Education plays a pivotal role in the socio-economic transformation and development endeavors of a nation. In acknowledgment of the importance of education for attaining sustainable development the government has introduced policies and procedures in view of expanding basic education with enhanced equity and quality. The essence of educational policy is to diversify the structure of education into technical and vocational education while still emphasizing on primary education. In line with this the education sector has been reorganized at all levels and attempts have been made to make the content more relevant to the economy and vast majority of the population.

The educational system of Oromia normally consists of formal and non-formal education: formal education comprises of primary and secondary education, technical and vocational education and tertiary level education. As per the recently available data there are four teachers training colleges (TTC), two teachers training institutes (TTI), 38 technical vocational education training (TVET) of which 36 and 2 are government and non-government centers respectively. Moreover, there are 164 secondary schools and 4893 primary schools as of 1995 E.C in Oromia Region.

As can be seen from the trend of growth of number of educational facilities stated in the previous section, tremendous efforts were made to improve access to education facilities over the past seven years (1987-1995 E.C). According to the available data in this regard the number of primary schools has increased from 4069 to 4893. Likewise, the number of secondary schools has also increased from 108 to 164, which is a commendable achievement over a shorter period of time. This generally indicates that on an average the regional government has been constructing and putting in operation about 103 primary and 7 secondary schools each year. It is apparent from this, that the rate of increase in senior secondary schools facilities is by far significantly lower than that of primary schools affecting the quality of and access to secondary level education.

As exhibited above remarkable efforts were made to improve access to education by constructing as many facilities as possible in both rural and urban areas, of course with much more emphasis on rural areas. It is visible from this that the supply side of the equation has been worked out by putting more facilities nearer to the community, although there are still many places yet to be served. The expected outcome of such an improved supply would be a significant increase in enrolment.

The analysis of the performance of primary education enrolment shows that there was an increment over the past seven years from 21% (1987) to 66.7% in 1995. Generally, the primary education enrolment rate was growing at an average rate of about 5.8% per annum. By and large, the current level of enrolment as well as the annual growth rate compared to the level of 1987 is encouraging. Nonetheless, the level of primary education participation has remained low compared to the achievements of some of the regional states (Tigray 77.6% and SNNP 67.5%). On the other hand, the gender gap is getting wider growing from 12% in 1987 to 31.% in 1995. Therefore, it is obvious that what has been achieved over the past seven years has favored male than female signifying the required level of attention to be paid in order to improve female's participation in primary education. Lack of proximity, lack of opportunity to go to the next higher level of education, low income of parents, lack of awareness of the benefits of education by some parents and poor facilities are among factors contributing to lower enrolment rate at primary education level. Similar to gender gap there is significant disparity of enrolment rate among godina's. In line with this, Arsi has attained the highest enrollment rate of 86.3% in 1995, whereas Borena is standing at only 46.6%, which is the lowest enrollment rate compared to all other godina's of Oromia.

Expansion of secondary level educational facilities was much lower than the primary level of education in the past several years. This clearly shows that much emphasis has been given to the primary level education. In spite of this, additional facilities were being built to enhance the expansion of secondary level education. As the result, the enrolment rate at secondary education level has increased to 18.4% (1995 E.C) from the level of only 6.2% in 1987, which is still below the country's average of 17.1%. Generally, the currently attained enrolment rate at secondary education is very low indirectly indicating the regions' position in tertiary level education, which is again fundamental in socio-economic development endeavors of the region. Moreover, female participation in secondary school is still very low (10.8%) with again wider gender gap reaching 13.0% in 1995 compared to the 1.9% level in 1987. It is evident from the trend that the gender gap is widening both at primary and secondary level. For that reason, it is crucial to design and adopt a strategy to enhance the school participation of both sexes while narrowing down the existing wider gender gap.

Access or proximity is among major factors affecting secondary level education participation in the region primarily because of a limited number of secondary schools in the region. Moreover, limited space in the existing secondary schools, backward traditional practices of abduction, perceived unemployment after school, low level of awareness of the parent about benefit of education, and low income are amongst other factors limiting access.

On the other hand, the literacy rate of the region stands at 27.1 (2002 G.C.), which is lower than the national average of 29.4 depicting the worrisome situation of the region and the level effort to be exerted to improve the current status.

As a whole, in order to overcome these problems continuous efforts should be exerted to increase the number of schools both at primary and secondary still focusing on rural areas; promote community, private sector and NGO's participation in the education sector to enhance the expansion and rehabilitation of schools; promote public, community and NGO's investment in non formal education to improve coverage.

