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The Relevance of Education for Employment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Emil R. Rado
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Extract

The 19605 can be justly described as the decade of great expectations about the developmental potential of education. It started with the historic 1960 Ashby report on education in Nigeria,1 and the equally widely quoted 1961 Addis Ababa conference of African ministers of education; 2 before it expired, over 40 manpower-education plans had been published, not to mention a host of commissions of inquiry and academic studies. In the first five years alone, school enrolment in Africa rose by almost a half; the average proportion of the government budget spent on education jumped from one seventh to over one sixth— the highest for any continent except North America— and the proportion of national income devoted to education increased from 3 per cent to 43 per cent, exceeded only by Europe.3 These rates of growth were almost certainly sustained in the second half of the decade.4

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , October 1972 , pp. 459 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

Page 459 note 1 Investment in Education: the Report of the Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education in Nigeria (Lagos, 1960).Google Scholar

Page 459 note 2 Final Report of the Conference of African States on the Development of Education in Africa (Addis Ababa, 1961).Google Scholar

Page 459 note 3 Education: a Sector Working Paper (I.B.R.D., Washington, 1971,Google Scholar mimeo.), annex tables 1 and 3.

Page 459 note 4 Despite such striking rates of growth, enrolment ratios for Africa during 1967–8 in primary and secondary education were barely two-thirds of the average for the Third World as a whole.

Page 461 note 1 See Education in Uganda: the Report of the Uganda Education Commission (Entebbe, 1963)Google Scholar; and the Report of the Kenya Education Commission (Nairobi, 1964 and 1965).Google Scholar

Page 462 note 1 Cf. Nuttall, D. L., British Examinations: techniques of analysis (London, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 464 note 1 Cf. de Bono, Edward in Where? (London), 03 1971Google Scholar, summarising the conclusions of a series of experiments on the creativity of children: ‘A child's knowledge is severely limited by his short experience, but the way he handles knowledge (i.e. his thinking) is skilled. To see this one must be able to separate the content of thinking from the process itself. Children's thinking is no different from that of adults. This either implies that [good home] education does a marvellous job in getting children to think so quickly [even at age 5] or that long years of education add nothing further to thinking skills. Education may simply pile on the facts and techniques required by the examination system without having to bother about thinking skills.’ The author then goes on to suggest that English children have a period of high creativity between the ages of 5 and 10, which subsequently declines and may well have been drilled out of them by an educational system that values competence over creativity.

Page 465 note 1 Given the striking implications of such a selection procedure — cf. E. R. Rado, ‘The Explosive Model ’, Conference on Urban Unemployment in Africa, University of Sussex, September 1971 – it would probably pay a government to provide employers with a heavily subsidised national aptitude.testing service!

Page 466 note 1 See Blaug, M., An Introduction to the Economics of Education (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 32–46.Google Scholar

Page 467 note 1 For example, Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama (London, 1968), vol. II, ch. 23, sec. 6Google Scholar; Blaug, M., Layard, M., and Woodhall, M., Causes of Graduate Unemployment in India (London, 1969)Google Scholar; and the recent I.L.O. mission to Ceylon, , Matching Employment Opportunities and Expectations (Geneva, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 467 note 2 J. Anderson, P. Kinyanjui, E. R. Rado, and H. C. A. Somerset, A Study of Kenya Secondary School-Leavers, 1965–70, forthcoming. Some preliminary results of our survey show that educational aspirations of this sample of students were realistically related to their subsequent performance and opportunities; see H. C. A. Somerset, ‘Educational Aspirations of Fourth Form Leavers in Kenya’, Universities of East Africa Social Sciences Conference, January 1971. My own work suggests that the aspirations of those who left in 1969 match fairly closely the 1970 occupational distribution of those who left in 1968. It is interesting to note that, in our sample, the largest single group (35%) aspired to technician/sub-professional jobs, and that not only did more students (8.6%) hope to become artisans, craftsmen, and labourers than those opting for clerical occupations (74%), but the former also did signifi. candy better academically. But only 5 out of 1,000 wanted to become farmers or businessmen.

Page 467 note 3 Cf. Peil, Margaret, ‘Education as an Influence on Aspirations and Expectations’, Conference on Urban Unemployment in Africa, University of Sussex, 09 1971.Google Scholar

Page 468 note 1 Knight, J. B., ‘Rural–Urban Income Comparisons and Migration in Ghana’, in Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Economics and Statistics (Oxford), XXXIV, 2, 1972, p. 219,Google Scholar drawing on the research of Peil, loc. cit.

Page 468 note 2 Cf. Clignet, Rémi and Foster, P. J., The Fortunate Few: a study of secondary schools and students in the Ivory Coast (Evanston, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 469 note 1 Somerset, ‘Educational Aspirations of Fourth Form Leavers in Kenya’, loc. cit.

Page 469 note 2 It cannot even be assumed that those who do continue are the ‘brightest’ academically. Cf. Somerset, H. C. A., Predicting Success in School Certuficate (Nairobi, 1969).Google Scholar

Page 469 note 3 See, inter alia, Mwingira, A. C., ‘Education for Self-Reliance: the problems of implementation’, in Jolly, A. R. (ed.), Education in Africa: research and action (Nairobi, 1969)Google Scholar; P. J. Foster, ‘Education for Self-Reliance: a critical evaluation’, ibid; Ndunguru, S., ‘Education for Self-Reliance and the Curriculum’, in East Africa Journal (Nairobi), VIII, 2, 02 1971Google Scholar; and Resnick, I. N. (ed.), Tanzania: revolution by education (London, 1968).Google Scholar

Page 470 note 1 See Foster, P. J., ‘The Vocational School Fallacy in Development Planning’, in Anderson, C. A. and Bowman, H. J. (eds.), Education and Economic Development (Aldine, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 470 note 2 Ndunguru, loc. cit. shows that Tanzanians realise this also: ‘Do not visit our school on a Wednesday afternoon, because that is when we have Education for Self-Reliance.’

Page 470 note 3 Foster, ‘Education for Self-Reliance’, loc. cit.

Page 471 note 1 Cf. Smith, T. C., ‘Okura Nagatsune and the Technologists’, in Craig, A. M. and Silvey, D. H. (eds.), Personality in Japanese History (Los Angeles, 1970).Google Scholar

Page 475 note 1 Cf. Inkeles, A., ‘Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Nations’, in The American political Science Review (Menasha), LXIV, 1, 01 1970Google Scholar; and Kahi, J. A., Measurement of Modernism: a study of values in Brazil and Mexico (Austin, Texas, 1968).Google Scholar