Report reveals significant failure in English literacy skills

Kiswahili literacy for schoolchildren is said to be higher than that of English, Twaweza, a Non-Governmental Organization which deals with education advocacy and report has said.

According to the report ‘Uwezo Tanzania Annual Learning Assesment Report 2017’, the performance in Kiswahili literacy tests among pupils in standard 3 and7 shows Kiswahili being significantly and consistently higher than English.

The report has it that literacy skills in English are significantly lower than those in Kiswahili and this applies to children at all levels of primary school, which implies that many children who will join secondary school are likely to find it hard communicating in the Queen’s language.

Twaweza Manager Zaida Mgalla said the 2017 Uwezo Annual learning assessment report study titled: “Are our children learning?” says proficiency in English is lower among primary schoolchildren.

Mgalla said the region with best performance is Dar es salaam, with 64 per cent of school-going children in the region aged between 9-13 who could do standard 2 work recorded average pass rates in Kiswahili, English and Numeracy. Katavi was listed as the poorest performing region having recorded a dismal pass rate of 23 per cent.

With 74 per cent on record, Iringa Urban is recognized as the best performing district while Sikonge, sitting at 15 per cent, recorded the poorest performance.

According to the manager, in 2015 the pass rate in Kiswahili test among Standard Three pupils was 56 per cent compared to just 13 per cent in English, nearly 6 out of 10 pupils in Standard 3 were able to read a story in Standard 2 level in Kiswahili, while only 1 in 10 could read a story in English.

The report says most standard seven pupils have achieved basic reading competence in Kiswahili. In 2015 nearly 9 out of 10 (89 per cent) of Standard 7 pupils were able to read a story at the standard 2 level in Kiswahili, but fewer than half 48 per cent could do so in English.

“Data shows that 54 percent of children aged 9-13 years passed the Kiswahili test in 2015 compared with just 19 per cent in English,” reads the report.

Uwezo data shows literacy challenges are much worse in English. However focusing on Standard 3 students, taking into account the width of the confidence interval, statistical tests suggest the pass rate in 2015 is significantly higher than the pass rates in 2012.

The report also shows that literacy skills in Kiswahili among children in Standard 2 have improved over time.

According to the report, English literacy among children is generally low and shows no systematic changes between 2011 and 2015.

For example, data from 2015 shows that only 13 per cent of Standard 3 students and 48 per cent of standard 7 students were able to a read a standard 2 level story in English.

“The average pass rates in English test among 9-13 years old appeared to fall from 25 per cent in 2014 to 19 per cent in 2015,” reads the report.

Due to the width of these confidence intervals, statistical test indicates no meaningful difference between these two points. Similarly statistical tests were performed on the data for pass rates among pupils in standard 3 and found no robust statistical difference between the average pass rates achieved by standard 3 pupils in 2015 and in early 2010-2014.

A Part from that, data does not show significant improvement in numeracy pass rates among children over time. For example, in the latest report around 35 per cent of children enrolled in standard 3 passed the test and the average child in this grade was able to perform basic addition but not multiplication.

Among children attending standard 7, approximately 8 out of every 10 students (78 percent) demonstrated competency in multiplication.

The pass rates on numeracy test among all 9-13 old in 2015 was just 40 per cent. The data confirms that many primary school aged children face difficulty in mastering higher level numeracy

In terms of the trends over time, the results again suggest that performance has been largely unchanged over the period from 2011 to 2015.