The little snags in Tanzania’s education

Tanzania’s education sector is picking up amid a government commitment that involves a number of initiatives.

The statement was made by World Bank Group senior director for Education Jaime Saavedra when he sat down for an interview by The Citizen on Saturday Reporter Deogratius Kamagi in Dar es Salaam recently.

Question. You have been here for a few days now. You engaged with Tanzanians at the report’s launch; you have visited some schools and held discussions with officials. Would you like to tell us a bit about your personal impressions of Tanzania and specifically the education sector?

Answer. I have been very interested and had a chance to visit both primary and secondary schools to get a sense of both challenges and opportunities that exist in the country.

Like other countries in Africa, Tanzania has seen improvement in enrolment, which is going to accelerate policy especially on free education from primary to secondary levels.

At the same time, however, there are challenges for the country whose student population is increasing, a situation that we don’t see in other countries.

This is a big challenge because there are more youngsters that will have to be in school. The problem remains in the quality of education.

Government has to make sure that when children are at school, there is an effective learning process that is going on in the classroom.

It has to ensure more children finalise primary education and continue to secondary and eventually to higher education.

Quality is not only a challenge for Tanzania, but it is seen everywhere.There has been a lot of analytical work in the World Bank (WB) in the last year both in Africa and at the global level. As such, we cannot equate school with learning.

More kids in schools does not necessarily mean they are learning. In this case Tanzania has to be part of the solution in terms of making sure that we not only put more kids in schools but also ensure an effective learning process.

The Government of Tanzania has made its stand that no schoolgirl will be allowed to resume learning at public schools after giving birth. What is your take on the matter?

I was lucky to visit a girls school and saw a lot of hope there. Those girls are basically able and willing to pursue their dreams to be whatever they desire. For those dreams to happen we need to ensure all of the have a right to education opportunities.

Right now, our key line of action for the WB, not only in Tanzania, but across the world, is to make sure everyone has a right to education.

We will work with all governments, including Tanzania, to ensure girls’ dreams come true.

One challenge that all countries face is making sure all girls and women have the right to opportunities that would enable them to be productive citizens in the same way that boys and men are, in terms of the growth and development of countries, and also the improvement of their families.

What are the things that we are doing well as a country given the available resources? And where can we do better?

The decision to opt for fee-free basic education may not have been easy to fulfil because you need to have more places for students and the right offer in terms of education services.

So, definitely you are moving in the right direction to fulfill the country’s journey to a middle income status.

All countries that have advanced have offered opportunities for all children, regardless of where they were coming from, their races, tribes, parents and social economic status. And in order to have that equal opportunity we need to make sure that there is free basic education.

Actually not many countries offer free education to the level of secondary school, placing Tanzania in a unique group. Moreover, we have seen children here being enabled to get 3R’s skills, (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) in their first three years (Standard One to Three).

Furthermore, there is a need for more simplification of the Curriculum to focus on providing teachers with all the support in order to be more effective in their classroom practices in the first three years of primary education.

Another point is improvement of efficiency in the use of resources, which are scarce. At the same time they have to be invested in education and spent well. All governments need to make sure that there is no money going down the drain.

In that regard, there has been inefficiency in the use of resources. Teachers, for instance, did not have the right qualifications due to different reasons. So, we need to keep focusing on improving the quality of education.

This can be done by also creating a space for bringing in teachers that are well prepared, motivated and have the skills. Among those factors, one that distinguishes a better performing education sector is teachers. It is absolutely at the centre of everything.

They also need to be promoted and have a conducive working environment so that they can internalise the huge responsibility that they have, because their role is to change people’s lives.

The report you launched recently at the University of Dar es Salaam highlights four key priority areas for Africa. One of them is universalising basic education with quality. How would you advise the government to go about it – especially in light of the constraints in the various financial and manpower resources?

Universal basic education is absolutely a priority for Tanzania and Africa in general. There is no way young Africans can compete in a future without being educated.

The labour market is going to change in the near future. What we don’t know is the direction we are going to take.

Given that we need to make sure that we give our young people skills they need, we need to have them trained on other social motivational skills such as creative thinking, adoptability, teamwork, capacity to learn permanently and that is going to be fundamental for them to learn and strive in the labour market for the future as well as be happy citizens.

The government needs to have the political will that will be accompanied by managerial resources to enable proper monitoring of all projects that are to be implemented.

Do you honestly believe quality fee-free education is attainable given these challenges?

It is a challenge to deal with quality, it is not a matter of putting more hours in schools. That is why I have said there is a huge opportunity for a country such as Tanzania following its attempt to offer fee-free education.

With fee-free education, the government can start taking measures to improve the quality of higher education given that there might be an increase in the number of people to be recruited in a near future.

On higher education, improvements can be made on expanding the university system with quality and ensuring you have technical streams as another valid option that can give you the tool to be productive in the available market.

As a country you can be able to outline the exact available productive sectors in order to supply them with right labour force that is employable.

Those linkages between educational institutions and such sectors is something we don’t see here (in the country) yet and it is a challenge for many developing nations. That is even more important in a labour market that is unpredictable.

So, these 20 to 25-year-old Tanzanians have to be taught in universities and technical institutions, not only specific skills regarding their occupations that they are being trained for, but also on soft skills that guide them on how they can engage in meetings, engage in teamwork and other factors that will allow them to learn on a permanent basis.

At the launch of the report, the need to learn from regional peers (low-income and middle income categories) in trying to address the challenges of the education sector were emphasised. Can you enumerate some of the best practices in the region that should be emulated?

What we don’t have enough here is the assessment that allow schools and educational authorities to know where the country is doing better in learning.

There might be expansion of schools, but students have not been learning something that we have in Tanzania.

The system will help all schools in the country to know how much progress has been attained and what schools are doing better than others. Those systems are not necessarily used to find out how students are doing but the whole system.

This is what we see in all developed countries and Tanzania will have to put more efforts on this.