Education policies and the changing economic environment in Zambia: some reflections

The questions with which we snail je principally concerned in this paper relate to the impact of changing economic circumstances on educational provision and on the formulation and content of educational policy. The view will be advanced that although financial provisions for education rose and fell in tandem with the rise and decline of the economy the system itself marched steadily on, in-creasing in numbers scope and sense of professional identity, cut stagnating in its attempts to respond to the real needs of its clients and declining in the pre-eminence of many of those characteristics for which it is accorded public and private support, two Dominant educational policies, which are robust enough to survive every economic or national crisis, will be identified: one which looks inwards to what the system is accomplishing and which affirms the enduring need for ever more of the same type of predominantly academic education; the other, which is more outward-looking and which appears to be the policy from which all other policies ultimately derive, that regardless of the circumstances and no matter at how unsatisfactory a level of excellence, educational services must continue to be provided. In order to establish the context for a consideration of these two policy dimensions it will be helpful to take note of some of the macroeconomic features that have characterized Zambia in the years since independence.