Zambian Teachers' Unions in education policy making.

Despite worldwide recognition of the fact that education is one of the most substantial affairs in life, many children lack access to quality education. Quality education begins with decent education policy. In order to improve the quality of education policies, contributions of those working in the field of education, should be encouraged. Under the Sector Wide Approach and later the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, donors brought the concept ‘civil society participation in policy making’ to Zambia. This research is concerned with the participation of Teachers’ Unions in the education policy making process. The description of the degree of participation is based on the ladder of Arnstein. She distinguishes eight rungs, from non participation to participants’ power. The degree of Teachers’ Unions participation in education policy making in Zambia is between these extremes. The participation is mainly placation, in other words: fake participation or symbolic participation. In some stages of the policy cycle, the degree of participation is higher or lower than placation. Besides degrees, there are the different types of participation. Participation of the Teachers’ Unions of Zambia in the education policy making process is both performed alone and performed shared, within a coalition. And the participation is direct, face to face negotiations, and indirect, when other measures to influence the policy are practiced. For the explanation of the degree of participation, the distinction is made between factors that promote or hamper the degree of participation at the level of the government, the level of the Teachers’ Unions and the level of donors. At the level of the government, the factors that can promote or hamper participation, are the level of democracy, and the willingness and capacity of the government. At the level of the Teachers’ Unions, the capacity in terms of institutionalization, legitimacy and concerning the participation process is investigated. The relationship between donors and the government, donors and the Teachers’ Unions, and the activities of donors, are the factors that can determine the degree of participation at the level of donors. The factors hampering most, are the poor level of democracy in Zambia, expressed in limitations of the freedom of speech, and the unwillingness of some government officials. At the level of the Teachers’ Unions, it turned out that they lack legitimacy within their own organization and capacities with regard to the participation process. At the level of donor; donors provide facilities to improve participation.