School Fees and Access to Primary Education: Assessing Four Decades of Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this article, we examine the relationship between primary school fees and education quality and access over the past forty years in seven sub-Saharan African countries. School fees were introduced as a means for revenue-constrained governments to fund the improvement and expansion of primary education. Recently there has been a move towards their abolition. We find that the introduction of fees decreased primary school enrolment, without achieving significant quality improvements. We also discuss the impact on quality of the major increases in enrolment following the abolition of school fees and identify the government funding shortfall amplified by this policy change.