6.
Provision: participation and achievement
In many cases it is difficult to distinguish between government and non-governmental provision because, although funding may come from government (and that funding usually comes from donor aid) actual provision may be by NGOs and other institutions and organisations. There are government, non-governmental, faith-based and community-based organisations that cater for both youth and adults. 16 It is also difficult to distinguish between adult basic education and secondary education provision, including the writing of formal external examinations, even when it is categorised as ‘non-formal education’ from genuinely nonformal education and training. The Lesotho Distance Teaching Centre (LDTC) coordinates literacy, numeracy, functional literacy, adult basic education,
adult secondary education and continuing education programmes, including those for out-of-school youth and adults.
Literacy and adult basic education Current data points to an estimated adult illiteracy rate of 10 percent (UNESCO Institute for Statistics database, 2010) with 131,000 illiterates. However, this may be overly optimistic given the failure of primary schooling to retain all its participants. Notable is the higher level of male illiteracy – 17 percent compared to just 5 percent for females. Enrolments in literacy programmes from 1999 to 2007 totalled 39,844 learners, most of them (about 70 percent) men. Data from 2010, including from the Lesotho Association of Non-formal Education (LANFE) and other organisations, suggests that the numbers enrolling each year have not grown (and indeed may be in decline).