their responsibilities were expanded beyond administration to include pedagogic issues. AE and CAP 14 Case Study: Mali deliver pre-service teacher education for contract teachers, advise communities on teacher recruitment and provide in-service professional development for practicing teachers. More than 40% of the sector's non-salary budget is transferred to the AE (MEN, 2004) and the operating budget per CAP increased from 500,000 CFAF in 1998 to more than 10,000,000 CFAF in 2004. Mali's decentralization efforts, especially the creation of municipalities, greatly increased local initiatives and the efficiency of resource allocation. Municipalities spent CFAF 12 billion on classroom construction and hired more than 2,000 teachers from 2001-2003 (MEN, 2004). However, CAP and AE still do not have the capacity to influence the organization of classes, teacher transfers, or student enrollment; despite their staff, equipment and training, they are still only minimally involved in pedagogic support (interview data, 2005). Pédagogie convergente. For most students, as noted in Section 1, schooling in 2005 is similar to schooling in 1995: teaching is in a language students scarcely understand, teachers use memorization and recall as their primary teaching techniques, and the curriculum is devoid of local content. However, about 9% of students are participating in a bilingual education program called pédagogie convergente. The program was developed after many years of adult literacy and primary education programs in national languages. Students begin school in their first language and gradually transition to French. The program calls for active, constructive teaching methods, and for the inclusion of local content. The first Malian pédagogie convergente school opened in Segou (south-central Mali) in 1987. The program expanded slowly until 2000, when the World Bank-financed Learning and Innovation Loan (LIL) financed an expansion from 300 to 2,056 classrooms. The program has been an extraordinary success in improving student learning and retention. Evaluation at the end of the LIL found that dropout rates are 80% lower for pédagogie convergente students than for students in French-only classes, and repetition rates are 70% lower. Exam pass rates are significantly higher for pédagogie convergente students, and a series of independent and Ministerial evaluations has found that pédagogie convergente students even perform better on tests of French and mathematics than students in French-only classes (World Bank, 2003 and MEN, 2005). The MEN concluded in 2004 that pédagogie convergente students learn faster, are better socialized, are more autonomous, have more team spirit, work actively in groups, express themselves more freely and have better relationships with teachers (MEN, 2004). As a result of this success, the program became part of national policy in 1998. When the government changed hands in 2002, political support for the program plummeted. Key technical staff members were sidelined at the time of the case study mission. The future of the program remains unclear. Changes in critical components of primary education This part of the section reviews (i) teacher recruitment, education, hiring and support; (ii) textbooks; (iii) construction; (iv) curriculum; (v) school health; (vi) the private sector; (vii) statistics and education planning; and (viii) monitoring and evaluating student learning. Next, it looks at some of the major background issues in the sector: (i) higher education; (ii) donor coordination; and (iii) labor force issues. 15 Case Study: Mali Teachers Recruitment. During the early 1990s, Bank pressure to limit entry into the teaching profession to high school graduates, combined with the lack of interest in such careers among high school graduates and a GoM hiring freeze, led to a drastic decline in the number of student teachers and the closing of five out of eight teacher education institutions (Instituts pédagogiques d'enseignement général [IPEG]). With new support for EFA, the number of teacher education institutions, now called Instituts de formation des maîtres (IFM), gradually increased, beginning in 1995. Twelve IFM were operating in 2004 and a thirteenth is planned. At the beginning of the period reviewed for this case study, all teachers in Mali were civil servants. The recruitment of contract teachers began in the mid 1990s, and Mali currently hires three kinds of teachers: (i) contract teachers with short-term pre-service teacher education; (ii) contract teachers with long-term pre-service teacher education; and (iii) community teachers, hired directly at school level. Teacher education. There are two kinds of pre-service teacher education programs, long-term programs in teacher education institutions (2-4 years), and a very short-term program for candidates hired at decentralized levels (45 days). Short-term entrants are generally required to have a lower secondary (ninth grade) diploma from a general or technical/vocational school. The long-term programs for primary school teachers are at two levels: a three year institution-based program with one year of student teaching for students who have graduated from ninth grade, and a one year institution- based program with one year of student teaching for high school (12th grade) graduates. The GoM aims to graduate 2,500 teachers per year, but is still a long way from meeting that target, with graduation rates of less than 20% (and even lower for female candidates). The evolution of enrollment is shown below: Enrollment by type 1990 1995 1996 2000 2001 2002 2004 (5 IFM) (6 IFM) (9 IFM) (12 IFM) Two year program 274 Four year program 3002 4144 5100 7306 Total 124* 494* 1121* 3002 4144 5100 7580 Source: MEN, 2005 *These numbers include teachers for both cycles of basic education (1-6 and 7-9). The quality of teacher education appears to be very low, but there is little hard data to support this claim. Teacher educators told the case study mission that their students have very low levels of basic literacy when they arrive and that student teachers who arrived with only a ninth grade diploma almost never graduate; graduates are all students who continued to tenth, eleventh or twelfth grade but failed to receive a secondary school diploma (interview data, 2005). Teacher education classes remain purely theoretical, there are few textbooks or other teaching materials, and teacher educators have never taught in primary schools. Pédagogie convergente, which was adopted as a nation-wide program, is mentioned only in passing, and no new teachers interviewed during the mission were able to recall the outlines of the program, let alone have the capacity to teach it. Other, smaller curriculum additions, such as environmental, health and family life education, receive even briefer coverage. Pre-service teacher education contains little supervised and mentored student teaching. Students are supposed to have three sessions of student teaching, one for observation, one for assisting and a year-long session of teaching with supervision. It is common for student teachers to find themselves in charge of classrooms during 16 Case Study: Mali their second period of student teaching, and supervision of student teachers during their year of student teaching is sporadic at best. During data collection, several student teachers were observed without support and one school had only two teachers: the director, who had graduated from teacher education the previous year, and a student teacher (case study data, 2005). Teacher professional development. The GoM officially adopted a professional development policy in 2003. Donors supported a wide variety of such programs during the period reviewed for this case study, including programs in pédagogie convergente, teaching large classes, strategies for increasing girls' learning, school management, multi-grade teaching and the development of a radio-based instructional program. The programs are of variable quality, reach varying numbers of teachers, generally are not evaluated for effectiveness, and are not coordinated by the MEN. Participation is unrelated to promotions and pay raises. Teacher hiring. In 1983, the GoM halted the automatic hiring of high school graduates into the civil service. A few years later, the Volunteer Service Corps began, which opened the door to a tremendous hiring of contract teachers, managed at the regional level. Contract teachers recruited were offered a salary equivalent to 2.1 times the 2000 GDP per capita. In 1980, civil service teachers were earning about 13 times GDP per capita. Community schools began to open in the early 1990s. Salaries varied, depending on the revenue level of the community, but were lower than those of contract teachers. The figure below shows the changes in teacher salary-to-GDP ratio from 1970 to 2003. GDP/per capita (primary school teachers) in Mali 14 12 at 10 apic/PD 8 6 G X 4 2 0 1970 1980 1990 2003 Source: GOM Records Since 2001, the Ministry of Education has recruited more than 2,000 teachers per year, on average, financed with HIPC funds. The number of contract teachers grew from 835 in 1997 to 14,184 in 2003. The number of community teachers grew from 1,106 to 5,808 during the same period, and the number of civil service teachers decreased from 11,356 to 5,293. At the beginning of 2002, the new GoM decided to increase contract teacher salaries by almost 100%. This measure resulted in a faster budgetary increase than projected for basic education, as well as a substantial increase in the funding amounts needed to reach EFA goals. As contract teachers' training varies greatly and is often less than that of civil servants, civil servants are unhappy with the decision and may push for salary increases as well (case study mission, 2005). (See Annex 11C for additional teacher hiring information.) 17 Case Study: Mali Number of Teachers Recruited by Type, 1997-2004 Source: GoM records Pedagogical support. Until 1999, inspectors visited classrooms every two to three years (interview data, 2005). The inspectors did not have adequate transportation and spent most of their time on administrative tasks. School directors were intended to be the first line of supervision, but their lack of training, heavy administrative burdens and teaching duties meant that they rarely visited classrooms. In 1999, the pedagogical support system changed in name, with the conversion of inspectorates to Centres d'animation pédagogique (CAP). Not much changed about their activities, although they now report visiting classrooms once a year (case study data, 2005). Schools are currently closed every Wednesday afternoon, ostensibly for in-service training activities at the school level, but no sessions were observed during the case study mission and the pedagogic advisors and teachers questioned could not recall ever participating in a Wednesday session. Textbooks Textbook policy. Mali's first textbook policy was adopted in 2004. Prior to this, textbooks were purchased with donor and national financing and sent to classrooms sporadically. Language books for French-language classrooms were written and published by the Ministry; math books for French-language classrooms were written and published by CONFEMEN (Conférence des Ministres de l'Education des pays ayant le français en partage); national language books for pédagogie convergente were written by an informal team, photocopied and bound for very low cost, and distributed in an ad hoc fashion by whomever the team could get to distribute them; and French books for pédagogie convergente were purchased through sole source contracts with the Belgian university that developed them and again delivered by whatever means possible. The current textbook policy calls for the privatization of textbook production, printing and distribution, and a shift towards school level procurement and management of textbook stocks. Textbooks will be free in grades 1- 18 Case Study: Mali 9 and available for a rental fee in grades 10-12. Each level in the decentralized administration has several roles to play in procurement. The policy is not yet operational and will require considerable training and follow-up if it is to succeed. Textbook provision continues to be ad hoc. Other teaching/leaning materials. Over the case study period, classrooms in Mali contained very few other teaching and learning materials. School libraries are almost non-existent. Schools generally have a few maps (although teacher-drawn maps on blackboards are far more common), scientific diagrams, or some geometry equipment. Walls are usually bare and there are few other learning materials. Textbook procurement. Methods of textbook procurement depend on the financing source. The Bank has generally insisted on international competitive bidding (ICB). Although there were preferences for local publishers during the Education Sector Investment Program (EdSIP), they were not used. Other donors and the MEN use non-competitive bidding and/or sole source contracts. Procurement delays last for years and the use of ICB for national language books makes the process even longer, as international publishers are not fluent in the languages used and have to return manuscripts and proofs numerous times for editing. Delivery to Mali is problematic, especially with the political turmoil in Côte d'Ivoire. Textbook distribution. Many textbook distribution systems have been tried in Mali, with little success. Books have been delivered to various levels of the system by public and private means, and have even been delivered directly to schools by publishers. While it is clear that the latter method is the most efficient, it is costly, and books continue to disappear at all levels of the system. Markets visited during the case study mission were full of textbooks, some with official school stamps and some without. A particular problem in Mali is the decision of the MEN to allow private publishers to reprint MEN-copyrighted books and to sell them. These books are identical to books distributed free of charge using program funds. The MEN signed contracts with several publishers, allowing them to sell books around the country, but, four years after contract signature, most areas of the country have no bookstores. The decision of the MEN to keep the books identical to those distributed for free means that it is impossible to prosecute market sellers found with government-provided textbooks, unless they are marked with school stamps. A Ministry technician estimated that 70% of the national language books financed by IDA under the EdSIP had been lost during distribution (interview data, 2005). Textbook use. 9.7 million textbooks were purchased by donors and the national budget for the first cycle of education between 2000 and 2004. The case study mission observed one classroom where all students had reading books. Most other classrooms had no books, or fewer than 20 (for class sizes up to 120). Pédagogie convergente classrooms were particularly affected, as they have long suffered from a dearth of materials and the procurement of new pédagogie convergente books has been delayed. The January 2004 joint supervision mission found that textbook-to-student ratios in core subjects varied from 1:2 to 1:10 (World Bank, 2004), despite a project objective of two books per student. Even in cases where books arrive at the school level, they are not necessarily used. The case study mission found school directors' cabinets full of books, old and new, including books that were still wrapped in their delivery plastic. Some directors claimed that teachers came and took books when they needed them for classes, but in many cases, the books on their shelves had not been disturbed for quite some time. In other cases, teachers had their own strategies: some did not use any books at all because there were not enough for a 1:1 ratio, and one reserved books for the best students (interview data, 2005). 