Trends and projections of primary education in Lesotho: implications on human resources requirements

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to project the future evolution of primary education in Lesotho over a planning horizon and consider the implications of this growth on future requirements for teachers. With this information, it should be possible to assess the feasibility of attaining the pupil - teacher ratio targets spelled out in the development plans of the country. The Third Five-Year Development Plan 1980-85 (TFYP) set goals for primary school staffing as follows: - to reduce the pupil teacher ratio from 52:1 to 42:1 and 1 to increase the number of qualified teachers by 50%. These objectives, as the Education sector survey (1982) rightly puts it "imply massive pre. and in-service primary teacher training programme over the plan period." The study aims to examine the hypothesis that primary school enrolment will continue to rise in Lesotho and this will continue to put pressure on the demand for teachers. In the face of bottlenecks over the supply of adequate number of teachers of the desired quality, the pupil-teacher ratio targets stated in the development plans may not be realized. At best the pupil-teacher ratios over the past years may continue to be maintained. In this study, an attempt is made to explain the expansion of primary education in Lesotho in terms of a set of macro(e.g. economic and demographic) and other educational policy variables that are capable of influencing it. At the risk of being over simplistic the relationship between the indicator of educational expansion - the number of students enrolled - is established within the framework of a simple growth model.