Education and Employment in the Informal Sector A Review of Some Recent African Research

Abstract

problem of increasing concern in many African countries.' This concern is a reflection of the dual effects of rapid expansion of primary education during the 1970os and of massive rural-urban migration which still continues up to the present day. However, even while primary schooling has become commonly available, in all countries in sub-Saharan Africa only relatively small numbers of students are able to continue on to secondary school. Not only are places far fewer in number but also secondary schooling usually involves a double financial burden for families - school fees and loss of a potential economic contribution from the child's labour. In view of these considerations, the reality for most African children in the I980s is that primary schooling will be terminal. Recognizing this reality, African education policymakers have started to put greater emphasis on teaching productive, work-related skills in primary schools. Attention has been focused on the vocationalization of the curriculum and on the teaching of skills believed to have immediate applicability and relevance in the world outside school. The general concept of the vocationalization of the primary school curriculum is certainly not a new one in the African context. The history of African education is replete with examples of the attempts of the former colonial powers to introduce vocational slants into the education offered to African children - and with the resistence strategies adopted by African parents and intellectuals who rejected this type of education for their children, regarding it as a thinly disguised attempt to ensure that Africans remained permanently entrenched in subservient economic and social roles. (See, for