19 Case Study: Mali School Construction In 1990, there were 7,321 classrooms and 249,371 (MEN, 1998) students enrolled in basic education, a student- to-classroom ratio of 34:1, which masks significant regional disparities. Sixty-four percent of schools did not have any sanitary facilities and 61% did not have access to drinking water (MEN, 1998). From 1990-93, the number of classrooms did not increase. From 1994-96, the Fonds d'Appui à l'Enseignement Fondamental (FAEF), funded by the Bank, USAID, Norway, FAC and OECD, financed the construction of 957 classrooms and the renovation of 914. Most of these were classrooms for community schools, opened by NGO with USAID support. When the EdSIP began, the Bank, the Netherlands, Japan, KFW, AFD, ACDI, Norway, UNICEF, FAC and the GoM began another wave of classroom construction. In addition, local authorities have used government funds to build an additional 900 schools and/or classrooms (breakdown data is not available) (Abillama, 2004). (See Annex 11D for additional information on classroom construction.) In order to reach PRODEC's enrollment goals, 1,533 classrooms were to be built per year, but after four years of implementation only 2,807 have been completed, due to: (i) delays in the identification of sites; (ii) a lack of builders capable of managing multi-site projects; and (iii) procedural delays related to contracting. The figure below shows the evolution of the number of classrooms from 1990 to 2004: Evolution classroom stock 30000 25000 20000 15000 classroom stock 10000 5000 0 Years Source: GoM records School maintenance remains problematic. It is hoped that the decentralization of school management and the allocation of funds to localities will reduce the backlog of classrooms in need of renovation (interview data, 2005). Curriculum Curriculum plays an important role in the quality of education in Mali. High stakes exams and the inspection/pedagogical supervision system work to keep teaching close to official school programs. About 9% of Malian students are enrolled in pédagogie convergente classes (see above); all other public school students 20 Case Study: Mali follow a curriculum that was described by the World Bank in 1973 as being "theoretical . . . devoid of coherent themes . . . and uses a medium unfamiliar to the majority of rural students (World Bank, 1973, p. 38)." As part of the intended nationwide expansion of pédagogie convergente, the GoM began a process of general curriculum revision. The new curriculum was to be based on pédagogie convergente, and to incorporate curriculum additions such as environmental, health and family life education. As of March 2005, the curriculum and teachers' guide for level one (grades one and two) had been completed and had been tested, although not evaluated, in eighty pédagogie convergente classrooms. They had been translated into four national languages of the eleven currently used, but it is unclear whether those translations had been distributed. None of the teachers testing the new curriculum had a copy of the documents in national languages, and there were no finalized versions available at the curriculum offices of the MEN. Level two (grades three and four) had also been completed, but had not yet been tested (interview and case study data, 2005 and MEN, 2005). Pédagogie convergente teachers observed in March 2005 were attempting to use French documents to teach the first two grades, which use only minimal amounts of French (none in grade one). Curriculum officials thought that trainers needed additional training (they had received only twelve days), which was underscored by field interviews in which trainers told us they were unable to use the curriculum in their classrooms, let alone to teach it to others (interview data, 2005). School Health and HIV/AIDS UNICEF and other donors have financed school health programs since the 1980s, including general health education, family life and population education. These programs have mainly been focused on small-scale curriculum change and NGO-delivered activities at small groups of schools. The World Food Program and NGOs run school feeding programs, but in 1996, they only reached 22,118 children, about 4% of those enrolled (World Bank, 2002). The current school health program focuses on health education, providing micronutrients and treatment for parasites, and the development of an HIV/AIDS prevention program. Collaboration with the Ministry of Health has been difficult, with both ministries wanting leadership roles. The multitude of activities supported by other donors and NGOs has made coordination difficult, and activities have yet to begin (case study data, 2005). One group of students had been scheduled to receive deworming medication, but the central level had no information as to whether or not the medication had been dispensed. Curricula for grades 1 and 2 were revised to include family life and hygiene information, but it was unclear whether this information was being taught or, if it was, whether it was having any impact on health practices. HIV/AIDS. Many NGOs are involved in HIV/AIDS education-related activities. UNESCO assisted the Ministry with the development of a training module and guide, which is included in the health component of the new curriculum. There is no MEN supervision, follow-up or evaluation of this activity. Private Education The number of private (non-community) schools has increased every year since 1990, most rapidly in the first cycle of basic education. Increases have primarily been due to FAEF funding (see above) and changes in legislation in the early 1990s. These both increased the number of schools and increased their diversity (earlier, 21 Case Study: Mali almost all private schools were run by the Catholic church). From 1980 to 1998, the number of private secular schools increased from 54 to 711. Government support for private schools varies according to the type of school. The Government pays 80% of teacher salaries in Catholic schools. All teachers in private schools are eligible to participate in government- funded pre- and in-service training programs. Statistics and Education Planning Statistics. The educational statistics system was largely dependent on USAID funding from 1994 to 2000. When USAID funding ended, GoM teams were unable to take over and the system almost stopped functioning. The French Cooperation began funding technical assistance in 2001 and data became available again in 2002- 2003. This funding, primarily for technical assistance, is ongoing as of 2005. Beginning in 2002, the information collection system was progressively decentralized. As of 2005, statistical data were available to all services of the MEN, but underused in decision-making. The statistical unit does not conduct any analysis or disseminate information. Most requests for statistical information come from donors, who are required to channel all requests through the one person in the Ministry who is capable of using the statistical system (as was the case study team). Statistical information is thus used mainly for post-review, not for planning purposes. There are many consequences of this lack of data use, especially in teacher deployment, school construction and textbook procurement. Teachers are unevenly distributed, with resulting huge differences in student-to-teacher ratios, even between schools in close proximity. In urban Sikasso the number of teachers per class is 1.6 (meaning that some schools have more teachers than classes) as against an average 0.8 in surrounding rural areas (some schools have more classes than teachers (interview data, 2005). National differences are even greater, with ratios ranging from 29 students per teacher in Kidal to 62 students per teacher in Mopti, and class sizes reaching 260 in the environs of Bamako (divided into two cohorts, but with one teacher). (See Annex 11E for national student-to-teacher and student-to-classroom ratios.) School construction is based on community requests and does not follow a school mapping or planning process, and textbook procurement always underestimates needed quantities. Educational planning. Between 1990 and 2000, sector planning was limited to (i) financial planning; and (ii) planning by quantitative objectives such as enrollment and dropout rate (interview data, 2005). Donors prepared individual financial and operational plans. From 2001 to 2003, donors and MEN developed joint strategic plans at the national level. Since 2004 the process has become more decentralized, as action plans are created at the CAP level, sent to the AE for review and then finalized at the national level. Monitoring and Evaluation of Student Learning From 1960 until the 1980s, the basic education inspectorate (IEF) conducted monthly and end-of-cycle exams. The IEFs have since been converted to centers of educational support (CAP) and their number increased, but learning evaluation remains rudimentary. Exams are intended to select students; they are not used to provide feedback to students and families on student learning, or to teachers to help them improve their teaching practice. There is no use of continuous assessment to guide teaching. 22 Case Study: Mali USAID financed the establishment of a testing unit during the Fourth Education Program (1989-95). A separate evaluation structure, the National Center for Educational Exams (Centre Nationale des Examens et Concours de l'Education, CNECE) was established as part of PRODEC. It is now in charge of organizing exams, developing program standards and setting up a system of monitoring student learning. These programs are not yet operational. Mali has not participated in any international assessments of student learning. Issues affecting the delivery of primary education Higher education Higher education students have played a critical role in Malian politics since the 1968 coup d'état and resulting dictatorship. Serious demonstrations started in 1979-80 when the government attempted to close boarding facilities for secondary school students. When the structural adjustment measures described in Section 2 arrived, student unrest became part of everyday life in Bamako. During the 1991 revolution, students were at the forefront of the demonstrations and 300 of them were killed (interview data, 2005). This led to student inclusion in the new government and began another period that continues today, of student demands, protests and strikes. Free education and supplemental payments in the form of scholarships, mostly for urban students from middle and upper middle class households, continue today for students in higher education (interview data, 2005). Scholarships at the secondary level officially stopped in 2001-2002. In 1996, PRODEC called for the institutional and structural reform of higher education. As of the date of the case study mission (March 2005), little progress had been made. Enrollment. In 1972-73, 2,400 Malian students were enrolled in higher education, of whom only 1,392 studied in Mali. By 2004, enrollment had risen to 37,534, almost all of whom were based at the University of Mali. (See 11F for additional information on higher education enrollment and faculty.) Controlling student flow and the preparation of a master plan for the development of higher education were conditions of the Structural Adjustment Project (SAP), the Education Sector Consolidation Project (ESCP) and the Education Sector Adjustment Project (ESAP) (World Bank, 1989, 1990 and 1995), but the GOM has been unable to comply. Attempts to implement enrollment controls have been met with violent protests. Costs and financing. In 1985, the unit cost of a higher education student represented 635% of the GNP per capita. By 1995 and 2000, it had dropped to 369 and 253% respectively (World Bank, 2001), due to Bank conditionalities. The unit cost of the first cycle of basic education was 13 and 14 percent of GNP in 1995 and 2000, respectively. The percentage of the 2005 recurrent higher education budget allocated to higher education scholarships is estimated at approximately 57 percent (MEN, 2005), reducing the potential for expenditures on quality improvement inputs. Current expenditure per education level (2003, billions CFAF) Education level Enrollment Billions % CFAF % Preschool education 80,035 4.55 0,4 0.57 Fundamental teaching Cycle I 1,294,319 73.53 22,5 32.01 23 Case Study: Mali Fundamental teaching Cycle II 237,298 13.48 12,3 17.50 Pre service teaching 6,873 0.39 3,4 4.84 Non formal education - - 0,3 0.43 General Secondary education 74,419 4.23 11,0 15.65 Technical and professional teaching 41,873 2.38 9,3 13.23 Higher education 25,535 1.45 11,1 15.79 Total 1,760,352 100 70,6 100 Source: MEN, 2005 Educational quality. There have been no formal evaluations of quality, but observation and interview data portray it as very low. The number of students makes it difficult for faculty to teach and advise. The student per faculty ratio in 2000 were 100:1 at the College of Arts and Sciences and 147:1 at the College of Law and Economics (Bagayoko and Diawara, 2003). Graduate employment. No tracer studies have been done, but it seems that unemployment of university graduates is substantial (interview data, 2005). This is due partly to the low quality of higher education and partly to the structure of the labor market. Graduates from technical and vocational programs and high- performing apprentices are in higher demand than university graduates. (See 11G for additional information on employment by education level.) Donor coordination Prior to PRODEC, there were no mechanisms for formal donor coordination. Many donors undertook small- scale projects in particular areas. Information on these activities is incomplete; due to rapid staff turnover, many donor agencies do not have records of their activities in Mali prior to 2000, and, in many cases, the funding is not recorded in international databases (CAD/OECD). Ad hoc meetings were called irregularly when one or several donors thought a meeting was necessary. The advent of PRODEC and the unified donor financing plan of the EdSIP increased structured donor coordination. There is now a partnership framework, with coordination meetings and a series of committee meeting covering education quality, access, management and decentralization, and nonformal education. The lead agency rotates among donors and is seen by donors as generally satisfactory and exemplary for the sub region (interview data, 2005). However, issues of planning and short and medium-term financial management of the educational sector have been given more attention in the last four years than issues pertaining to the quality of education. Coordination has mainly been a monitoring tool for the implementation of EdSIP activities, and not an instrument for fostering policy dialogue with the MEN (interview data, 2005). Labor force issues Labor force skills. Although the skills of the labor force have improved in recent years (interview data, 2005), they are still insufficient. In recent years, middle-level technicians have been imported from other countries in the region, including Senegal, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. Employment. The main cause of unemployment is low economic growth. In addition, training programs are not well matched with labor market demand. Migration, a traditional response to job scarcity (World Bank, 1996), has been limited by regional economic and political conditions, especially the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire. With an 24 Case Study: Mali average annual population growth rate of 3.1 (UNDP, 2004), a growing urban population (31% of total population in 2002, projected to rise to 41% in 2015 [UNDP, 2004]) and an increasing number of school graduates, the number of Malians seeking non-agricultural work is rapidly expanding (Johanson and Adams, 2004). In the existing job scarce environment, many graduates, especially those with secondary and tertiary degrees, accept jobs that are not commensurate with their educational levels. It is therefore difficult to establish the relationship between wages and educational attainment. Nevertheless, schooling does seem to improve the productivity of informal sector workers and increase earnings (interview data, 2005). Annex 11G provides the only available data on the structure of the labor force. Household Demand for Education It is difficult to determine whether low and disparate enrollment rates in Mali are due to a lack of demand for education or to the poor fit between education and the economic and cultural context. Enrollment did drop following the 1983 decision to abolish automatic civil service entry for high school graduates, but it has been rising ever since. No formal studies on demand have been conducted during the last fifteen years, although it is clear that enrollment rates differ significantly between regions, gender and ethnic groups. Major constraints to enrollment include: (i) poverty and the costs of schooling, both direct and indirect; (ii) economic constraints related to the need for child labor, the location of schools and school schedules; and (iii) cultural constraints including gender roles and conflicts with religious education. Poverty and the cost of schooling Household demand is linked to the costs of education, according to a 1983 World Bank study, the 1993 Poverty Assessment, the 1995 Public Expenditure Review (PER), the 2003 PRSP, and interviews conducted during the case study mission. Fees in rural schools were supposedly abolished in the early 1990s, but it is not certain that this is always the case (World Bank, 1993). As many parents have more than one child in school, the cost is generally multiplied. In addition to fees, parents contribute to school construction costs, teacher salaries and school feeding programs. The 2003 PRSP found that there were significant differences between the very poor and the non-poor in terms of expenditure on education and attendance at school. The amount spent on education by the non-poor was between two and fifteen times higher than that spent by the poor. Children from non-poor households are between two and three times more likely to attend primary school than children from poor households. During school visits to Mopti, the case study mission was told that children had to be withdrawn from school to beg for food in neighboring villages (March, 2005). School locations Home-school distance is an important constraint to the enrollment of young children, especially girls in areas that parents perceive as non-secure. Although Malian school construction norms call for children to walk no more than three kilometers in each direction, that is a significant distance for young, often malnourished, children in Mali's extreme climactic conditions. Many children have to travel considerably greater distances, with scarce food and water. For nomadic children (estimated at 10% of the population), the abolition of traveling schools and the administrative difficulties associated with school transfers greatly reduces their attendance rates. Nomadic children may attend school during their families' more stable months (usually at the beginning of the school year, before water has dried up), and then withdraw when their families move. 25 Case Study: Mali School schedules Economic activities also take precedence over demand for schooling. The conflict between the school calendar, which is based on the French agricultural calendar and French religious holidays, and Malian agricultural schedules and holidays also makes it hard for children to attend school during some periods of the year and decreases daily attendance rates. Cultural constraints Most Malians are Muslims and most children attend Koranic school. For some families, it is impossible for parents to send children to both Koranic and public school, for schedule or cost reasons, or because of the need for the child's labor for a significant part of the day (case study data, 2005). In more conservative areas of the country, girls and boys do not mix, especially after puberty, which, given late enrollment and frequent repetition, generally arrives during primary school. The 1993 Poverty Assessment found that parents were concerned the school would create culturally inappropriate behavior: "disrespectful, dishonest, selfish or just unattached (p.36)." Gender constraints Enrollment varies significantly by gender. Girls' enrollment rates are significantly lower than boys' in all areas outside Bamako (see Section 7). Families are "less willing to pay to send girls to school, less willing to forgo girls' labor, think that the curriculum is less relevant for girls and are more reluctant for girls to walk long distances to school (World Bank, 2000, p. 21)" Sexual harassment by teachers and other students also reduces girls' enrollment and participation (World Bank, 2000). It does seem that girls' educational experiences are better in the bilingual program (Maiga and Tembon),3 but there is no hard evidence of this. Changes in Primary Education Outputs and Outcomes The education system in Mali has changed significantly since 1990, but the experiences of students have not. Classes are overcrowded, teachers use memorization and recall as their primary teaching techniques, and instruction for most students is in a language they generally do not understand. Data on student learning is limited, but failure and dropout rates as well as case study interviews and observations show that learning levels are very low. Access The expansion of access to education was the main school-level achievement of the case study period. The GER increased from 27 in 1990 to 50 in 1997 to 71 in 2003 (MEN, 2005). Access expanded in all regions of the country and for girls as well as boys, although large disparities remain. In 1996, the GER for an urban boy was 86%, but the GER for a rural girl was 17% (Franck, 1996). In 2004, the GER for boys in Bamako was 126 (although girls edged them out at 128, perhaps a promising sign of things to come) and the GER for girls in Kidal was 28. 