ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the relationship between education and development in Zambia cannot be understood adequately in terms of a functional perspective, since from this point of view much of the school system can only be regarded as dysfunctional and irrational. In Zambia, there was the further assumption, manifested in the Second and Third National Development Plans, that the priority and larger educational investment should be in tertiary education, in order to 'Zanbianise' the partly expatriate workforce and to prepare the skilled manpower for increasing industrial activity. Similarly the 1976 JASPA report on Zambia entitled Narrowing the Gaps recommend that there should be a more equal distribution of income in Zambia; in an equally innocent fashion the report makes educational suggestions along the lines of the Zambian reform proposals of the same year. Zambian school system is one where very few get to the top; it is best understood as a system from which the majority is thrown out.
