Publications

In this paper, the author examines the characteristics of school heads and their schools in 15 African schools systems (Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe). The data for this study were collected in 2007 as part of a major project known as the SACMEQ III Project that sought to examine the quality of education offered in primary schools in these school systems as well as the conditions of schooling in these systems. (SACMEQ is an acronym for Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality). The results revealed large variations in characteristics of school heads among these school systems in terms of their personal characteristics (age and gender), academic education, pre-service training, and special training on school management. Most SACMEQ school systems had large gender imbalances in school head positions in favour of males. In addition, the results revealed considerable variations among these school systems in terms of conditions of school buildings, provision of teachers, provisions toilets, and pupils’ and teachers’ behavioural problems. The most common pupils’ and teachers’ behavioural problems in these school systems were lateness to school, absenteeism, and skipping of classes. School systems with high levels of teachers’ problems tended to have higher levels of pupils’ problems, and vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to study the gender differences in learning achievement by exploring in Southern and Eastern African countries the educational environment and curriculum contents. The study is based on the data archive of a large-scale assessment administered by a consortium known as Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) during 2000 and 2007. The examination of the progress in gender equality in various educational dimensions revealed that many countries have improved the gender balance in school participation while the quality issue tended to remain unchanged between 2000 and 2007. However, by comparing the characteristics of groups of schools within two countries, it was suggested that gender differences in achievement may not always be related to the availability of school resources and/or the wealth of the pupils. By examining different domains of reading and mathematics subjects, it seemed that boys tended to do better in the ‘documents’ domain of reading and the ‘measurement’ domain of mathematics while girls tended to do better in the ‘expository’ domain of reading and the ‘number’ domain of mathematics.

The gender-balance issue ranks high in most educational HIV and AIDS prevention programmes in the countries of Southern and East Africa which is the region hardest hit by HIV and AIDS. Indeed, such programmes aim at “young people” – which is a group at risk, as it represents 45% of new HIV infections. Moreover, it has been observed that young women in Sub-Saharan Africa are more vulnerable as they are 8 times more exposed to HIV than are young men (UNESCO, 2011). The main reasons invoked for this are gender inequalities and an unequal sharing of power between men and women (UNAIDS IATT, 2009).

Policy Brief Number 6 This policy brief deals with progress in ‘gender equality’ in primary education for the six divisions in Malawi by seeking answers to the following specific questions