Education

General

Ethiopia’s government launched already in 1994 an Education and Training Policy (ETP) aimed at country-wide universalizing of basic and primary education. Implementation is realized through the Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP), a twenty-year rolling plan. Running period of the present ESDP III is until 2011.

The Education for All targets and the Millenium Development Goals being basic principles for both, ETP and ESDP provided the necessary framework for donors to reorientate their assistance towards more harmonized, effective support to the sector.

Upon the introduction of its Plan for Accelarated and Sustained Development to end Poverty (PASDEP, 2005) the Ethiopian government identified education as a key sector for poverty reduction and development. Subsequently education was given the highest priority in government policy and budget considerations.

Despite the developments in educational policy reformulation and efforts to prioritize the education sector, Ethiopia continues to face enormous challenges in providing regular primary, secondary and tertiary education. Nevertheless, impressive progress has been made in expanding access to schools, although this has been achieved at the expense of the quality of education provided. Consequently providing and maintaining quality education while expanding equitable access has been repeatedly identified as key strategic and policy challenges to the sector.

Meanwhile the sector faces other major challenges, e.g.  improvement of resource mobilization and allocation; management and planning capacity building throughout the system, promoting gender – and geographical parity; HIV/AIDS; adjusting  population growth.  Coping them, the Ethiopian government expects to meet international targets and goals.

Involvement of the Netherlands Embassy in the education sector

In Ethiopia the Netherlands support to the education sector started only in 2002. Taking

the MDG’s, the Netherlands development policy and Ethiopia’s policy documents, in particular PASDEP and the ESDP,  as point of departure, the Embassy focusses its input on improving the quality aspects of basic education (BE) and on increasing the poverty alleviation effects of BE, emphasizing the harmonisation with other donors.

From this strategic perspective specific attention is paid to the development and training of teachers and to efforts to improve quality and access to education for girls and women. During the policy dialogue and in monitoring activitiesthe issue of prevention of HIV/AIDS is simultaneously kept on the agenda. At present the formal education system implementation capacity is not sufficient to accommodate the demands for quality education provision. For this reason the Embassy also supports NGO’s which improve the delivery of non-formal basic education.

As to the various subsectors in the field of education, activities are supported in the area of

·                            Teacher Development 

·                            Girls' Education 

·                            Non-formal education  

·                            Education policy development 

·                            Higher Education, in specific through the   NPT programme managed by Nuffic