How Education ministry plans to expend Sh1.3tr in 2020/2021

Dar es Salaam. Parliament yesterday endorsed a Sh1.3 trillion budget for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology for the 2020/2021 fiscal year.

Earlier, tabling the budgetary proposals, Education, Science and Technology Minister Joyce Ndalichako said Sh857.5 billion was meant for development projects, with the rest being for recurrent and other expenditures.

She said, among other things, the ministry sought to complete the electronic accreditation system to increase efficiency in registration of schools. It also plans to enable Higher Education Students Loans Board (Heslb) to provide loans to 54,000 first year university students up from 49,799 in 2019/20.

Also on the list, the ministry sets to conduct monitoring and evaluation of 200 registered schools to ensure compliance with the registration rules, and procedures as well as conduct surveys and assessments for 100 registered schools in conditions to see if they have completed improvement of infrastructure as directed by the ministry.

Prof Ndalichako said that her ministry will also provide training, counseling and child protection to 200 secondary school teachers to build their capacity and strengthen school care delivery skills.

Further the ministry plans to provide in-service training modules for teachers in primary schools about new curriculum, teaching materials and continuous learning and testing.

According to Prof Ndalichako, the ministry will publish a guide book: Child Care, Counseling and Protection in both Primary, Secondary and Teachers Colleges, to strengthen the provision of school care services.

The ministry will also use 2020/21 budget in building capacity for the coordinators of teachers’ resource centres and 966 ward education coordinators officers in relation to the continuing education program of improving teachers in the workforce in accordance with teachers’ continuous professional work development framework programme.

Opposition camp on education budget 2020/21

Education shadow minister Suzan Lymo (Chadema) believes that closure of schools and other educational institutions due to the Covid-19 will bring a backdrop to an already struggling education sector with low achievement, high dropout rates and low tolerance for students to stay in school until graduation.

In her speech, she proposed that the education budget be set in a different way to other years to take into account the realities of coronavirus disease that has affected the education sector by 100 per cent.

“…The government through this budget should establish a short-term and long-term plan to ensure the availability of learning technology in schools and colleges that can help provide distance learning; including teaching and learning materials to compensate for lost teaching time,” part of the speech states.

“Since we don’t know when Covid-19 will end; the Camp recommends that the government allocate funds through this budget to finance academic programs on radio and television so that students will continue learning,” she added.

The Camp further advises that at the, National Television (TBC1) and Radio (TBC-Taifa) should be used to broadcast the programs before private station start applying for admission if it is deemed that National TV and Radio do not meet the requirements.

The opposition also called on the government to take steps to negotiate with Internet service providers and budget for subsidizing those providers to reduce the cost of downloading topics, publications, books and live-streaming tutorials for students, teachers and parents.

It also said that given the current crisis of education provision, Parliament must discuss and advise the government on how to promote public-private partnerships in education to support the provision of distance education especially to vulnerable students.

The government was also asked to reduce taxes on mobile phones and other electronic devices for teaching and learning.