Making Sense of the EFA from a National Context: Its Implementation, and Impact on Households in Ethiopia

Abstract

Although global factors undeniably play a role in the adoption of Education for All (EFA) goals in any given country, it would seem that a great majority of studies on EFA tend to overlook the significance of local dynamics. The meaning of schooling is socially constructed, regardless of how the global consensus may wish to structuralize it. The main concern of this chapter, therefore, is to closely analyze the processes by which EFA goals are adopted by the Ethiopian government and how they are implemented at the central and local levels of the government structure. The government's dependence on foreign assistance contributes to the way in which Ethiopian education policy converges with EFA. However, EFA goals are predominantly the concern of policy makers at the international and central government levels, while, over the course of implementation, the administrative judgment of street-level officials inevitably narrows the actual focus of policy. Also, the choices parents make concerning their children's education are not always purely motivated by educational concerns, but are also contingent on economic and/or social factors as well. Ethiopia has achieved a rapid increase in enrolment rates, a development regarded as a sign of true governmental commitment to succeeding in EFA. However, as the author demonstrates in this chapter, a variety of social and systematic factors coalesced to bring about the increase in enrolment, with governmental commitment numbering as just one.