Youth and Adult Learning and Education in Southern Africa: Overview of a 5 Nation Study

This 44-page report combines the findings of 5 Southern African country studies into the current state of Youth and Adult Learning and Education. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), in collaboration with the Institut für Internationale Zusammenarbeit des Deutschen Volkshochschul-Verbandes (DVV International), commissioned researchers to look at the laws, policies, and institutional frameworks governing the sector. The reports suggest that great strides have been made in recent years towards providing universal primary education, increasing participation in secondary and tertiary education, reducing gender disparities, and addressing the needs of the most marginalised groups. However, much still needs to be done in the youth and adult education sectors if southern African countries are ever to meet the demands of all the uneducated and unskilled youth and adults.

According to the report, many countries in southern Africa are facing a critical and growing challenge of how to provide an education that meets the socio-economic needs of their bulging youth populations and illiterate adults. And there are very limited "second chances" for these youth to learn in adulthood since the adult education sector faces serious difficulties. Huge numbers of youngsters still drop out of school before completing their studies and find themselves entering adulthood with no place in education, employment, or training. Their fundamental right to learn is denied and their chances of finding decent work in a rapidly changing and increasingly technologically oriented world are sharply reduced.

The study found that adult education exists and in many cases is vibrant in all these countries. Countries such as Angola have demonstrated the usefulness of partnerships with civil society in the provision of literacy and adult basic education. Namibia's laws and policies are inclusive and have left no citizen behind – from the able to the disabled, from the poor to the affluent, from the advantaged to the disadvantaged. Youth and adult education takes many different forms including formal afternoon classes in basic education; evening continuing education classes; literacy, numeracy, secondary school qualifications through distance or part-time radio, television or computer teaching sessions; cultural events; church and institutional interventions in life skills and health education; informal, incidental, non-formal education.

On the other hand, the study also found that policy makers, actors, and providers of youth and adult education services continue to underplay their mandate and fail to recognise and integrate the contributions that youth and adult education offer to broader economic, social, and human development. The field of adult education remains fragmented, advocacy efforts are dissipated across a variety of fronts and political credibility is diluted. There is a need to consolidate fragmented pieces of laws and policies that relate to adult education and form or reform education structures to achieve desired outcomes for this field.

Key findings of the study were:

• all five countries need clearer policies, better financing, and improved governance to help youth and adults enjoy their right to education;
• policies covering the components of youth and adult education (literacy, non-formal education, vocational education, life skills or continuing education) are patchy and ambiguous; and
• there is a dearth of hard information, with very little effort being made at policy level to aggregate data to get a clearer view of the big picture.

The following are some of the recommendations from the report (there are 45 in total) which relate to information and communication:

• agencies at all levels, including government ministries, that are involved in youth and adult education need to overtly identify themselves as being such providers and so assist in deepening the understanding of key players and the public about the importance of youth and adult education;
• there should be an annually updated communication plan for the promotion of the youth and adult education sector;
• education partners and stakeholders must have improved access to official information;
• literacy curricula and materials need a drastic overhaul;
• language policy needs revision to acknowledge that the basic building-blocks of language are best acquired in a learner’s mother-tongue;
• digitised, internet accessible storage of reports, research, evaluations and other documentation is needed;
• the use of Open and Distance learning and ICTs in the training and support of educators and materials developers should be encouraged; and
• civil society associations working in the field of youth and adult education should synchronise their awareness raising activities with those of national, provincial, and municipal education departments, and with school management and community or neighbourhood members at the local level, to increase their impact and to ensure local contextualisation and adaptation.

The findings of the study are intended to provoke much-needed reflection and debate on youth and adult education by policy-makers, experts, and financiers at national and regional levels . The scale and scope of the recommendations suggests that long term and systemic work will be needed in the field of adult and youth education in the region, but a quick action programme is cited as also vital. The suggested actions include a public campaign to raise more awareness of youth and adult education, a swift start to an advocacy campaign, re-galvanisation of adult literacy plans and resources, and upgrading of data, information, and research capacity.