The ministry of education will embark on a 15-year programme to completely revamp the education sector until 2020, with the first phase to start this year. The Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (ETSIP) will concentrate on pre-primary school education, continuous teacher training, better control on performance of schools, performance contracts with top civil servants in the education sector and better equipped schools with an expansion of information technology and e-learning. Namibian experts and representatives of the donor community and development partners held a three-day appraisal meeting in Windhoek to discuss the programme document for ETSIP and its first phase which will run until 2011. Until the year 2009 costs come to about N$8,5 billion, according to education minister Nangolo Mbumba. "The Namibian government will make available N$ 100 million on top of the education budget for the new financial year", he announced during the meeting. Donor countries pledged some N$ 512 million and the EU will fund 30% equivalent to the annual education budget. The Namibian government intends to borrow US$ 30 million (approx. N$ 185 million) from the World Bank to help finance the enormous amount.

Curricula for all grades will be reviewed to make them more focussed on modern needs for young school leavers to be better prepared for the economic sector. Those who will study at universities will receive a prepa-ratory year before they enrol for a full degree at tertiary institutions. Aware-ness on HIV/AIDS will become a subject integrated into the curriculum. Special needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) have been noted and also for children with disabilities.

The recommendations made at this conference to the ETSIP programme document will be added to the final draft. AN implementation conference will be held on 19 and 20 April. The ETSIP programme can be downloaded at www.edu.na/publication.

Namibia has some 1,600 schools, 530,000 pupils and about 18,770 teachers, including private schools, pupils and teachers. Nearly 75% of the pupils are in primary schools (Grades 1-7). The Namibia College for Open Learning (Namcol) caters for 25,000 teenagers, who either failed Grade 10 or dropped out of school and who want to study for either a Grade 10 or Grade 12 certificate.