Technical Efficiency And Total Factor Productivity Growth Of Primary Schools In Zimbabwe: The Case Of Harare Province

In light of the efforts by government to lift the Zimbabwean system of primary education, the study assesses technical efficiency of primary schools using Data Envelopment Analysis. Precisely, the study examines the technical efficiency of 27 primary schools based on obtainable inputs data on number of classrooms, teaching staff, enrollment, average class size and number of toilets and output data on performance in primary leaving examinations. The efficiency scores are then regressed against input variables and locational dummy to determine their effect on efficiency. Furthermore, the study also examines total factor productivity change in these primary schools based on the Malmquist Index using panel data for 5 years from 2011 to 2015. The results from the Data Envelopment Analysis suggest that a great number of the primary schools are not efficient because they have efficiency scores less than 1. Additionally, results from the efficiency scores suggest that primary schools could improve performance by 14.3% using the same resources. Moreover, mean annual total factor productivity growth decreased by 2.9%. Analysis of Tobit regression shows a negative significant relationship between average class size and efficiency thus congested classes are associated with inefficiency. Primary schools situated in low density areas are found to perform better than their high density counterparts. The study recommends that government policy should be geared towards reducing the average class size. The increasing levels of enrollment should be dealt with by increasing the number of classes and the number of teachers. The assessment system in primary schools should be restructured to ensure improvement in the low pass rates by implementing a competency based assessment framework which is more valid to skills improvement.