Why Educational Policies Can Fail: An Overview of Selected African Experiences Book

This paper reviews a number of educational policy statements in east African countries on issues ranging from combining education with production at the primary level to the financing of higher education. An assessment is made as to how successful the policies have been in achieving their original intention. The paper's conclusion is that policy outcomes fall far short of matching expectations, mainly because of insufficient, or the absence of, implementation. Most educational policies are not implemented because they are vaguely stated and the financing implications are not always worked out. Another common reason for failure is that the content of a policy is based on an empirically unsustained theoretical relationship between instruments and outcomes. The paper makes a plea for the formulation of more concrete, feasible and implementable policies based on documented cause-effect relationships.