3Personal communication. 26 Case Study: Mali GER by region and gender from 2000 to 2004* 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 G B T G B T G B T G B T G B T Bamako 126 133 130 128 139 133 136 139 137 125 127 126 128 126 127 Kayes 35 59 47 44 72 57 47 78 62 45 75 60 50 81 65 Koulikoro 52 82 67 52 84 68 55 86 70 61 93 77 61 92 77 Sikasso 44 66 55 43 61 52 44 64 54 47 70 58 51 73 62 Segou 41 64 53 42 69 55 47 70 58 48 72 60 53 77 64 Mopti 27 39 32 29 42 35 34 46 40 40 51 46 46 55 50 Tombuctou 32 46 39 40 55 47 44 57 50 51 64 58 54 67 60 Gao 42 64 53 50 71 61 49 72 60 63 83 73 68 88 78 Kidal 19 30 25 21 32 27 23 36 30 26 37 32 28 42 35 Source: MEN, 2005 *Earlier regional breakdowns were not available. Country-wide, the GER for girls remains far below that of boys: Overall GER by Gender from 1990 to 2003* 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98* 99 00 01 02 03 Boys 34 36 41 45 47 51 57 60 60 72 73 75 78 81 Girls 20 21 25 28 31 33 37 40 46 50 50 53 56 60 Source: MEN, 2005. *Data from this year does not include new madrassah students; prior to 1998, students in community schools supported by Save the Children were not included. Repetition, completion and transition Repetition rates remain extremely high, ranging from 13% in first grade to 29% in fifth grade and 28% in sixth grade (SY 2002-03/2003-04, Ministry of Education, 2005). Data on completion are suspect, since the relatively high completion rates report seem inconsistent with the high rates of repetition and dropout, which have not decreased as per the EdSIP projections (World Bank, 2000). Data provided by the MEN show that of 1,000 girls who entered first grade in 1993, 604 of them survived in the system until sixth grade. By 2003, the number of girls remaining until the sixth grade was 801. For boys, 684 survived to sixth grade in 1993 and 874 in 2003. Educational quality Mali does not have a system of student testing other than the end-of-cycle exams, nor has it participated in international comparisons of student learning. The Bank and USAID have funded sporadic evaluations, but there is no functioning evaluation system. The most recent evaluation compared students in French-only classes with students in the bilingual program (see below). Nevertheless, with high repetition and dropout rates, low exam pass rates, low levels of inputs and the existing student and teacher characteristics, it is clear that quality is very low. Repetition rates are sometimes used as a proxy for quality but, as many studies across a range of countries have shown, repetition rates can be an artifact of many very different factors and policies. The attempts of MEN since the mid-90s to mandate reductions in the repetition rate by administrative fiat makes the presumptive link with quality even more tenuous. Current MEN policy calls for no more than 15% of students to repeat each grade and students with grades as low as 2/10 are being passed (case study data). Repetition rates have 27 Case Study: Mali remained close to 20% since 1994; they were between 20% and 30% in the preceding decade (World Bank, 1995 and MEN 2005). In 1991, only one of twenty school-aged children was likely to complete the primary cycle (1 of 4 enrolled and 1 of 5 enrolled graduated) (World Bank 1995). School directors and parents interviewed during the case study mission complained about the negative effect on quality of overcrowded classrooms, undertrained teachers and the dearth of textbooks. Anecdotal evaluation showed very few students able to decode simple sentences in their textbooks (case study records, 2005). In addition, students are poor and often malnourished or in ill health (see Ch 1 and 2). Most teachers are also poor, do not speak the language of instruction as their first language or at home, come from backgrounds with low levels of education, receive poor quality general education and poor quality teacher education (World Bank, forthcoming). Curriculum is poorly designed, as are textbooks, which are also few in number. Pedagogic supervision and in-service professional development occur infrequently and are of low quality. For about 91% of students, teaching is in a language they scarcely understand (see above). The impact of pédagogie convergente (bilingual education) on educational quality. Pédagogie convergente has had an important impact on educational quality and has the potential to do much more. Students in pédagogie convergente classrooms perform better on tests of French and mathematics than students in French-only classrooms (World Bank, 2003), while also learning to read and write in their first language. The use of a language that students understand enables teachers to use more effective, active teaching methods. Pédagogie convergente students also outperform students in French-only classrooms on the primary school exam: about 68% of pédagogie convergente students passed the exam in 2000, versus only 52% of students in French-only classrooms (MEN, 2005). Repetition and dropout rates are much lower for pédagogie convergente students: 3.7% versus 18.1% and 1.6% versus 5.7%, respectively (World Bank, 2003). Given the poor state of implementation of pédagogie convergente, the reform has great potential to further increase educational quality. The expansion of pédagogie convergente may also increase demand for schooling. The 1993 Poverty Assessment found that "a common reason cited in field interviews for high repetition and drop-out rates was the use of French in early grades. Most children find total immersion into French difficult and frustrating and often refuse to continue school since they cannot follow the class (p. 36)." Given this background and these results, World Bank support should be more consistent. 4. WORLD BANK SUPPORT FOR EXPANDING AND IMPROVING PRIMARY EDUCATION World Bank Support Prior to 1990 World Bank lending to the education sector in Mali started with the First Education Project (US$5 million) in 1973. The main objectives of this project were to improve sector planning and management and educational quality, and to support the expansion of a nonformal system, which was seen as more relevant for rural children. The formal system would continue to strictly limit entry. This was followed by the Second Education Project in 1977 (US$10 million), with objectives of improving planning and management as in the first project, improving existing education programs and improving labor force skills, especially in the rural sector. The Third Education Project (US$9.5 million) started in 1984 and planned to increase access to basic education for children and adults by expanding teacher education for primary school teachers and non-formal adult programs. This was a major policy shift. 28 Case Study: Mali The implementation of the Third Education Project occurred in a difficult economic context (see Section 2). In response, the country started a series of adjustment and stabilization programs in 1982 (World Bank, 1990). After initial success, progress slowed in 1986 and a severe economic and financial crisis developed. This led the GoM to begin a medium-term adjustment program as defined in a Policy Framework Paper (PFP) for 1988- 90 (World Bank, 1990). In November 1989, a second-year PFP for 1990-92 and a structural adjustment credit (SAL I) (US$70 million) was prepared and approved in 1990. These programs dominated Bank assistance to Mali in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The conditionalities they contained still affect the education sector and are still negatively referred to by Malians (interview data, 2005). One of the most disliked measures was the "voluntary departure program," through which the GoM and the Bank hoped to reduce the number of civil servants. Although teachers and personnel in other social sectors were not intended to be included, economic conditions (salaries were unpaid for months) were such that the teachers' union and individual teachers demanded inclusion for the short-term benefits without thoroughly understanding the long-term consequences (interview data, 2005). Those who agreed to leave were offered an average of four years of salary and about 1,000 of them did, representing about 12.5% of the teaching force (interview data, 2005). The adjustment program called for the maintenance of education expenditures at a minimum of 25% of the recurrent budget from 1990-1992 (World Bank, 1990). Raising the percentage of the national budget allocated to the education sector was difficult, given the competing demands on the government budget in a resource- scarce environment. Increasing the percentage of the education budget allocated to basic education was dependent on controlling the number of students entering secondary and higher education to 2,200-2,500 for secondary education and 1,100-1,500 for higher education in 1989-92 (World Bank, 1989). The GoM was unable to do this. In higher education, enrollment increased from 3,123 in 1996 to 5,980 in 1997 (Bagayoko and Diawara, 2003). World Bank Support from 1990 to 2005 It was against this backdrop that cooperation between the GoM and the World Bank continued in the 1990s. Bank assistance to the education sector during this period included policy dialogue, analytic work, lending, technical assistance and capacity building. The Country Assistance Strategies (CAS) of 1994, 1998 and 2003 cite education as a key poverty alleviation strategy, and there was continued emphasis on policy dialogue and funding for the sector. The fourth education project, also known as the Education Sector Consolidation Project (ESCP, US$26 million) opened in 1989, followed by the Education Sector Adjustment Project (ESAP, US$50 million, 1995), the Learning and Innovation Loan (LIL, US$3.8 million, 2000), and the Education Sector Investment Program (EdSIP, US$45 million). The Education Sector Consolidation Project consisted of an adjustment component of US$3 million and an investment component of US$22 million. Adjustment conditionalities included: (i) the allocation of at least 25 percent of the GoM recurrent budget to MEN; (ii) the implementation of a scholarship reduction program; and (iii) increases in the basic education budget to 42 percent of the education budget. The project contributed to budget increases for basic education and to increases in the percentage of the basic education budget allocated to teaching and learning materials and school maintenance. In addition, double-shift teaching was introduced; 29 Case Study: Mali teachers working in administrative positions were redeployed to classrooms; and communities were authorized to establish their own schools and hire their own teachers (World Bank, 1996). The investment component aimed at increasing primary level enrollment in three regions and improving quality nationwide (World Bank, 1996). The project outcome was rated satisfactory. Enrollment targets were met and classroom construction exceeded targets (World Bank, 1999). However, the numeric targets of the adjustment component were not achieved. Eventually, two-thirds of the adjustment funding was cancelled. The Education Sector Adjustment Project (ESAP) was a re-packaging of ESCPs adjustment conditions. With GoM perseverance and intensive Bank supervision from the resident mission, the project achieved most of its objectives. Sustainability seemed likely for the less controversial reforms, and a few, including the ceiling on scholarship expenditures, were reversed prior to the credit closing date (World Bank, 1997). Although technical education and vocational training are not a focus of this case study, this sub-sector affects demand for schooling (interview data, 2005). In March 1996, the Vocational Education and Training Consolidation Project (US$13.4 million) opened. It strengthened programs in areas of labor market demand and eliminated or consolidated those in other areas. The project also established a training fund and a labor market observatory. The outcome of the project was rated satisfactory, but sustainability unlikely (World Bank, 2003). The Support Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project (US$21.5 million) was prepared by the World Bank's Institutional and Social Policy sector, but included important education sector activities. The project supported the construction of eighty schools and literacy centers in rural areas. The project also contributed to reducing the amount of time that schoolgirls spent on domestic tasks. Concurrently with the implementation of these latter projects, the GoM, with Bank assistance, was preparing its ten-year education strategy (see Section 2 and 6 for more information). During program preparation, the Improving Learning in Primary Schools Learning and Innovation Loan (LIL) (US$3.8 million) was approved. This four-component project was primarily intended to develop further the essential elements of pédagogie convergente. The project supported curriculum development; textbooks; professional development for pédagogie convergente teachers; and the evaluation of student learning. An additional objective was the strengthening of family/school/community partnerships through the establishment of school management committees (Comités de gestion scolaire, CGS), and other support for decentralization and implementation. The project's objective of strengthening pédagogie convergente was met. The number of pédagogie convergente classrooms increased from 300 to 2,056 (World Bank, 2004). Other outcomes were moderately satisfactory, except decentralization and monitoring and evaluation, which were rated unsatisfactory, due to conflicts with the GoM's larger scale decentralization schedule and the low capacity of the project implementation unit to conduct monitoring and evaluation. The overall project rating was satisfactory (World Bank, 2004). In 2000, the Education Sector Investment Project (EdSIP) (US$45 million) opened with the support of 15 other donors (see Section 3 for more details on other donor support) and a total cost of over US$0.5 billion. Activities supported during the first phase of the EdSIP include: (i) increasing GER from 47 percent in 1997 to 61 percent by 2002 and 75 percent by 2008 through school construction, pre-service teacher education and increasing the involvement of communities and the private sector in school financing and management; (ii) improving educational quality by expanding pédagogie convergente, increasing expenditure on textbooks and other learning materials from 13 percent of GoM expenditures to 16 percent and 19 percent by 2002 and 2008, respectively, and the decentralization of personnel and budget management; and (iii) making the education 30 Case Study: Mali system more cost-effective by hiring non-public service teachers to reduce wage costs and redirecting scholarship resources for secondary students towards activities that would improve learning conditions at the secondary school level (IDA & IMF, 2003). The EdSIP started slowly. There was a delay of almost a year before start-up, since the GoM still had not satisfied the conditionalities of the ongoing ESAP (see above). Additional reasons for implementation delays included the massive replacement of MEN staff by the incoming Minister, the reorganization of the Ministries of Basic Education and the Ministry of Secondary and Higher Education into the Ministry of Education (Ministère de l'Education Nationale, MEN), and the less than enthusiastic attitude of some Ministry officials towards pédagogie convergent. By March 2004, nine months prior to the original closing date, disbursement was only 45%. The credit's closing date was extended from December 2004 to December 2005. HIPC and PRSP. The Bank's support to the education sector in Mali continued with collaboration of the education and economic teams on the HIPC and PRSP initiatives. Mali became eligible for HIPC in 1999 due to its external debt burden4, its vulnerability to external shocks and its good track record of adjustment over a long period (IMF and IDA, 1998). The 1998 HIPC preparation documents call for strong support for education: "Assistance under the debt relief initiative will support the expansion of social sector infrastructure, promote improvement in education and ensure sustainability of recurrent costs (World Bank, 1999, p. 12)." The development of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) began in 1998. The PRSP was to be Mali's medium-term framework for poverty reduction policies and strategies. Human development, including education, was one of three priority areas (World Bank, 2003). The PRSP is partially financed by HIPC funds, which totaled an estimated CFAF 75 billion in 2002-2004. Forty-five percent of this amount was allocated to education and adult literacy. Analytic work. The Bank financed only limited Education and Sector Work (ESW) during the case study period. The following were the only education or education-related studies directly financed: Mali, Assessment of living conditions (1993); Case studies in financing basic education, Mali (1993); Participation in education, Mali (1995); Indigenous knowledge, blending the new and the old, Mali (2000); Developing indigenous knowledge in francophone Africa, a four nation overview, Mali (2002); and Two studies to help Sahelian countries reach UPE by 2015" (2002). Other studies were conducted during project preparation and are listed in Staff Appraisal Reports (SAR) and (PAD). Key studies in this category include: The informal sector in Mali (1989), Pédagogie convergente: learning first and second languages (2000). and Street children: the case of Bamako (2000). In addition, sector analysis was conducted during the preparation of the 1994, 1998 and 2003 CAS, the 1998, 2000 and 2003 HIPC documents and the 2003 PRSP. These studies have provided information to the GoM and the many donors to education in Mali. In some cases, they also increased the visibility of important issues, influencing policy and lending negotiations and improving the quality of projects and conditionalities. Technical assistance. The Bank used to provide technical assistance to client countries, including Mali, by financing the appointment of long-term consultants to the government. This strategy changed to one focused on short-term, just-in-time assistance through projects, to improve the efficiency of training and encourage the transfer of skills. Bank staff also provided technical assistance through the years during project preparation, supervision and completion missions. For most of the 1990s, staff supervised projects three to four time a year, bringing teams with several specialists to work with the MEN on areas like construction, teacher education, and textbooks. Since the end of the 1990s, shrinking operations budgets have reduced the frequency of supervision 4In 1998 the Net Present Value (NPV) of the debt was 1.325 million USD, equivalent to 221 percent of export (IMF and IDA, 1998). 