The project employs a combination of advocacy, social accountability and capacity building interventions to address the main problems in the education sector that stand in the way of Zambia’s attainment of the SDG 4 targets.

By UN definition, target 4.1 states that by 2030 countries should ensure that all girls and boys complete free equitable and quality primary and secondary education, while target 4.2 indicates that countries should ensure that 2030, all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education. Target 4.5 on the other hand commits countries to eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and training by 2030.

The specific problems being addressed under these targets are: low financing to the education sector; poor utilization of education budgetary allocations; and poor implementation of education sector plans. Other problems being addressed are the poor mainstreaming of gender and disability issues in national plans and budgets; and low participation of citizens in service delivery monitoring. In addition to the problems related to the three SDG targets, the proposal also addresses the organizational capacity problem of having inadequate opportunities for learning and advocacy at international level.

To address the above problems, ZANEC has proposed for the implementation of 5 main strategic interventions that are further broken down into 28 specific activities to be implemented over the two-year duration of the project.

The proposed strategic interventions are:

1. To conduct education revenue and expenditure budget advocacy designed to address the problems of low financing to the education sector and poor utilization of education budgetary allocations;
2. and participate in policy development, planning and monitoring implementation of education sector plan designed to address the problem of poor implementation of education sector plans.
3. Other proposed strategic objectives are to undertake advocacy campaigns to promote gender and disability mainstreaming
4. and support local citizen participation in public social accountability monitoring intended to address the problems of poor mainstreaming of gender and disability issues in national plans and budgets as well as low participation of citizens in service delivery monitoring, respectively.
5. At organisational capacity level, the project proposes a strategic intervention to participate in international learning and advocacy meetings to address the problem of inadequate opportunities for learning and advocacy at international level.

Furthermore, the project envisages that once the respective activities under the above stated strategic interventions have been implemented, their outputs will contribute to:

• improved budget performance; improved implementation of the education sector plan;
• improved mainstreaming of gender and disability in national plans and budgets;
• increased citizen participation in local education service delivery monitoring;
• and increased access to learning and advocacy opportunities at international level.

The achievement of these outcomes will also be expected to contribute towards three main impacts namely; improved progress towards achieving SDG 4 national targets; improved achievement of gender and disability national indicators; and improved quality of education in targeted schools.

The first phase of the project was implemented in 2020-2021 with support from Education Out Loud of 299.372 USD.