**11. Conclusion**

Within this setting of overall growth in the economy and in school enrollments no longer principally at primary and basic school levels but at secondary and higher levels, by 2017 the primary school enrollment reached 3, 300,000 [67]. The country had almost achieved its target of universal primary schooling. It was noted that this goal, though in sight, was still not achieved as the net enrollment rate of the age-relevant children was 80 percent and completion rate 79 percent [68]. Part of the reason entails high repetition and drop-out rates, low quality linked to poor infrastructure including high numbers of students in classrooms, insufficient numbers of teachers, lack of textbooks and free schooling in theory rather than in reality [69]. One could argue that the whole Zambian population has been included in gaining some degree of literacy at the primary level, leaving overall literacy at approximately 75 percent. This of course assumes that completion of primary or even basic school can be correlated with a satisfactory level of literacy [70].

While this emerges as an unquestionable achievement and the result of a long-time ambition, it has a major shadow. It does not provide the majority with the prospect of formal employment and the rewards associated with that. Instead, it leaves the country, like many other African countries, with 60 percent of the population of approximately 16 million marginalized. They are said to be in poverty of varying degrees, high level or extreme for 5 million and moderate for almost 8 million [71]. One might say that the education system that was originally thought to promote a prosperous nation with wealth equitably shared has delivered something very different.

Among other things, this means that, while 88 percent of students in primary school aspire to university education, only 3-4 percent have access to it. Though one might claim that the system offers equality of opportunity through its meritocratic system, is this true? The boy/girl from Matero who we mentioned at the outset has a much weaker chance of climbing the educational ladder not necessarily because he/she is less gifted but because he/she is located where he/she does not have the resources to enter the school system well equipped. He/she is unlikely to have had pre-school, educated parents, facility in speaking and reading English at home, which most of his/her well-to-do age-mates from more affluence parts of the city have and so they are likely to gain higher grades in the Grade VII test. This enables them to be admitted to the Catholic school which, like most Catholic schools, prides itself on good performance in meritocratic pro-privileged national league Tables [72]. The Matero boy/girl has to travel to where his/her schooling is likely to be less well resourced.

This trend is seen more widely where 37 percent of Grade I students reach Grade 9 or secondary school. Even if he/she finds him/herself in the 26 percent who reach Grade XII, College entry ranges at roughly 3 percent and there is almost no chance of having access to university [73]. Given this pattern that clearly favours the 'haves', we find that 77 percent of university students coming from the richest 10 percent of the population and they were assisted with state bursaries at tax-payers' cost [74].

As the overall rate of inclusion of the population at the primary level is to be commended so too is the overall expansion of those completing secondary and higher education in large part because of widespread development of private contributions so that the country now has five public and upward of 32 private

universities and multiple colleges in concord with the human capital approach to the goal of middle-income status in 2030 [75]. However, without large-scale economic development and dramatic increase in the formal employment rate, what is likely to result, will be somewhat like we find in 2017 when the country had 85,000 or so teachers emerging from colleges, there was employment for 2,000 or so, leaving the country with ever larger numbers of marginalized college and university graduates [76]. The linear system, even modified by *Framework 2012,* still needs urgent and radical reform if it is to deliver not purely middle-income status for a fortunate few.

Despite the hopes of those who led the country after 1964 of creating a prosperous nation where the division between those who 'have' and those 'left out' or marginalized would be small, the modernization mode of schooling by which they strove to achieve this delivered a different outcome, dispelling the persistent myth of achieving equality through a meritocratic system. This was glimpsed early in the history of schooling in the country but adopting an alternative paradigm proved to be difficult not only for the state but even for faith-based public schools because of the power of a newly formed elite.

This discussion has recounted how the Zambian school system has marginalized a major part of the population from access to the kind of lifestyle that each person has reason to value. Government initially attempted to counteract this progressive exclusion of the majority through reform in the 1970s. It failed and resorted to a piece-meal solution along the lines of basic education for all. In the early part of the 21st century, after debt relief and a more buoyant economy, government invested in setting the school system on better footing. Though welcome, this has not confronted the social structure and the school system as part of it, marginalising the majority and frustrating its desire for an acceptably equitable level of well-being for every Zambian.

### **Author details**

Brendan P. Carmody1,2

1 Institute of Education, University College, London

2 St. Mary's University, London

\*Address all correspondence to: carmody.brendan4@gmail.com

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Zambia's Poorest Progressively Left Behind: Well-Being Denied DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95570*