31 Case Study: Mali missions and the number of specialists who can participate. This constrained environment, in a country with very limited implementation capacity, is impeding project implementation. 5. CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OTHER DONORS TO THE EDUCATION SECTOR Many donors have been involved in Mali's education system over the past 15 years. They include multilateral donors such as the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), and bilateral donors such as the Belgian Cooperation, the French Cooperation (CF), the French Agency for Development (AFD), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Netherlands, Germany's Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). UNICEF, UNDP, and UNESCO have been involved as well. CIDA, USAID, the Netherlands and the World Bank have been the lead donors. For specific investment amounts, see the table below. A variety of national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also contributed to sector development, either with their own resources or as implementing agencies for donor programs. Save the Children (USA and UK), Care International, World Vision, World Education and Plan International are the largest NGOs working in Mali. Many other smaller NGOs have supported the sector: Santé Sud has built community schools, Paul Gérin La Joie has supported school management committees, Action Mopti works with schools and the Groupement des Retraités Educateurs sans Frontière conducts teacher education. It is not clear whether the donors had specific policies guiding their education interventions prior to the advent of PRODEC. Unlike the Bank, which takes a sectoral or at least sub-sectoral approach, other donors tend to be more limited in their interventions. In particular, the Bank is one of very few donors working outside the primary education sub sector (the French Cooperation, CIDA and the Belgian Cooperation work in higher and secondary technical/vocational education). External Financing in the Education Sector (World Bank excluded) in US$ millions Year Canada Germany Japan Luxem Netherlds USA UNICEF France Norway Belgium 1990 1991 7.03 1992 1.2 1993 5.34 7.41 1994 5.97 3 0.97 1994 1995 1996 4.86 1997 4.26 8.27 6.09 1998 0.01 15.1 2.31 1999 2.72 4.37 5.64 0.47 1.35 2000 4.86 5.47 1.17 0.29 2001 0.49 4.49 2.13 5.33 1.29 9.78 0.03 6.65 2002 0.18 1.43 11.25 0.31 28.83 4.29 1.27 0.16 0.64 2003 0.49 2.41 7.09 1.29 0.18 0.57 0.14 32 Case Study: Mali Total 1.16 20.66 34.62 2.44 40.37 60.38 5.02 10.88 2.59 7.76 Source: OECD Database The Netherlands, USAID, Japan (JICA) and Germany (GTZ and KFW) were the main donors to the education sector during the period from 1990-2003. JICA finances only classroom construction. The Netherlands supported improvements in educational quality by purchasing textbooks and by building and equipping CAP and AE. From the mid-1990s until 2003, USAID principally worked in the development of community schools in the south of the country (Sikasso). GTZ supported the development of pédagogie convergente and community schools in the Mopti area, and KFW financed classroom constructions in Mopti region. CIDA focused its resources on teacher education. Co-financing of World Bank projects. During the first half of the 1990s, many donors co-financed World Bank-led projects. The Fourth Education Project was co-financed by USAID (US$20.8 million) AFD (US$3 million), UNDP (US$0.5 million), CIDA (US$1 million dollar), and Norway, US$3 million. From 1994 to 1996, the governments of Japan, Belgium and Holland, through the ESAC5, contributed US$44.7 million, US$3.2 million, and US$25.6 million), respectively EdSIP. EdSIP, linked to the country's ten year plan (PRODEC), initiated a system of coordinated donor financing. Today most donors, including UN agencies like UNICEF, UNESCO and UNDP, work within that cooperative framework. EDSIP funding per donor and per component (2003-2004) in CFAF million Quality Access Management Total IDA 4586 16505 387 21478 Belgian Funding 0 2261 0 2261 French Cooperation 1571 0 565 2136 Netherlands/SIDA 9407 9488 1685 20580 CIDA 7574 312 313 8199 AFK/KFW 0 3107 0 3107 FAD III 1109 1268 462 2839 OPEC 302 1275 387 1964 UNICEF 255 353 1212 1820 UNESCO 71 0 0 71 USAID 4912 969 2879 8760 UNDP 521 366 233 1120 GTZ 523 0 688 1211 WFP 0 5858 0 5858 Source: DAF/MEN, updated December 31, 2004. Quality. CIDA, USAID, the Netherlands and SIDA are the main non-Bank donors to educational quality initiatives. CIDA is primarily involved in pre-service teacher education for contract teachers, in-service professional development for all teachers and textbook provision. USAID funds curriculum development in 5ICR, education sector adjustment credit, June 5, 1997 33 Case Study: Mali national languages, textbooks, teacher in-service programs and curriculum reform. The Netherlands and SIDA provide budget support, which has mostly been used for textbook procurement and girls' education. Construction. Major donors to classroom and administrative building construction, besides the Bank, are the Netherlands, SIDA, Belgium and French and German cooperation. The African Development Fund and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also made significant contributions. Management. Major donors to management strengthening are CIDA (donor coordination and educational planning), USAID (decentralization), the Netherlands, SIDA, UNICEF, and the French cooperation. The donors fund school management committees, parents' associations and decentralization activities. They also support core MEN activities like education statistics (French cooperation). Donor strategies in the era of the sector-wide approach. Donors who sign partnership agreements with the MEN pledge to support the coordinated sector program and to develop coherent action plans that include the activities of other donors. This has changed relationships between the MEN and donors. Donor interventions must be approved by the MEN, and this often requires negotiations. In addition, donors are required to support program implementation by contributing to the financing of joint supervision missions and technical assistance and educational research that are deemed necessary by the coordination team. When the team discovers an area of policy weakness, donors contribute towards policy development in that area. The coordinated sector approach has made it possible to structure donor participation. Because the EdSIP is sufficiently descriptive and includes a clear list of short-term activities, donors can now better direct their support. The program has improved MEN leadership and forced donors to consider education administration and management. Unfortunately, the approach has not resulted in uniform implementation procedures. Donors use a range of strategies to improve the implementation of donor-financed activities. However, some important Malian institutions receive little or no agency support. The Basic Education Directorate receives no external funding, and this keeps it from being able to operate effectively, as funding from the national budget is insufficient. In addition, many donors (AfDB, OPEC, UNESCO) continue to rely on project implementation units. All donors have different implementation procedures and offer different financial incentives, both direct (per diems) and indirect (funding for activities). Civil servants respond, using social networks and personal influence to ensure access to the most profitable activities (interview data, 2005). Civil servants also request allowances from donors or present invoices for activities like the development of non-formal education policy or the technical and vocational education policy. Some donors continue to refuse to fund the sector program, instead requesting that the MEN insert their particular program. The diversity of donors' financial execution procedures (UN agencies, French cooperation, AFD, GTZ) makes the program approach difficult to manage for the MEN. Financial planning of the education sector is a major problem for MEN, and financial information circulates slowly between donors and the MEN. The MEN uses these issues to argue for budgetary support. In response, CIDA, the Bank and the Netherlands are planning to provide budget support to the sector during the next phase of the EdSIP. 34 Case Study: Mali 6. THE WORLD BANK'S CONTRIBUTION Contributions to Changes in Policies In a context where partners had unequal power (see Section 7) it is difficult to separate World Bank policy from Malian policy. At times (higher education reforms), the Bank influence was so strong that the GoM agreed to policy changes that could not be implemented. The GoM was so in need of funding that it pursued a strategy of imposing reforms until finances were released, then rescinding them (see Section 2). Additional analysis might have prevented this from occurring, by anticipating the need to implement certain reforms more gradually. The Bank had a tremendous effect on Malian education policy during the case study period, guiding policy development through the offering and withholding of resources and continuous policy advice. The adjustment projects stressed increasing resources for the education sector, and especially for basic education. The Bank took the lead in policy dialogue with the government, raising issues such as the need to reduce scholarships and enrollment in upper secondary and higher education, and recommendations for budget increases and reallocations. Most of the Malian education officials interviewed during the case study mission acknowledged that the discussions with the Bank assisted them to assess the sector's needs and also to link those needs to funding requirements. They felt that other donors did not ask the difficult and important questions and that other government officials did not want to discuss sovereign issues with them. The Bank was able to raise these issues because of its relative importance and the perceived rigor of its analysis. During the First Education Project, the Bank supported expansion of the nonformal sector, following Malian policy. The project aimed to restrict access to formal education because of economic constraints and concerns about the relevance of education. The Second Education Project had a similar approach: "the growth of enrollment will have to be carefully controlled ...(World Bank, 1977, p. 8)." With the Third Education Project the Bank began to support increasing access to the formal sector. This approach continued during the ESCP and ESAP, at first parallel to and then intersecting with the 1990 Jomtien Declaration, in which the international community committed itself to achieving universal primary education by the 2000 (UNESCO, 1990). Policy changes on the technical level have been developed jointly by donors and the GoM, so, again, it is difficult to separate responsibility. Bank staff worked on the textbook policy, construction modalities; CIDA worked on teacher education policy. Bank influence has been strong throughout, although Bank-led policy dialogue has diminished in recent years. Other donors now appear to be working more closely with MEN technicians. Substantively, since 1990 the Bank has supported improvements in access, quality, equity and decentralization, although most funding has supported access-related initiatives. The LIL and the EdSIP continued to support the Malian commitment to universal access, which was also a Bank commitment. To improve educational quality, the Bank has supported teacher education (pre-service and professional development), textbooks, and, since 2000, the expansion of pédagogie convergente. The Bank has also been a consistent supporter of gender equity in access to education, having long insisted on separate performance indicators for girls and the integration of measures targeted at girls within project components. 35 Case Study: Mali The Bank and other donors have contributed significantly to decentralization, and the case study mission was told that the education sector is taking the lead in decentralization in Mali. Contributions to Changes in Capacity The Bank has supported a variety of capacity building activities since 1990, including training in school mapping, information and communications technology, procurement, budgeting, the use of software for educational planning and modeling, and a variety of technical areas such as curriculum and textbook development. However, capacity as measured by impact on the sector continues to be low, as described above. The experiences of one team within the Ministry illustrate the difficulties of capacity building in this context. Staff members stated they will not work with international consultants unless they are paid a fee, as they consider that to be helping the international consultants earn their fees. In addition, more senior staff members attend all training events that provide high levels of per diem, whether or not they are appropriate participants, while lower level members attend training activities that are not financially interesting for senior staff, whether or not they are appropriate participants. One team member stated that he only goes to training events in order to pursue NGO consulting contracts, which he undertakes while being paid by the civil service (interview data 2005). Contributions to Changes in Services Resource reallocation One of the most important outcomes of the Bank's investment in education between 1990 and 2005 was the increase in resources allocated to the education sector, especially the first cycle of basic education. Structural adjustment credits (SAC I, II, III), followed by a hybrid loan and sector adjustment credits (HIPC and PRSP) all supported consistent policy advice and conditions during the period. As a result, education's current budget as a percentage of the national current budget rose from 20% in 1991 to 30% in 2005 (MEN, 2005), while the budget for basic education as a percentage of the education budget rose from 36% in 1993 to 65% in 2004 (MEN, 2005). The credits and policy frameworks also improved budget planning and execution and the quality of public expenditures (World Bank, 1994). Institutional development From 1990 until 1998, Bank-financed projects were implemented by the Bureau des projets éducation (BPE), an independent unit housed in the MEN and staffed with civil servants relieved from their usual responsibilities. Other donors, also frustrated with institutional constraints, followed the same approach. This was seen as a more effective approach to project implementation, but it did not contribute to building MEN's institutional or implementation capacity. Rather, it exacerbated divisions and tensions between the GoM, hampered in its actions by a perennial lack of funds and management capacity, and externally-funded projects. Most project activities were supposed to improve core MEN activities, but the use of a separate implementation agency to disburse project funds reduced the sustainability of contributions to programs like teacher education and supervision. The elimination of the BPE in 2001 forced the administration to be more involved in policy dialogue and program implementation. 