More Good Work By the IMF

Robert Weissman at CommonDreams.org:

In the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF and particularly the World Bank told developing countries to adopt user fees for education. The institutions have enormous power to impose conditions on developing countries eager to get loans, especially heavily indebted countries that need new loans to pay off old debts and keep their economies functioning.

Why should families be charged for sending children to school? The idea was school fees can help pay for the cost of schools, especially as the Bank and Fund demand government spending cutbacks.

In practice, and predictably, school fees proved a disaster.

Mary Njoroge has recently retired after 31 years in the Kenyan educational system. Her final post was Director of Basic Education in the Ministry of Education.

Njoroge says that, “even as the fees were introduced, poverty levels were rising in most of the country, and the parents were not able to pay the fees. That led to many, many children dropping out of school – just because of the inability of parents to pay the fee.”

In Kenya, Njoroge says, school fees were a very important revenue source. They became an inadequate substitute for lost federal revenue – and the existence of school fees became a rationale for further federal spending cuts.  more here