Quality of Basic Education Provided by Rural Community and Regular Schools in the Northern Province of Zambia

Community schools provide an alternative mode of education delivery in Zambia. They have helped in making basic education accessible to many school goingage children. In addition, community schools have helped in strengthening relationships between schools and surrounding communities; and pupils do not have to travel long distances to schools. Considering that both regular and community basic schools play a very important role in the provision of education, the study sought to establish the quality of education in 12 selected rural basic schools belonging to both categories in the Northern Province of Zambia. Although the fi ndings indicated that all stakeholders felt that some learning was taking place, it was clear that neither community nor regular basic schools provided what may be referred to as good quality education. However, the picture emerging from the fi ndings was that the situation in regular basic schools was slightly better than that found in community schools. Suggestions from respondents on ways of improving the quality of basic education included, among other things, rehabilitating of existing infrastructure, building new classroom blocks and enough teachers' houses, provision of adequate desks as well as teaching and learning materials, deployment of an adequate number of trained teachers, and running of regular inservice training courses.