36 Case Study: Mali Administrative reform is a major component of PRODEC. The EdSIP has supported the decentralization of some educational services (World Bank, 2000). The Bank also encouraged the two education Ministries (Ministry of Basic Education and Ministry of Secondary and Higher Education, and Scientific Research) to merge, in order to improve policy development and make disagreements over educational policies between educational levels easier to manage. Access Bank support had a strong effect on Mali's GER, which increased from 26% in 1990 to 71% in 2004 (MEN, 2005). The Bank's contribution to this increase began during the Fourth Education Project. The most important activities were the: (i) creation of the FAEF (Basic Education Support Fund); (ii) introduction of double shift teaching (World Bank, 1996), (iii) redeployment of teachers from administrative positions to classroom teaching positions; and (iv) emphasis on the recruitment of contract teachers (World Bank, 1996). In addition, the Bank's leadership in educational policy dialogues during the mid-1990s appeared to encourage other donors to contribute to the sector (interview data, 2005). Quality Prior to 1998 and the beginning of PRODEC, the Bank was only minimally involved in educational quality issues, other than its emphasis on increasing resources for teaching and learning materials and the recruitment of pedagogic advisors during the ESAC. Performance indicators for the Bank's support to the sector from 1990 to 2000 consisted only of budgetary ratios and GER, not measures of educational quality. Post 1998, the Bank contributed to improving educational quality by: (i) financing textbooks; (ii) recruiting pedagogic advisors from among experienced teachers; (iii) supporting curriculum reform and associated teacher professional development; (iv) focusing the curriculum on the bilingual education reform; and (v) supporting the expansion of the bilingual education reform. Relevance and Efficacy of Bank Assistance Relevance Other than the LIL, which was very successful in expanding pédagogie convergente and providing some quality inputs for that sub-system, the Bank's interventions have not been effective at improving classroom-level conditions or student learning. Investments were made in very relevant areas: textbooks, teacher education and school health, but delays, lack of attention to pedagogic detail, and the focus on the central level for service delivery have kept them from having a substantial impact on the ground. The Bank was working in a difficult institutional environment and spent years on policy and program development, encouraging and supporting MEN staff in implementing reform programs. (Unlike other development agencies, the Bank does not manage program implementation itself, a fact that greatly reduces its own control.) This model assumes a good prior understanding of potential obstacles to government implementation progress, and effective monitoring procedures coupled with flexibility, so that implementation problems can be identified early and effectively dealt with. In the existing institutional context, a better assessment of capacity and incentives could have improved the long-term course of interventions. Decentralization, including the devolution of funds directly to local school 37 Case Study: Mali management committees (CGS), with subsequent monitoring and the application of sanctions when necessary, might have been more effective than investing most resources at the central level. Focusing more attention on the needs of teachers, allowing schools to "contract" for services with CAP, providing professional development opportunities to teachers and linking them with career and salary advancement are other strategies that, in retrospect, might have been more effective, given the context. Efficacy The efficacy of Bank support was lessened by contradictions in policy recommendations and project-financed activities. Structural adjustment measures reduced the number of teachers in the sector, through teacher participation in the early retirement program and the closure of teacher education institutions (interview data, 2005). Contract teacher recruitment was poorly organized and Bank programs did not contribute substantially to contract teacher training. These programs were at odds with the policy of rapid expanding access. Several policy contradictions slowed progress in improving educational quality. In a misguided attempt to improve access, the Bank pressured the GoM to introduce double shift teaching. While this permitted rapid increases in the enrollment rate, it greatly decreased the amount of instructional time per student, a major factor in student achievement. In the early 1990s, the Bank pressured the GoM to limit access to teacher education to high school graduates. Although this was a worthy goal and should have improved the quality of teacher candidates and lowered costs, in reality, high school graduates were reluctant to enter teaching. This resulted in a drastic reduction in teacher recruitment. The GoM was compelled to recruit contract teachers with little or no pre-service teacher education and struggled, without Bank support, to provide them with short-term courses (interview data, 2005). Although this strategy decreased salary expenditures, it has had a lasting effect on educational quality. Lastly, although the Bank has financed many textbooks, policies have not been sufficient to place books in the hands of students. Inadequate projections of quantities, which did not take continuing procurement delays into account, inefficient distribution procedures, the use of international competitive bidding procedures for the production of national language books, and insufficient teacher and pedagogic advisor training in the use of textbooks have undermined textbook production. As a result, by the end of the period examined by this case study, Malian students had, on average, less than one book in each core subject. Efficiency and Sustainability of Changes Supported by the Bank Rates of return were not calculated for education projects during this time period. Cost savings were calculated for the LIL, and it was found that the costs of educating pédagogie convergente students are much lower than the costs of educating students in French-only classes. Although the start-up costs for pédagogie convergente programs are higher, due to the need for materials and teacher education in different languages, the costs of graduating students from basic education are significantly lower, due to reduced dropout and repetition rates. Thus, while total cost for a student to complete the first cycle of basic education in French-only classrooms is 202,722 CFAF, it is 159,342 CFAF for pédagogie convergente education, 27% lower (World Bank, 2004). Two other potential areas of significant cost savings are decentralizing school construction (use of local materials and community management) and changing methods for procuring textbooks. An assessment of the sustainability of changes supported by the Bank must take into consideration the reality that the education system will be dependent on donor aid for many years. The policy shift away from low cost nonformal programs in the 1970s and the continued globalization of the system in the 1990s have contributed to 38 Case Study: Mali the need for external support. Little of the investment budget can be financed by the GoM, and the Bank and other donors support the financing of many operating costs as well. The GoM and donors are encouraging an even higher level of dependence with the attempted computerization of operations at all administrative levels, the purchase of vehicles, and planned "technology centers" in teacher education institutions. The functioning of some services within the Ministry has improved, but none of this progress will be sustainable without further external support. Overdependence on technical assistance The plethora of donors in the sector, contracting mechanisms that emphasize short-term achievement of results instead of long-term improvements in capacity, and the disincentives to performance in the Ministry have resulted in the high levels of external assistance in some technical areas. The statistics unit that has received international assistance since 1994 exemplifies these weaknesses. After eleven years of almost constant technical assistance and considerable investment in equipment, the unit is still not capable of carrying out its basic responsibilities without external assistance. Constant staff turnover and inappropriate staff selection by the MEN have also contributed to problems (interview data, 2005). Such problems have led to the production of data that is basically unusable in recent years. According to the current director of statistics, long-term technical assistance is expensive. The unit's objectives would be better met by just-in-time training for specific outcomes, with the payment of trainers linked to the trainees' attainment of those outcomes. Distortions produced by external aid The large-scale provision of external resources has had other negative effects on system management. Civil servants prefer to be in an office supported by external resources. MEN has now split into networks of civil servants which spend more time competing for external resources than improving service delivery (interview data, 2005). The use of per diems, which were originally intended to reimburse travel expenses, are now used by donors to "motivate" civil servants to participate in donor-funded activities. As a result, participants are assigned by their superiors based on the per diem level of the particular activity. In some cases, those needing capacity building refuse to undergo training if they are not offered the same kind of per diems as their trainers. Levels of per diem frequently determine staff interest and willingness to participate in professional activities (interview data, 2005). The counterfactual The counterfactual is difficult to determine. Early in the period examined, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Malian economy might have collapsed had the Bank and the IMF not provided financial support. At that point, these were the only institutions that could have provided the magnitude of support needed. Later in the adjustment period the education system and probably the entire government structure would have collapsed without Bank support. However, the Bank/Fund structural adjustment program had a very negative and pervasive effect on the opinions of Malians towards the Bank: "the Bank should never have intervened in education in Africa," and "everything the Bank did was against students" were just two of the many negative opinions expressed to the case study mission. If the terms of these adjustment programs had been "softer" or at least more diplomatic, subsequent policy dialogue might have been easier. 39 Case Study: Mali Had the Bank had not insisted on educational policy reforms, disbursing funds without conditionalities, it is probable, given the strength of the student movement (AEEM) and the teachers' unions, that imbalances in sector funding would have increased. During the case study period, the Bank provided consistent policy advice on increasing the amount of resources going to basic education and to teaching materials. The tensions, violence and school closures related to the reform might have been assuaged with a better communication strategy and more gradual implementation. Without adjustment financing, however, the system could not have continued to function. Beginning in the mid 1990s, if the Bank had decided to not support the sector, it is still possible that other donors would have contributed, and that one of them, perhaps USAID or CIDA, would have taken the coordinating role that was played by the Bank in the late 1990s. Overall funding probably would have been lower, as other donors were already contributing. Perhaps the most important Bank contribution to policy development was a focus on coherent planning, based on data, with objectives. Interventions have become more coordinated than they once were. This is most likely not something that other donors, with smaller funding envelopes and different implementation procedures, could have achieved. Perhaps in the absence of Bank and other donor support, the GoM would have been forced to become more efficient in the use of its own funds. More likely, though, the country would have become even poorer and the education system even less functional. Based on the results of the case study, the more useful question at this point in the development of the sector is "how can the Bank make better choices and provide better support?" 7. LESSONS LEARNED Bank support The story of the World Bank's support to the Mali education sector over the past fifteen years is a cautionary tale about the fragility of policy dialogue. It underscores how challenging it is to establish and sustain a partnership whose members are unequal in strength and change frequently. In addition to a number of country- specific lessons, the Mali experience highlights an important lesson for the Bank as a whole: the need for evidence-based dialogue that incorporates country perspectives while maintaining core principles about the importance of educational quality, equity and access. This Bank-wide lesson means that policy dialogue in education must receive sustained attention from sector managers, country directors and regional management. Task teams are the principal actors on the Bank side of policy dialogue and must have a solid background in education. Although they should have professional autonomy in developing recommendations for country-specific, policy-based interventions, their recommendations should follow Bank sector policy. Stability in sector personnel is also important. Also, when task team personnel change frequently, it is difficult to ensure that policy dialogue will remain consistent. Experiences in Mali showed that task team characteristics matter. Some teams were much more successful than others in Mali in nurturing and sustaining the policy dialogue, and the complexities of any country make it clear that more knowledge contributes to better dialogue. During much of the case study period, the MEN was unable to implement politically difficult reforms. Yet the MEN demonstrated considerable knowledge of the country context and championed several worthwhile reform initiatives. Bank staff more willing to respect and listen to Malian expertise might have facilitated more Malian efforts to initiate meaningful systemic change. 40 Case Study: Mali Third, the Bank did not provide a consistent evidence-based justification for its reform program. Policy recommendations and conditionalities within adjustment programs changed over time and were often contradictory. Research evidence was rarely used to support recommendations. No impact analyses were conducted to decide when policies should change. Policy dialogue, for the most part, seems to have been left to the interests and focus of individual task managers. The Bank also appeared indifferent to fundamentally important programs managed and negotiated by other donor partners, including most notably, the NGO- managed community schools program that was the cornerstone of USAID support through the late 1990's and early 2000's. An example of the Bank's inconsistent policy advice has to do with the use of national languages as a medium of instruction. This approach, which had a wide base of grassroots support in Mali, was given conditional support by the World Bank as early as the mid-1970s, but then was eliminated from a follow-up project due to a disagreement with MEN as to whether the number of languages included should be increased or the program should first be expanded to additional speakers of the primary language. This was a politically heated topic for the MEN, as its neighbor, Guinea, was under the control of an authoritarian government that was imposing an inappropriate approach to languages. Because of the disagreement, Bank support for a local language policy ended until 2000. Similarly, pre-service teacher education, initially supported heavily by the Bank, went through a long period of neglect and conflict that reduced much of the country's pre-service teacher education capacity and required the country to institute a stop-gap program of pre-service education without Bank support (interview data, 2005). The pre-service program that emerged from this had significant flaws, but not until the EdSIP (2001) did the Bank begin to rethink its decisive earlier move away from pre-service teacher education. No significant reform has yet occurred. The Expansion of Education: Issues of Quality and Quantity Expansion of enrollment Given Mali's democratization, and related national and international demand for equity, it would have been very difficult for the country to continue to contain enrollment. Attempts to restrict access to secondary and higher education have resulted in more than a decade of violent protest. In addition, it is unclear that constrained enrollment would have increased student learning. In Mali's highly centralized and low capacity educational system, small classes are taught just as poorly as large classes. By contrast, the use of a language of instruction that students understand, significant changes in teacher education and support, curriculum reform and the provision of adequate educational materials could have a significant impact on improving educational quality. Moreover, in a country attempting dramatic economic growth, restricting enrollment at the primary level to less than the current rate (fewer than half of children currently start school) would seem an unproductive policy. Institutional development When donors create parallel systems in the name of efficiency of project implementation, they add another layer to existing inefficiencies in the recipient country, and miss opportunities for capacity-building. They may also inadvertently reinforce existing tendencies towards over-centralization. The Bank's support for education in Mali since 1990 is replete with such examples. The project coordination units in the education projects and the use of relatively advanced structures for contract management led to an increasing centralization of functions 41 Case Study: Mali that would have been better managed locally. The project units, and the functioning of the PRODEC team outside the MEN, disenfranchised staff in the line ministries, and created resistance to needed reform. Donor coordination Ultimately, donor coordination may be less important than donor coherence. Over the past ten years, improved cooperation in Mali has led to a far greater sense of shared purpose and goals among donors and government. However, much less progress in attaining coherence (e.g., harmonizing financial management procedures) has made it difficult for technical staff to access funds. For example, the complexity of Bank procedures leads MEN staff to use other sources of funding or, indeed, to cancel needed activities such as in-service teacher education when financing can not be accessed when needed. Quality at exit Much is made of the importance of quality at project start-up. Similar attention must be given to quality at their exit. As projects or programs come to an end, how will policy dialogue be continued? How can children be made less vulnerable to changing priorities? For example, USAID's community school intervention was an absolutely critical program of support in largely rural areas of the country over the past decade, serving the most marginalized children in the educational system. Yet there was little discussion among the donors, including the World Bank, about how to mitigate the potential negative impact of the phase-out of this support. A good deal of attention had been given to "quality at entry," but virtually none to what might happen as projects reach their conclusions. Participation and ownership The approach used by the Bank and other donors in preparing the EdSIP significantly contributed to the development of Malian capacity in policy design. Malians within the MEN developed the ten-year education policy largely by themselves. Although there was considerable external funding, they were responsible for the work and had to account for the results to funders (World Bank and CIDA) and other authorities in the GoM. The process ended with the presentation and defense of the proposed program to the National Assembly. It was a major learning and legitimizing experience for the policy design team and the education sector staff. Decentralization In countries of Mali's size, diversity and transportation/communication limitations, the central government is poorly placed to develop responses to local conditions. Attempting to retain centralized control over service delivery under these conditions produces great inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. Donor resources that are deposited into central ministry accounts and not transferred to local education offices can reinforce national centralizing tendencies. Adjustment and investment lending Adjustment lending can produce rapid, dramatic shifts in government policy by mitigating the financial and social costs of change, and/or by providing sufficient incentive to those responsible for implementing change. 