A commendable achievement has been registered, over the past seven years, in improving access to education and increasing primary and secondary level school participations. However, little has been achieved in enhancing the quality of education at both levels. Teacher's qualification, class size and availability of teaching materials and facilities are among factors that determine quality of education. As per the national standard, the minimum qualification to teach in first cycle primary is a certification of Teacher's Training Institute (TTI) and a Diploma from Teacher's Training College or above for second cycle primary. Moreover, a minimum of BA/BSc degree is required to teach in senior secondary schools. In line with this out of the 31974 teachers in first cycle primary 98.3% of them fulfill the minimum requirement and therefore, at this level teacher's qualification is not a point of concern merely looking at the minimum qualifying criterion.

On the other hand, the minimum requirement of qualification is a point of serious worry when it comes to second cycle primary as only 15.4% of the 16,159 currently existing teachers meet the criterion. The situation is even much more severe in rural areas as only 11% of the teachers teaching in second cycle primary fulfill the minimum qualification requirement, thus significantly contributing to the lower quality of second cycle primary education in the region.

With respect to the quality of teachers teaching in first cycle senior secondary schools, as per the available data, only 3989 (24.2%) meets the minimum requirement, whereas for second cycle senior secondary 910 (58.8%) of the teachers fulfill the criterion. Generally, looking at the requirement of qualification of teachers at various levels, second cycle primary and first cycle senior secondary schools are in critical situation as the existing reality is significantly affecting the quality of education at these levels. An apparent evidence for this is that out of the total students who took ESLCE from 1989-1994 in the region, on the average only 63.8% scored GPA of 2 and above.

On the other hand, there was no significant improvement in student textbook ratio. In this respect in 1995 E.C for first and second cycle primary the ratio remained 1:3. However, the ratio was observed improving for senior secondary schools that is 1:2 compared to 1:2.5 at the national level.

Apart from points raised above, the larger class size (for primary 1:75 and for secondary 1:82, against the standard which is 1:50 for primary and 1:40 for secondary) lack of library and laboratory facilities are amongst important factors affecting the quality of education in the region. Although concrete evidence is lacking, only few schools are believed to have library and laboratory facilities. Therefore, efforts should be made to equip schools with these facilities over the coming years so that competitiveness of the students in the national exams will be enhanced.

Drop out and repetition rates are among important indicators of level of educational efficiency. In line with this encouraging results were obtained in reducing the drop out rate of grade 1-8 from 18% in 1990 to 16.9% in 1995 although the drop out rate for grade 1 has still remained high 28.5%. On the other hand, repetition rate for grade 7& 8 has been reduced from 20% and 18% in 1992 to 10.7% and 14.6% in 1995 respectively. The average repetition rate for primary school (1 -8) was 6.2% in 1995. Considering expansion of primary education and increase in student teacher and student section ratios across the region this shows some perceivable movement in the improvement of the efficiency of education.

Technical and vocational education and training is at its infancy stage of development in the country. Compared to the sub-Saharan Africa the proportion of TVET to academic student at secondary level of education is much lesser. Recently the government has undertaken an extensive effort at restructuring the technical and vocational education and training envisaging expansion of the intake through addition of new courses, new institutions and rehabilitation of existing ones and increasing the entry opportunity. Accordingly, the number of TVET schools has reached 38 in Oromia. In addition, there are about seven skill development centers in the region. Presently, the enrollment has reached 10193 (male 5156, female 5037)of total enrolment in secondary schools in 1995 E.C, still remaining low.

Lack of qualified teachers, the shortage of appropriate and adequate equipment, textbooks and facilities, lack of stakeholders' participation in the curriculum design and implementation, inefficient management and limited funding impair the quality of education and training provided. The current trend that many of TVET graduates are not getting employment and/ or not commencing self employment is having significant impact to subsequent enrolments. It is essential therefore, to be flexible in adjusting the contents of the training in line with the private and government sectors demands. Moreover, effective planning has to be undertaken to assist the graduates in starting self employment, by facilitating access to credit, business information, market, business premises etc...

Education sector has remained one of the priority areas for public investment over the last seven years. Accordingly, the Regional Government allocated a total of Birr 697.1 million capital budget for the development of the sector, of which only Birr 461.6 million or 66.3 percent was utilized, demonstrating the weak implementation capacity of the institution responsible for the sector. Thus, it is imperative to build institutional capacity of the sector so that the governmental priority objectives would be achieved.