24 • Abolishing School Fees in Africa
fees or levies to any public primary school and that every child regardless of age should report to the nearest public primary school for admission. As schools were to open on January 6, 2003, the minister summoned senior officials from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) to a crisis meeting on January 3, 2003, to strategize on the challenges in implementing FPE in Kenya. Of primary concern was the call for immediate implementation of FPE. Since the announcement for FPE was made in the middle of the financial year, there was no plan or budgetary allocation in place for its implementation. Clearly, under such conditions, all the planning and preparation had to be done as part of the implementation of the policy.
PHASING IN THE REFORMS Two of the five countries attempted to phase in the fee abolition policy, while three (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi) did not, though Ethiopia only provided the instructions to schools one year after the decision was announced. Clearly, there may be difficult trade-offs between the big bang approach and various ways of phasing in fee abolition; for example, limiting new entrants to certain age groups or grades, or introducing fee abolition gradually, starting with grade 1. The big bang in principle allows all those who have so far not benefited from primary education to avail themselves of the opportunity to enroll.26 The big bang approach avoids difficult choices such as who should benefit now and who should benefit later, which implies that some may not benefit at all because they have become overage by the time it is their turn. Apart from allowing a second chance for entry into grade 1 for youth who had not been able to enroll so far, the big bang approach in Kenya and Malawi also provided a second chance for children who had dropped out of primary school to reenter and sit for the Primary School Leaving Certificate (which was prominent in Kenya and Malawi). However, as the Malawi study points out, allowing reentry to the last grade of primary education also has a serious impact on the demand for secondary education. On the other hand, in a case where abolition of fees may be expected to result in a major enrollment surge, to phase in the decision, such as was done in Ghana and especially Mozambique, has many advantages, permitting both to limit the “access shock,� giving more time to mobilize the required teachers, classrooms, and training materials, test different procedures for channeling the fee-replacement funds to schools, put in place