42 Case Study: Mali When the national context is volatile, however, pressing for the enactment of politically sensitive reforms is risky to the Bank and the country and can have long-term negative consequences. Also, in such contexts quickly implemented reforms can be equally quickly rescinded once adjustment funds are disbursed. Investment lending may take longer to produce results, but often leads to incremental change that is rooted in the local context and supported by a wide range of actors. Capacity building Capacity building is clearly not the sum of assorted trainings. Donors and the MEN need to work together to develop coherent systems of institutional rewards and sanctions, accompanied by training focused on skill transfer, core responsibilities and results. Donors should be aware of the capacity-building potential or danger in their activities and structure them accordingly. For example, Mali has a nascent publishing industry that needs to grow for the country to develop a literate, and post-literate, society. Insistence on international competitive bidding procedures for the procurement of national language textbooks can be detrimental to the development of the local publishing industry. Attention must also be paid to the hostility of some offices in the MEN to international technical assistance, often due to huge salary differentials and the perception that ministry staff are helping the consultants do their work, rather than the other way around (interview data, 2005). In many cases, ministry officials asserted that national consultants were just as capable as international staff and external help was not necessary (interview data, 2005). Both of these issues indicate the need to clarify the role of international consultants. In-service teacher education In-service teacher education programs are a collection of different donor-driven programs, with no unifying philosophy or planning processes. Neither donor nor government interventions are based on expressions or diagnoses of teacher needs. Per diem policies in training programs also need to be reexamined. A clear lesson is that ongoing learning programs, including teacher development, must be organized on the basis of need, and that incentives must be built into the career progression of teachers and other staff--i.e., promotions and certification must be made to depend on completion of training programs. The World Bank, as well as other donors, must support a systemic, research-based approach to in-service teacher education. 8. CONCLUSIONS Development Effectiveness of Bank Support The Bank has been a major contributor to educational finance and policy change since 1990. Without the Bank's involvement, system expansion could not have occurred as rapidly as it did, and educational policy may have remained incoherent and based on disparate, donor-driven interventions. Consistently, throughout the years of the case study period, education and the social sectors more broadly were the focus of Bank intervention in Mali. Adjustment work, HIPC, the PRSP, country assistance strategies and other Bank work gave high priority to the sector. This emphasis reinforced the country's priorities: in the 2002 Client Survey, Malians listed education as their top priority (World Bank, 2002). 43 Case Study: Mali Nevertheless, it is clear, as discussed in Section 6, that Bank intervention has had positive and negative effects, and that the Bank has generally been unsuccessful in leveraging its lending program into direct impact on student experiences at the classroom level. Most investment has occurred in infrastructure and at the central level; school level inputs have not changed much. There are more textbooks than there were in 1990, but they still are far from being used by all teachers and farther still from being in the hands of all students. Other learning materials are almost absent; pre-service teacher education remains unchanged in content and duration, although perhaps housed in nicer buildings; and in-service teacher professional development has not been supported by the Bank in any substantive way. The Minister of Education found the experimentation with a new curriculum to be "a disaster,"6 and we found reason to question that judgment. On the other hand, substantial progress has been made in improving the form of the Ministry. There are commissions and committees; there are working groups and seminars. Studies are conducted, reports are submitted and policies are written. Training, transportation, computers and per diems have made it to almost every corner of the central MEN and "deconcentrated" offices. However, the image of classes of 80 poor students, many malnourished, reciting sentences in a language they do not understand with teachers whose own grasp is weak, remains the strongest image of the case study mission. Mali's education system has a long way to go. The Bank can help but interventions need to be focused at the classroom level and on helping the MEN deliver services to students. New procurement and disbursement strategies, new technical directions and new incentives will be required. Debt and the future of the sector Given the existing policy directions, the Malian education sector cannot survive without a continual, substantial influx of external resources. Donors finance an increasing range of inputs and debt relief financed the payment of some teacher salaries. Given the emphasis on universal access to primary education and increasing quality, that dependence will continue for the long-term. In 2003, the completion point of HIPC, Mali's debt was estimated in at US$ 2.64 billion. The total debt burden as a percentage of exports is expected to remain steady or to increase in coming years, due to the dependence of the economy on sectors highly prone to fluctuations in global commodity prices. At best the total debt burden could be maintained at 119%; at worst, it could rise to 350% by 2020 (World Bank and IMF, 2003). If the Bank is going to continue to support the development of a "modern" school system, using a global definition, an increase in the quantity and constancy of resources will be a necessary condition for substantive change. Improving the Development Effectiveness of Future Bank Support Donors and the GoM have decided to pursue a vision of a modernized, conventional education system in a country with a per capita GNI of US$ 240 in 2002. This decision ensures the dependence of the country on external assistance for a very long time. The level of resources currently being provided is far from the amount needed for the country to reach its goal of universal access to modern primary education of an "acceptable" quality. If the country had maintained course in the 1970s, if the Bank had continued to encourage the development of a low cost non-formal system, this might not be the case. However, the pursuit of "Real School" (Metz, 1987) triumphed, and most Malian children are still waiting for it to arrive. 6Interview with Case Study team. 44 Case Study: Mali In spite of missed opportunities, Mali's education sector in 2005 is in a stronger position than it was in 1990. Gross primary enrollments have grown from 27% to over 70%. Tens of thousands of new teachers have been recruited and hundreds of thousands of new students have been added to the rolls. Two developments, the emergence of community schools as a significant force within the sector and the rapid expansion of bilingual education, hold promise for the future and have been sources of energy and growth in the recent past. However, quality, as far as it can be measured, remains extremely low. Repetition rates remain high. The gender gap is wide. Textbook availability is sporadic. Both pre- and in-service teacher education suffer from inadequate funding and neglect. Complexity in the sector is unavoidable. It is not possible to choose between building classrooms and buying books, or even between buying books and buying supplemental reading materials. What is avoidable is choosing poor strategies, and the story of Mali's education system is full of poor strategies that have endured for decades. A language of instruction that is not spoken by students, parents or communities; expensive classrooms that cannot be maintained by communities or supported by the national budget, and that do not include libraries, teachers' work spaces or playgrounds; and textbooks that are so expensive they must be edited internationally, ordered in limited quantities and guarded as treasures away from children are not strategies that will enable the country to reach the millennium development goals. Business as usual is unlikely to deliver the breakthroughs needed to reach sector goals. Educational efficiency would be improved and children's life chances greatly enhanced by, inter alia: the careful choice of approaches based on strong in-country and regional analytic work, recent, peer-reviewed education literature, exemplary models from other locations; careful development and experimental testing followed by monitoring and evaluation of educational hypotheses in cases when the best approach is unknown; and the development of achievement-focused incentive systems for teachers, technicians and administrators. Finally, an intensified sector dialogue, widespread adoption of field-tested policy initiatives such as bilingual education, and a significant increase in resource availability at the classroom level are promising avenues to significant medium term changes in Mali's primary education. 45 Case Study: Mali References Abillama, Fadi. 2004. Bilan financier et de procédure du PISE 2001-2003. Bamako, Mali. Adamolekun, Lapido. 2002. Public Administration in Africa: Main issues and selected country studies. Ibadan, Nigeria. Afristat. 2005. Principaux agrégats à prix courants. Bamako, Mali. Bagayoko, Diola, and Diawara, Moussa M., in African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Damtew Teferra and Philip. G. Altbach, eds., Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 423-430. Bayart, Jean François. 1989. L'Etat en Afrique, Fayart Editeur. Paris. Bourmaud, Daniel. 1997. La politique en Afrique. Montchrestien, Editeur. Paris. Doucouré, Samba et Diarra, Abou. 2003. Processus d'élaboration et de mise en oeuvre duProgramme Décennal de Développement de l'Education (Editude de cas du Mali). Ministère de l'Education Nationale. Bamako, Mali. Doumbia, Saliha, et Traoré, Modibo. 2005. Caractéristiques et déterminants du chômage, du sous emploi et des situations inadéquates d'emploi des jeunes. OEF. Bamako, Mali. European Centre for Development Policy Management. 2003. Relating sector wide approaches and decentralization: Towards greater policy coherence. Maastricht, The Netherlands. Gouvernement du Mali. 1994a. La modernisation de l'administration publique et le développement institutionnel. Conférence de table ronde du Mali. Bamako, Mali. _____. 1994b. La nouvelle politique de décentralisation au Mali: Justifications, enjeux et perspectives. Conférence de table ronde du Mali. Bamako, Mali. _____. 1996. Loi et décrets de la décentralisation. Primature. Bamako, Mali. _____. 1998. Recensement Général de la Population et de l'Habitat au Mali. DNSI. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2002. Cadre stratégique de lutte contre la pauvreté, version finale. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2003a. Enquête Malienne sur l'Evaluation de la Pauvreté (EMEP) ­ Résultats définitifs. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2003b. CPPR, Mali. Bamako, Mali Governement of Mali, International Monetary Fund, World Bank. 1999. Enhanced Structural Adjustement Facility, Medium Term Policy Framework Paper 1999-2002. Bamako, Mali. International Monetary Fund. 2004a. Country Report, Mali. Report No. 04/10. Washington, DC. _____. 2004b. PRSP Progress Report, Mali. Report No. 04/189. Washington DC. International Monetary Fund, World Bank. 1998. Final decision point document on the Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. World Bank. Washington DC. _____. 2000. Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC): Document for the Completion Point Under the Original Framework and Decision Point Under the Enhanced Framework. World Bank Washington, DC. _____. 2003. Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, Completion Point Document. Washington DC. Johanson, Richard K., and Adams, Arvil V. 2004. Skills Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank. Washington DC. Médard, Jean François. 1992. Etats d'Afrique noire. Karthala, Editeur. Paris. Ministère de l'Education de Base. 1995. La Nouvelle Ecole Fondamentale. Bamako, Mali. _____. 1999. Indicateurs du système éducatif du Mali. CPS. Bamako, Mali. 46 Case Study: Mali Ministère de l'Education Nationale. 1989. Actes des Etats Généraux de l'Education. Bamako, Mali. _____. 1991. Débat National sur l'Education- Document Final. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2000. Programme Décennal de Développement de l'Education : les Grandes Orientation de la Politique Educative. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2001. Programme d'Investissement Sectoriel de l'Education (PISE), Manuel de procédures d'exécution version définitive. Direction Administrative et Financière. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2003a. Evaluation de la performance en français, en mathématiques et en langues nationales des élèves des classes de 4ème année des écoles à pédagogie convergente et des écoles classiques au premier cycle de l'enseignement fondamental. Bamako, Mali. ____. 2003b. Communication du Mali au Séminaire sur les manuels scolaires et autres matériels didactiques imprimés. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. _____. 2004a. Cadre des Dépenses à Moyen Terme. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2004b. Résumé Exécutif de l'Aide Mémoire- Vème Mission Conjointe de Suivi du Programme d'Investissement dans le Secteur de l'Education (PISE). Bamako, Mali _____. 2004c. Annuaire statistique 2003/2004. CPS. Bamako, Mali _____. 2004d. Rapport financier: Situation d'exécution du PISE du 01/01/03 au 31/12/03. Direction Administrative et Financière (2004). Bamako, Mali. _____. 2004 e. Atelier de programmation budgétaire 2005. Direction Administrative et Financière. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2004f. Aide mémoire de la revue conjointe à mi parcours du PISE. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2005a. Répartition fonctionnelle des dépenses 2000-2005. Direction Administrative et Financière. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2005b. Rapport financier, Situation d'exécution du PISE du 01/01/04 au 31/12/04. Direction Administrative et Financière. Bamako, Mali. _____. 2005c. Les Grandes Orientations de la Phase II du PISE- Version Finale Provisoire. Bamako, Mali. Ministère de l'Education Nationale et Ministère de l'Economie et des Finances. 2004. Budget programme 2005, Tome 1. Bamako, Mali. Ministère de la Santé. 2002. Enquête Démographique et de Santé au Mali. CPS/DNSI. Bamako, Mali. Ministère du Plan. 2005. Tableau de sortie du modèle macroéconomique du Mali. Direction Nationale de la Planification du Développement. Bamako, Mali. SARECI. 2004. Audit des comptes du programme d'investissement de l'éducation (PISE), Exercice 2003. Ministère de l'Education Nationale. Bamako, Mali. Sindjoun, Luc. 1996. Quelle forme d'Etat pour l'Afrique. Afrique 2000, mai 1996. World Bank. 1973. Staff Appraisal Report, First Education Project. Report No. 140a-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 1977. Staff Appraisal Report, Second Education and Training Project. Report No. 1379a-MLI. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1982. Project Performance Audit Report, Mali. Report No. 3848. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1983a. Demand for Primary Schooling in Rural Mali: should user fees be increased ? Report No. PHN- 8704. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1983b. Demand for Health and Schooling in Mali: Results of the Community and Service Provider Survey, Mali. CPD Discussion Paper No. 1983-7. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1984. Staff Appraisal Report, Third Education Project. Report No. 4542-MLI. Washington DC. 47 Case Study: Mali ­­­­­. 1986. Project Performance Audit Report, Second Education and Training Project. Report No. 6481. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1989. Report and Recommendation. Education Sector Consolidation Project. Report No. P-5010-MLI. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1990. Report and Recommendation. Structural Adjustment Program (SAL I). Report No. P-5318-MLI. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1991. Staff Appraisal Report, Agricultural Services Project. Report No. 9073-MLI. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1992. Implementation Completion Report, Third Education Project. Report No. 10985. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1993a. Poverty Assessment, Mali . Report No. 11842-MLI. Washington DC. 1993b. Case Studies in Financing Quality Basic Education, Mali. Washington DC. ­­­­­. 1994a. Country Assistance Strategy. Report n° 13746-MLI. Washington DC. 1994b. Report and Recommendation, Education Sector Adjustment Credit. Report No. P-6484-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 1995a. Mali Public Expenditure Review, Report n° 13086-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 1995b. Participation in Education, Mali. Report No. 18182. Washington DC. _____. 1996a. Report and Recommendation, Economic Management Credit. Report No. P-6909-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 1996b. Staff Appraisal Report. Vocational Education and Training Consolidation Project. Report No 15347. Washington DC. _____. 1996c. Project Performance Audit Report, Third Education Project. Report No. 15855. Washington DC. _____. 1996d. Implementation Completion Report, Education Sector Consolidation Project. Report No. 15720. Washington DC. _____. 1996e. Project Information Document, Economic Management Operation Project. Report No. PIC 3243. Washington DC. _____. 1997. Implementation Completion Report, Education Sector Adjustment Credit. Report No. 16645. Washington DC. _____. 1998a. Staff Appraisal Report. Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty. Report No. 17342. Washington DC. _____. 1998b. Country Assistance Strategy, Mali. Report No. 17775. Washington DC. _____. 1999a. Medium Term Policy Framework Paper, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 1999b. Implementation Completion Report, Agricultural Services Project. Report No. 19323-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 2000a. Project Appraisal Document. Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. Report No. 19601. Washington DC. _____. 2000b. Project Appraisal Document: Education Sector Investment Program. Report No 20295-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 2000c. Aide-Memoire, Vocational Education and Training Consolidation Project, P001, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2000d. Mali: Indigenous Knowledge-blending the new and the old, Mali. Report No. 23437. Washington DC. _____. 2000e. President Report, Oil Shock Supplemental Credit. Report No. P-7415-AFR. Washington DC. _____. 2001a. Aide-Memoire, Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. 48 Case Study: Mali _____. 2001b. Aide-Memoire, Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2001c. Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project. P0035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2001d. Implementation Completion Report: Economic Management Credit, Report No. 21799. Washington DC. _____. 2001e. Under the HIPC Debt Initiative (Vol.1), Mali. Report No. P-7259-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 2001f. President Report, Third Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC III) Project. Report No. P-7495-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 2002a. BTOR, Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2002b. Aide-Memoire, Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Projeect. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. ____. 2002c. BTOR, Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2002d. Aide-Memoire. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2002e. Aide-Memoire. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2002f. HIPC Expenditure Tracking, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2002g. Client Feedback Survey, Mali. Washington DC _____. 2002h. School Health Situation Analysis, Mali. Report No. 24523. Washington DC _____. 2002i. Developing Indigenous Knowledge in Francophone Africa- a four nation review, Mali. Report No. 23656. Washington DC _____. 2002j. Deux Etudes Pour la Scolarisation Primaire Universelle dans les Pays du Sahel en 2015, Mali. Report No. 23563. Washington DC _____. 2003a. BTOR, Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Projeect. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003b. Aide-Memoire, Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003c. BTOR, Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003d. BTOR, Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003e. BTOR, Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003f. BTOR, Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003g. Aide-Memoire. Third Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC III) Project, P072785, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003h. Aide-Memoire. Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003i. Aide-Memoire. Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. P058770, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003j. Aide-Memoire. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003k. Aide-Memoire. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2003l. Implementation Completion Report. Vocational Education and Training Consolidation Project . Report No. 26178. Washington DC. _____. 2003m. PRSP, Mali. Report No. 25462. Washington DC. 49 Case Study: Mali _____. 2003n. Country Assistance Strategy, Mali. Report No. 25663. Washington DC. _____. 2003o. Third Structural Adjustment Credit. Report No. 26649. Washington DC. _____. 2004a. BTOR. Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2004b. Aide-Memoire. Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty Project. P035617, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2004c. BTOR. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2004d. Aide-Memoire. Education Sector Expenditure Program Project, P040650, Mali. Washington DC. _____. 2004e. Implementation Completion Report. Grassroots Initiatives to Fight Hunger and Poverty. Report No. 28408. Washington DC. _____. 2004f. Implementation Completion Report, Third Structural Adjustment Credit. Report n°29606. Washington DC. _____. 2004g. Education For All, Fast Track Initiative Framework Paper. Washington DC. _____. 2004h. Implementation Completion Report, Improving Learning in Primary Schools Project. Report n° 27345. Washington DC. _____. 2004i. Implementation Completion Report, Third Structural Adjustment Project. Report No. 29606-MLI. Washington DC. _____. 2004j. Project Appraisal Document, Development Learning Center Project. Report No. 28960-MLI. Washington DC. 51 Case Study: Mali Case Study Annexes 52 Case Study: Mali Annex 1: Timeline of Events and Development Assistance National World Bank Events Impact on Education Year Policies & Other Donor Remarks Events Events 1968 Interruption of the implementation of the The coup d'état and economic Coup d'état education reform of 1962 difficulties hampered sector installing a development. During the 1970s, Marxist oriented approximately 75% of current regime expenditures financed the wage bill, leaving few resources for social sectors. 1973 First World Bank education Insufficient sector investment. Government focused on Drought sector credit (Cr. 420-MLI; managing the food supply and US$5 million) maintaining political control. Government First departure of teachers About 1,000 teachers (approximately 1982 starts Civil service recruitment frozen 12.5%) depart the profession implementing Progressive closing of teacher education structural institutions. adjustment measures. 1987 First pédagogie Educators and administrators begin to Milestone in Mali's search for an convergente implement the bilingual program. effective bilingual education model. classrooms open in Ségou 1989 Education Sector . Violent demonstrations accompany Hybrid Project (Adjustment & Consolidation Project attempts to implement adjustment Investment) (CR 2054-MLI, US$26 mil) measures. Measures are not implemented. Access to education increases through the investment component. 1990 First donor Sector capacity improved; sector leaders support for were trained with USAID support. monitoring and evaluation (USAID) 53 Case Study: Mali 1991 Traoré regime is Structural Adjustment Structural adjustment continues. Students play a critical role in overthrown Program (SAL I) ( Cr. No. overthrowing the regime. 2188-MLI; US$70.0 m) Students became an important part of Student pressure includes violent Political political life. Secondary education demonstrations. transition scholarships and overall public begins expenditure for education increase, from 13.1 to 16.7 B CFAF in 1991 and 1993 respectively. 1992 Democratic Education officially becomes a national Decentralization, privatization of national firms, Presidential priority. political liberalization begin. election, Konare Gov't begins 1993 Government USAID starts a Number of community school teachers authorizes the community increases from 1106 in 1996 to 5808 in establishment of school program 2003. Increase in the GER accelerates community (0.7% from 1990 to 91 vs. 3.6% from schools 1993 to 94). Average growth never under 3% through 2003. 1995 Education Sector Adjustment 300 teachers redeployed from Double shifting strongly criticized Project (ESAP; CR 2673-MLI, administrative positions to classrooms. by parents and teachers as US$50 mil) Double shift teaching increases: 30% of contributing to declines in education primary school. classes. quality. 414 new community schools from 1993 to 1995. 1995 President of the World Bank President Alpha Konaré launched the visits Mali idea of a long term education program which became PRODEC 1996 PRODEC Bank financially supported the Other donors, Participative policy development The National Commission for development PRODEC team until 1998 including UNDP, process. Education Reform is dissolved and launched. UNESCO & JICA Major areas of policy reform are work is taken over by the PRODEC supported the determined. team. development of PRODEC 54 Case Study: Mali 1998 Education Sector Most donors to Significant increase in external The Bank did not commit to the Round Table Malian education assistance for education investment plan, but agreed to participate finance a program to support the expansion of pédagogie convergente and decentralization. This gave Mali time to fulfill conditionalities for major lending. 1999 Parliament Expanded Parliament involvement in Mali's first education law. approves the education sector oversight. education law 2000 Development of Development of the EdSIP Donors endorse Resources are reallocated between the EdSIP the sector wide education levels: basic education current approach and expenditures increases from 56.7% to program. 66% from 2000-05. Lower salaries for new contractual teachers (2.1 GDP per capita). 2000 Improving Learning in Pédagogie convergente expansion Primary Education Project is accelerates. approved and implemented (Cr. No. 33180-MLI; US$2.31 million). Bank agrees to support the Ed Sector Investment Project (EdSIP) 2001 EdSIP launched Ed Sector Investment Project EdSIP launched First program with activities that cover A partnership framework is launched (Cr 3449-MLI, the entire education system, using a established between the GoM and US$49 million), as first phase sector wide approach, (SWAP). donors to improve coordination. of an Adaptable Program Loan (APL) University of Specialized schools and faculties are The institution's master plan is not Bamako under the umbrella of this new entity completed established 55 Case Study: Mali 2002 Implementation of EdSIP Full involvement Increases in enrollment, professional No communication/dissemination starts of all the donors development, textbook distribution and program: reduces support for to education in curriculum reform. From 2001-2004, critical programs. Mali GER increases from 61% to 70.5%. 2005 Development of Development process Donors are Development of the budget support EdSIP 2 supported by the Bank contributing to approach for the next round of the (missions of the Task manager EdSIP evaluation EdSIP APL. in February and June; RESEN, external evaluation of EdSIP 1, learning evaluation) 56 Case Study: Mali Annex 2: Inventory of World Bank Assistance (funding levels in US Dollars) Lending: Education Sector Lending: Other Sectors Conditionalities 1.Education Sector 1. Structural Adjustment Program A. Education Sector (see Column 1) Consolidation Project (1989; (SAL I) (1991; 32.0 m); 1. Eleven (11) measures were listed in an 23.9 m) 2. Transport Sector (1994; 65.0 m); education policy letter. They included (i) 2. Education Sector Adjustment 3. Urban Development. & the allocation of at least 25 percent of the Project (1995; 50.0 m); Decentralization (1997; 80.0 m); government recurrent budget to MEN; (ii) 3. Vocational Education & 3. Regional Power (1997; 17.1 m) the implementation on schedule of the Training Consolidation Project 4. Grassroots Hunger/Poverty (1998; scholarship reduction program; (iii) (1996; 14.52 m); 21.5 m); increases in the primary education budget 4. Improving Learning in 5. Integrated Health Sector to 40 percent (second tranche) and 42 Primary Schools Project (2000; Investment (1999; 40.0 m); percent (third tranche) 2.31); 6. Finance Sector Development 2. Eleven (11) measures were 5. Education Sector (2000; 21.0 m); Expenditure (Investment) 7. Rural Infrastructure (2000; 115.1 Program (2001; 45.0 m) m); listed in an education policy letter. 8. Agricultural & Producer Organizations (2002; 43.5 m); Two of them were the 9. Structural Adjustment Program (SAC III) (2002; 70.0 m); redeployment of non-teaching 10. Development Learning Center (2004; 2.5 m) teachers to classrooms and the development of a legal framework for the expansion of private education. 3. The conditionalities were expressed in a policy letter as 16 measures, including the Ministry of Secondary and Higher Education and of Scientific Research agrees to exert tight control over student flows in accordance with the absorptive capacity of training capacities, not only for student in public institutions of vocational training but also students in private institutions and , beginning in 1998, the Government will increase the funds allocated for reparative materials and equipment used in technical and vocational training. The amount per student will rise from CFAF 50,000 to CFAF 60,000 and will then remain at this level throughout the life of the project. 4. None 5. The conditionalities included: (i) approval of PRODEC by December 1998; (ii) "comité de pilotage" named. Agreement on management team within 57 Case Study: Mali Ministry of Education by December 1998; (iii) maintain the 1996 level of scholarship funding; (iv) agreement on teachers' salaries (1999); (v) agreement to reform secondary and higher education scholarship program; (vi) availability of resources to implement education reform. B. Other sectors (see Column 2) 1. Macroeconomic Fundamentals (i). Full compliance with PFP targets; (ii) Expansion of tax revenue from 13.2% to 15% of GDP (2000). 2. Public Enterprise (i) Action plan implemented to improve EDM's financial situation, including tariff increases in 1998, 1999 & 2000; (ii) satisfactory arrangements for strengthening EDM's management; (iii) Privatization of EDM; (iv) Privatization of SOTELMA. 3. Rural Development (i) Implementation and redeployment plan to ensure better balance between staff of MDRE based in the capital and rural areas; (ii) adoption of an organizational structure for the Ministry that better reflects the new role between public and private sectors in service delivery to farmers (1999); (iii) propose sustainable solutions to terms and conditions of land use and researchers of IER (December 1998); (iv) completion of a rural road strategy (December 1998); (v) completion of a cotton sector strategy (June 1999). Economic & Sector Work: Economic & Sector Work: Other Education 1. Survey of the Informal 1. Equity & Growth (1998); Sector in Mali (1989), 2. Rural Strategy (1998); 2. Mali, Assessment of Living 3. Household Survey (1999); Conditions (1993); 4. Cotton Strategy (1999); 3. Case Studies in Financing 5. Irrigation Strategy (1999); Basic Education, Mali (1993); 6. Poverty Profile Update (2000); 4. Participation in Education, 7. Medium Term Expenditure Mali (1995); Framework (2001); 5. Indigenous Knowledge, 8. HIPC Monitoring/Completion Blending the New and the Old, Point (2003; US$20 K); Mali (2000); 9. IDF Gender/Legal/Literacy (2003; 6. Developing Indigenous US$15 K); Knowledge in Francophone 10. PRSP Review (2003; US$176 K); 58 Case Study: Mali Africa, a Four Nation 11. Cotton Poverty Study (2004; Overview, Mali (2002); US$36 K); 7. Two studies of universal 12. Livestock Poverty Growth (2004; primary education in US$25 K); Sahelian countries to 2015 13. Supports for Poverty Reduction (2002). Info. System (2004; US$41 K); 8. Pédagogie convergente: 14. Transport Support to Growth & Language Learning (in first and Equity (2000; US$92 K) second languages) in primary schools 9. Street Children: The Case of Bamako Policy Dialogue: Education Policy Dialogue: Other Policy dialogue revolved Policy dialogue dealt with macro around how to improve access, economic stability and the quality and equity at an development of conducive affordable cost particularly in environment for investment and basic education. Achievement economic growth. This led to the of these objectives required requirement that the GoM decrease profound structural adjustment public expenditures, especially the of the sector: reduction of civil servant wage bill, without scholarships, control of impacting social sectors, especially enrollment in secondary and education and health. tertiary education, the development of a master plan for higher education, an increase in education's share of the national budget, and a reallocation of that budget among the different levels of education. Capacity Building: Education Capacity Building: Other The Bank has supported a Annual public expenditure reviews variety of capacity building (post 2000) and the preparation of activities since 1990, including: HIPC and PRSP documents also training in school mapping, increased government capacity. information and communications technology, procurement, budgeting, the use of software for educational planning and modeling and a variety of technical areas such as curriculum and textbook development. A team of education professionals participated in a study organized by the Bank in Latin America (El Salvador & Guatemala) to investigate the Escuela Nueva. Malian education professionals participated also in various regional technical seminars. 59 Case Study: Mali Annex 3: Trends in Public Expenditure for Education (billions, FCFA) A. Education Expenditures & National Recurrent Budget 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Education sector budget(FCFA billions) 20.6 19.7 23.6 26.4 29.2 34.4 41.6 46.8 52.2 54.9 64.8 71.9 129 Education sector as a percentage of national current budget 21.2 19.9 20.1 21.2 22.5 24 24.7 27.1 29.5 29.5 30.6 30 30.3 MEN, 2005 B. Basic Education Expenditure as Percentage of Education Sector Recurrent Budget Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Percent 56.7 59.7 61.5 63.2 64.6 66.0 MEN, 2005 Note: Data is not available before 2000, when Mali's first Public Expenditure Review for education took place. C. Education Expenditure with & without HIPC Year % HIPC Budget With HIPC Without HIPC HIPC For Educ. 2000 National Budget (NB) 522 536 762 518 736 762 3 800 000 Education Budget (EB) 60 523 449 59 878 682 644 767 16.9 Basic Education Budget (BEB): grades 1-9 . 35 171 448 34 647 628 523 820 13.8 2001 NB 587 899 111 574 299 111 13 600 000 EB 64 378 981 58 308 013 6 070 968 44.6 BEB 39 255 625 36 357 439 2 898 186 21.3 2002 NB 679 330 540 647 530 540 31 800 000 EB 78 566 342 67 387 013 11 179 329 35.1 BEB 51 963 073 44 603 316 7 359 757 23.1 2003 NB 737 552 452 702 830 452 34 722 000 EB 102 652 531 91 438 154 11 214 377 32.3 BEB 74 304 898 65 370 846 8 934 052 25.7 60 Case Study: Mali 2004 NB 787 198 778 764 557 778 22 641 000 EB 119 061 015 105 541 015 13 520 000 59.7 BEB 89 652 202 77 323 345 12 328 857 54.5 2005 NB 836 231 194 811 597 194 24 634 000 EB 128 702 639 111 950 459 16 752 180 68.0 BEB 96 003 605 80 749 887 15 253 718 61.9 MEN, 2005 Note: Before reaching the HIPC completion point, Mali prepared a transition PRSP and thus received resources of the debt relief as soon as 2000. Mali decided to allocate 45% of debt relief to education. 