Mozambique is poised to meet the MDG goal of 100 percent primary education enrollment. The achievement will have limited impact if the quality of the education that pupils have access to is lacking. Education quality will critically determine whether the promise of the newfound mineral wealth is shared among all Mozambicans and whether the economic growth will be concentrated in the extractive industries, while innovation, education and training remain underdeveloped.
The Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) survey was conducted between March and June, 2014. The fieldwork involved collecting information from 200 primary schools, 1006 teachers, and 1,731 grade four pupils. The results provide a representative snapshot of the quality of service delivery and the physical environment within which services are delivered in public primary schools. The survey provides information on three dimensions of service delivery: measures of (i) teacher effort; (ii) teacher knowledge and ability; and (iii) the availability of key inputs, such as textbooks, basic teaching equipment and infrastructure (such as availability of sanitation, quality of lighting in classrooms, etc.).
Mozambique is the seventh country where SDI surveys have been implemented, the other being: Tanzania, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Togo. This allows for comparison across countries and benchmarking country performance. The Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) Program The SDI initiative is a partnership of the World Bank, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and the African Development Bank to develop and institutionalize the collection of a set of indicators that would gauge the quality of service delivery within and across countries and over time. The ultimate goal is to sharply increase accountability for service delivery across Africa, by offering important advocacy tools for citizens, governments, and donors alike; to work toward the end goal of achieving rapid improvements in the responsiveness and effectiveness of service delivery.
