A strategy centred on expansion, which does not neglect maintaining and improving the quality of schooling, will pose an important challenge to the teacher training sector of education. A rapidly expanding system will require heavy investment in initial teacher training. At the level of using the teaching staff, the system will have to make efforts to achieve more acceptable levels of efficiency - this can be done by over coming the problem of the inappropriate use of teachers. Of the 3,000 primary teachers that, on average, the system recruits every year , about half are used to teach classes of students repeating years.

The teachers are a key element in the educational system. There are still many challenges regarding the selection, training and social status of teachers. The fact that a teaching career is not attractive largely explains why it is pupils with learning difficulties or difficulties in acquiring other jobs who attend the teacher training colleges. In other cases, teaching is chosen while awaiting for other, more attractive employment opportunities.

Obviously one cannot talk about giving dignity to the teaching profession without mentioning the need to improve the conditions of ser vice of teachers. The apparent lack of interest on the teaching profession stems from the poor salaries paid to teachers, particularly to those working in the public sector . Table 3.5 depicts this reality.

Table 3.5: Wage structure of career teachers 1999
	Rank	Minimum	Maximum
Teacher with complete EP2	N5	751.680	1.202.690
Teacher with basic level	N4	1.119.170	1.790.670
Teacher with mid-level	N3*	1.520.060	2.629.710
Teacher with bachelor degree	N2*	2.939.900	5.086.030
Teacher with honours degree	N1*	3.733.680	5.698.010
*Not including subsidies Source: MINED

It is imperative that the debate on education should be more participatory and democratic, as Machili stresses in Special Contribution No. 3. The widest possible consensus should result from this debate, as regards the objectives and contents of education, as well as in relation to the choices and priorities concerning the allocation of human and material resources to the education sector .

The current moment is one for valuing the complementary relationships created between the different educational spaces and actors where all the links in the chain together form an educational society. Only thus will education represent a true national undertaking which goes beyond government mandates, ensuring the implementation and expansion of the idea of lifelong education of citizens, and the dynamic autonomy of individuals in a society under going rapid change.