61 Case Study: Mali Annex 4: Trends in Major Basic Education Development Indicators A. Gross enrollment rates (GER) from SY 1990-1991 to SY 2003-2004 (per school year), Grades 1-6 Girls Boys Total 1990/1991 20 34 27 1991/1992 21 36 29 1992/1993 25 41 33 1993/1994 28 45 36 1994/1995 31 47 39 1995/1996 33 51 42 1996/1997 37 57 47 1997/1998 40 60 50 1998/1999* 46 60 56 1999/2000 50 72 61 2000/2001 50 73 61 2001/2002 53 75 64 2002/2003 56 78 67 2003-2004 60 81 71 * doesn't include new medersa students ** prior to 1998, students in community schools supported by Save the Children are not included (Ministry of National Education, 2005) B. Gross enrollment rates (GER,) from SY 1990-1991-SY 2003-2004, Grades 7-9 (including medersas except in 2001-2002) Girls Boys Total 1990/1991 8 15 11 1991/1992 8 16 12 1992/1993 8 16 12 1993/1994 9 17 13 1994/1995 9 18 14 1995/1996 10 19 15 1996/1997 11 21 16 1997/1998 12 23 18 1998/1999 14 26 20 1999/2000 16 28 22 2000/2001 18 31 24 2001/2002 20 36 28 2002/2003 22 38 30 2003-2004 25 44 34 (Ministry of National Education, 2005) C. Regional Disparities in Gross Enrollment Rate (GER), Ministry of National Education Bamako Highest non- Lowest 62 Case Study: Mali Bamamko 2000/2001 130 67 (Koulikoro) 25 (Kidal) 2001/2002 133 68 (Koulikoro) 27 (Kidal) 2002/2003 137 70 (Koulikoro) 30 (Kidal) 2003-2004 126 76 (Koulikoro) 32 (Kidal) (Ministry of National Education, 2005) D. Gross Intake Rate (GIR) Girls Boys Total 1990/1991 21 35 28 1991/1992 23 39 31 1992/1993 32 47 40 1993/1994 32 43 37 1994/1995 32 43 37 1995/1996 34 49 41 1996/1997 41 61 51 1997/1998 43 60 52 1998/1999* 44 56 41 1999/2000 44 58 51 2000/2001 46 63 54 2001/2002 51 66 58 2002/2003 54 67 61 2003-2004 57 71 64 * doesn't include new medersa students ** prior to 1998, students in community schools supported by Save the Children are not included (Ministry of National Education, 2005) E. Repetition Rates, from SY 1993-1994 to S& 2002-2003 (between school years) Girls Boys 1993/1994 31 30 1994/1995 19 19 1995/1996 17 16 1996/1997 18 18 1997/1998 21 20 1998/1999 19 18 1999/2000 20 18 2000/2001 17 16 2001/2002 20 20 2002/2003 20 19 (Ministry of National Education, 2005) 63 Case Study: Mali F. Student survival to 5th grade, per 1000 entering students, Ministry of National Education Girls Boys 1993/1994 604 684 1994/1995 790 859 1995/1996 856 921 1996/1997 838 886 1997/1998 894 958 1998/1999 1297 1375 1999/2000 840 894 2000/2001 798 878 2001/2002 735 814 2002/2003 801 874 (Ministry of National Education, 2005) G1. Exam Pass Rates (percentage) Year Traditional Pédagogie convergente Students Students 1994 61 1995 60 1996 54 1997 55 1998 56 1999 61 2000 55 2001 57 2002 60 2003 61 76 2004 57 70 2005 62 79 (Ministry of National Education, National Center for Education Exams and Testing, 2005) G2. Exam pass rates (percentage) Year Traditional Pédagogie convergente Students Students 1994 41 57 1995 42 38 1996 54 76 1997 37 50 1998 48 72 1999 49 79 2000 52 69 (Ministry of National Education, Statistics Office, cited in ADEA, 2003) *It is impossible to determine which source is more accurate without extensive additional review. 64 Case Study: Mali H. Numbers of teachers I. Changes in student:teacher and student: classroom ratios Year Number of Teachers Year Number Number Number of Student:teacher Student: 1985 8,593 of of classrooms ratio classroom 1990 8,156 students teachers ratio 1991 7,963 1996 778450 9677 10385 80 75 1992 8,688 1997 862874 10853 11682 80 74 1993 8,363 1998 958935 11347 15446 85 62 1994 8,274 1999 1015479 15532 17845 65 57 1995 8,718 2000 1126364 17766 20655 63 55 1996 9,677 2001 1211989 21114 21618 57 56 1997 10,853 2002 1294672 22566 22330 57 58 (World Bank (EdStats), 2005) 2003 1396731 24646 24538 57 57 Ministry of National Education, 2005 *It should be noted that these figures mask significant regional disparities. The use of double- shifting makes the data less reliable. J. Adult Literacy Rate Year Adult Literacy Rate 1985 16 1990 19 1995 22 2000 19 2001 19 SSA 64 average Low 64 income (World Bank (EdStats), 2005) 65 Case Study: Mali Annex 5. Schools Visited 66 Case Study: Mali Annex 6: List of People Interviewed a. In Mali I. Ministers & former ministers of Education 1. CAMARA, Diallo Fatoumata, Former Minister of Education 2. DICKO, Moustapha , Former Minister of Education 3. DICKO, Younouss Hamèye, Former Minister of Education 4. HAIDARA, Baba Hakib, Former Minister of Education 5. KEITA, Modibo, Former Prime Minister 6. KONE, Bakari, Former Minister of Finance 7. KOULIBALY, Tiena, Former Minister of Finance 8. SAMASSEKOU, Adama, Former Minister of Education 9. TOURE, Bassari, Former Minister of Finance 10. TRAORE, Mamadou Lamine, Present Minister of Education II. Professionals7 1. AMADOU, Sidibe; Director, Institutional Development Commissariat 2. AG AMADIR, Ichrach, Advior for Orientation, CAP of Sévaré 3. BA, Youba; Director, Finance Department 4. BAGAYOKO, Ibrahima; Busar, IFM of Sikasso 5. BAGAYOKO, Issiaka; First Vice President, Mopti Department Council 6. BAGAYOKO, Madij; Director, Technical Services, Mopti City Council 7. BENGALI, Daouda; mayor, Rural Council of Diomatene 8. BENGALY, Mory; Vice President, Regional Assemby of Sikasso 9. BOGINOT, Patrick; In charge of Educcation at UNICEF 10. BOKOUM, Abdou; Advisor for Orientation 11. BOUBAKAR, Tapi; President, Mopti Regional Assembly 12. DACKOUO, Jean Galber; CAP Advisor 13. DEMBELE, Chaka; Chief, Pegnesso Village 14. DEMBELE, Mamadou; Director FAFPA (Training Funds) 15. DEMBELE, Sinaly; Save the Children 16. DIABATE, Lassimi (Dr.); Deputy Minister, Ministry of Employment 17. DIAKITE, Soulaila; In Charge of Education at CIDA 18. DIARRA, Noel; Deputy Director, Institutional Development Commissariat 19. DICKO, Seckou Oumar, Director of Academy 20. DISSA, Nanzanga; President, Sikasso Cercle Council 21. DJIRE, Moussa; Inspector of Economic Affairs 22. DOUCOURE, Samba; Director, Support Unit for Decentralization 23. DOUMBIA, Saliha; Directory, Employment & Training Observatory 24. HAIDARA, Mocktar, First Deputy Mayor of Sikasso 25. HAIDARA, Tania; Director, SwissContact Mali 26. HOYAUX, Alexis; In Charge of Education at Belgium Technical Cooperation 27. KONATE, Abdoulaye; Economist, Bank Resident Mission, Bamako, Mali 7Group meetings with of CGS members & APE presidents OF Mopti Region: (i) Bacari Ouologuem, Sevare; (ii) Saremala School; (iii) Niema School; (iv) Kouna School ; (v) Samadougou School ; (vi) Sikasso, Bemba and Pegnesso Schools. 67 Case Study: Mali 28. KONE, Fagnanama; Chief, Cotton Sector Re-Structuring 29. KONE, Jerome; Division Chief, Planning & Examination of the Academy 30. KOULIBALY, Djougou; World Education 31. KY, Abdoulaye; Former Bank staff 32. LAMOT, Edouard; In Charge of Education at UNESCO 33. LESSER, Jo; Education Officer at USAID 34. MAIGA, Abdoulaye; Director, CAP of Mopti 35. MAIGA, Ario; Education Advisor at the Prime Minister's Office 36. MONDOLINI, Dominique; In charge of Education at the French Cooperation 37. NIAMBELE, Issikia; Deputy Director, Planning & Statistics Unit, MEN 38. NIANGALY, Sakaria; Advisor, Municipal Council of Soufouroulaye 39. OLTHETEN, Theo; The Netherlands Embassy, In Charge of Education 40. PIETE, Jean-Claude; Unit Chief, French Cooperation 41. SIDIBE, Noumouke; Director, CAP of Sikasso 42. SISSOKO, Fassayon Gaston; Director, CAP of Sevare 43. SISSOUMA, Adama; National Director of local Collectivities 44. SOGOBA, Ibrahim; Deputy of San 45. SOKONA, Mohamed; Division Chief, Planning & Exams, Sikasso 46. STRAMMER, Geza; In Charge of Decentralization & State Reform at the European Union 47. TAPILY, Oumar; Mayor, Rural Council of Soroli 48. TOGO, Barthélemy; Secretary General, Ministry of Education 49. TRAORE, Drissa; Division Chief, Basic Education, Sikasso 50. TRAORE, Hama; Division Chief, DAF, MEN 51. VIRIEUX, Jean-Christophe; Budgetary Support, European Union 52. VON DER LEY, Inge; GTZ, Education Economist III. Parliament & Other 1. CONDO, Aliou Badara; , Member, Parliament Commission for Education & Culture 2. GUINDO, Adama; Adviser, Parliament Commission for Education & Culture 3. KONE, Makan Doh; President, Parliament Commission for Education & Culture 4. DIARRA, Mamadou Lamine; President, Federation of APEs (Association of Students' Parents) 5. GANABA, Youssouf; Secretary General, FEN (Teachers Union) 6. MARIKO, Oumar; Former Student Leader (AEEM) & Present Political Party Leader 7. TELLY, Tibou ; Secretary General, SNEC (Teachers Union) B. In Paris 1. NDOYE, Mamadou; ADEA C. In Washington DC (Bank staff who have worked on Mali) 1. CARLSON, Samuel; (by e-mail); Former TTL 2. EXPERTON, William; Current TTL 3. FREDRIKSEN, Birger; Former Division Chief for the Sahel Department 4. PROUTY, Robert; Former TTL 5. TEMBON, Mercy; Former TTL 6. SARBIB, Jean-Louis; Senior VP, HDN 69 Case Study: Mali Annex 7: Interview Guidelines for Malian and World Bank Staff Introductory note. This instrument is mainly an outline. The interviewer should fill in the gaps and adjust the content to the interviewee. S(he) should avoid questions that provoke a yes or no reply. Objectives of the interview (as an introduction to the interview) The case study: to help evaluate the impact of the World Bank's activities on Primary Education from 1990 to present. Briefly present OED and indicate the recipient of the case. Baseline review of the interviewee's intervention in Mali Period of your intervention in Mali In which capacity did you intervene in Mali? What was the status of Education in general, and Primary Education in particular when you started working on Mali? · Lending · Ministry capacity · Major issues in the sector What educational policies, including those related to EFA goals, were in place? What was the status of their implementation Bank's Intervention in Primary Education Your overview of Bank's intervention Specific points Bank-country dialogue (including adjustment/MOF relationship) Bank-sector dialogue Major Bank interventions (projects, components, technical/policy advice) Implementation obstacles Implementation successes Analytical work Capacity building What changes in the sector do you think were related to Bank intervention? Did Bank intervention cause other, unforeseen, changes in the sector or country? World Bank and other donors What other donors were involved in Primary Education at the time? How different was their involvement from Bank's? Describe the relationship between Bank and those donors 70 Case Study: Mali How would you estimate the relative funding of those donors compared to the Bank's? Please estimate other donors' contribution to the changes described above Do you think the changes indicated above would have happened: Without Bank's intervention? With different Bank intervention (different teams, different lending instruments)? Without any other donors' intervention? What major events (political, natural, etc.) influenced policy implementation and/or the changes during this period?. Please explain. Reflections How would you describe your involvement with Mali from the time you stopped directly working with the country to the present? As you reflect on that entire period, what are your thoughts about the Bank's work? Were the interventions relevant? Were they well-matched with policy goals? Were they the most efficient way of achieving policy goals? Was anything neglected that should have been emphasized? What changes would you make if you had the chance to do it again? Conclusions What is your assessment of the sector in Mali at the end of your involvement and/or at the present? After this review, how would you assess the Bank's influence on Primary Education in Mali? 71 Case Study: Mali Annex 8: School Level Data Collection A. Questionnaire guidelines for administrators: Collecte des données au niveau des écoles Description de l'école, son environnement, placement des bâtiments, sécurité des élèves, placement dans la ville/village Directeur de l'école genre années d'expérience formation enseignant aussi? Enseignants nombre total par année scolaire : genre, formation, années expérience, statut Autre personnel nombre fonction APE bureau (nombre, genre) responsabilités collecte d'argent : quand, combien, pourquoi Salles de classe nombre provenance état Cycles d'instruction Programmes offerts Latrines nombre provenance filles/garçons entretien Autres bâtiments (bibliothèque, bureaux de directeur) nombre fonction état Manuels scolaires pour le curriculum officiel 72 Case Study: Mali Autres manuels Autres matériaux d'instruction Petits matériaux (craie, cahiers des enseignants, cahiers d'administration, bics, crayons) Situation de la scolarisation de la communauté (taux de scolarisation, problème des filles, autres problèmes) Histoire de l'école Pour chaque catégorie, nous chercherons toutes les informations historiques disponibles. 73 Case Study: Mali Annex 9: Classroom observations Ecole:___________________________________________ Année________________ Traditionnelle (T) ou pédagogie convergente (PC)?______________ Enseignant femme ou homme? _____ Nombre d'élèves: ____ Filles/garçons____________ Type du leçon______________ Durée du leçon : _________ Description de la classe (décoration, propreté, matériaux) : __________________________________________________________________________________ Description de chaque cinq minutes. Quand l'enseignant demande les questions aux élèves, note si élève appele est fille ou garçon. Codification : Activité de Langue de Langue de Matériaux Fois observé Nombre total l'enseignant l'enseignant l'élève utilise* Ecrit au tableau Donne les instructions au grand groupe Donne les instructions aux groupes de travail Donne les instructions aux individus Fait une démonstration Lit en haut voix Raconte un conte/histoire Appel un élève Appel le grand groupe Appel les groupes de travail Demande les répétitions au groupe Demande les répétitions individuelles Demande les questions directes aux individus Demande les questions directes au groupe Demande les questions indirectes aux individus Demande les questions indirectes au groupe Assiste les élèves en cours de travail Corrections en groupe 74 Case Study: Mali Corrections individuels Corrections des cahiers Fait l'appel Donne les devoirs Demande aux élèves de copier Demande aux élèves de lire en groupe Demande aux élèves de lire individuellement Discussion sociale avec visiteur Discipline Gestion de la classe Questions aux filles Questions aux garçons *F : Français ; LN : langue nationale ** T : tableau ; M : manuel scolaire ; C : cahier de l'élève ; F : fiches d' instruction ; A : autres 75 Case Study: Mali Annex 10: Other Country Information A. Poverty incidence by region (1998) REGIONS Poverty Incidence (%) Very Poor Poor Total Mali 21.0 42.8 63.8 Urbain 1.6 28.5 30.1 Rural 27.9 48.0 75.9 District de 0.2 28.4 28.6 Bamako Kayes 24.7 37.7 62.4 Koulikoro 18.5 41.0 59.5 Sikasso 13.9 51.9 65.8 Ségou 25.9 42.3 68.2 Mopti 38.1 38.1 76.2 Tombouctou 26.4 50.4 76.8 Gao 11.1 67.6 78.7 Kidal 3.6 89.2 92.8 (CSLP, 2002) 76 Case Study: Mali B. Division of responsibilities between central & local gov'ts for gr. 1-6 Institutions Responsibilities Central Administration (Ministry of · Formulates policy. National Education) · Coordinates national activities. · Monitors and evaluates education system. Regional Administration (Teaching · Implement national policy as a Academies) "deconcentrated" service of the central government. · Coordinate local activities with CAP, in collaboration with local governments. Local Administration (Pedagogic Support · Ensure quality teaching Centers) · Provide short-term pre-service teacher education and teacher professional development · Give technical advice to local governments on education sector management. Local government councils · Manage the first cycle of basic education: develop education plans recruit and pay teachers build new schools manage schools encourage universal enrollment School Management Committees and other Manage schools as agents of local councils partners (usually NGO). 77 Case Study: Mali C. Additional Teacher Information Source : MEN Records D. Annual Classroom Construction Private Medersa Community (secular) Public 1990 161 25 86 164 1991 185 26 64 278 1992 184 44 127 503 1993 129 41 100 333 1994 162 124 187 484 1995 214 218 158 712 1996 252 730 220 946 1997 203 849 127 928 1998 184 855 247 938 1999 211 607 231 898 2000 333 797 437 1229 2001 221 750 398 1111 2002 244 651 443 1287 2003 235 750 412 1979 2004 54 97 50 421 (Ministry of National Education, 2005) 79 Case Study: Mali E. Student:teacher and student:classroom ratios by region Student/ Student/ Region teacher classroom Bamako 58 59 Kayes 57 59 Kidal 29 31 Koulikoro 54 53 Mopti 62 66 Ségou 59 56 Sikasso 56 58 Tombouctou 49 50 National 67 57 (MEN, CPS, 2003) 81 Case Study: Mali F. Higher Education Students and Faculty at the University of Mali : 1999-2000 Institution Students % Female International Faculty Students Members FSJE 6,607 28 106 45 FLASH 5,530 27 17 54 FMPOS 3,329 27 493 105 FAST 2,004 9 130 51 IUG 796 57 36 29 ENI 664 5 130 73 IPR/IFRA 440 10 64 85 ENSup 264 5 0 83 ISFRA 80 4 0 13 Total 19,714 27 976 538 Source: Bagayoko And Diawara, 2003 Accronyms FSJE FLASH FMPOS FAST IUG Full names Faculté de Droit et Faculté des Faculté de Faculté des Institut Universitaire French/English d'Economie/Faculty Lettres, Arts & Médecine, de Sciences et de of Law & Sciences Pharmacie et Techniques/Faculty Gestion/Management Economics Humaines/Faculty d'Ontologie/Faculty of Science & Institute of Arts of Medicine, Technology Pharmacy & Odontology ENI IPR/IFRA ENSup ISFRA Ecole Institut Ecole Normale Institut Supérieur de Nationale Polytechnique Supérieure Formation en d'Ingénieur/ Rural/Institut de /School of Recherche National Formation en Education Appliquée9/Institute School of Recherche of Applied Research Engineering Appliquée8/Rural Polytechnical Institut/Institut of Training and Applied Research 8In English : Iinstitute for Training in Applied Research 9In English : Advanced Institute for Training in Applied Research 82 Case Study: Mali G. Employment by level of education (in percentages) Total Employment Level of education categories Secondary/ Basic Basic Technical Koranic Education, Education, Secondar and Higher Non None CED school Cycle I Cycle II y general vocational Education declared High level 0.1 1.2 1.3 1.6 44.7 0.8 staff, engineers Middle-level staff 0.2 0.3 1.2 2.4 26.2 61.3 39.0 3.3 Assistants 5.2 5.2 7.0 10.1 16.1 21.7 14.6 2.6 5.3 6.9 Skilled labor 1.0 . 5 2.0 1.1 2.3 2.1 1.0 Unskilled labor 1.9 1.2 2.2 . 4 1.4 1.5 1.7 Employer 0.9 6.3 1.9 4.6 5.6 1.5 . 9 2.7 1.5 Self employed 71.1 69.4 61.1 60.2 60.7 30.5 13.6 4.0 50.2 65.5 Associate 2.1 2.4 3.6 1.4 2.5 1.5 8.8 5.4 2.1 Apprentice 1.5 4.4 6.5 3.1 7.2 1.0 2.3 Family helper 16.0 21.8 16.1 15.8 8.1 5.0 1.0 34.2 14.8 Non declared 0.0 0.0 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 (OEF, 2004)