The Success of Private Schools in Zambia: A Dirty Secret

摘要

The Ngoma community school in southern Zambia is private, but there is nothing grand about it. Its makeshift new classroom is missing walls and there are holes between the empty canvas fertiliser sacks that make up its roof. Inside it is easy to spot the many pupils who have lost their parents, usually to AIDS or malaria, because they are allowed to attend classes without wearing the school's simple blue uniform. The Zambian government may have made primary education free in all its schools three years ago, but some state schools still turn away students whose families cannot afford uniforms, books or Parent Teacher Association fees. Parents who work on the sugar plantations that surround Ngoma say they choose the private school because it is more practical and cheaper for them to pay its 62 pence monthly fees than to send their children to the nearest state-funded school 10 kilometres away.