Shock as urban public school lacks learning resources

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The school is located in an area where expatriates working for development aid organizations, and senior government officials, including ministers, permanent secretaries and directors and commissioners, reside, popularly known for the attractive beach along the Indian Ocean.

Dar es Salaam. Oysterbay Secondary School in Dar es Salaam is reported to be experience a shortage of learning resources especially for science subjects, a situation that has attributed to the school’s poor performance in the recent national examinations, The Citizen has learnt.
The school is located in an area where expatriates working for development aid organizations, and senior government officials, including ministers, permanent secretaries and directors and commissioners, reside, popularly known for the attractive beach along the Indian Ocean.
Currently, it has 1200 students from form one to form four, both male and female.
According to the Certificate of Secondary Education Examination (CSEE) 2019 examination results issued by the National Examinations Council of Tanzania (Necta), some 111 out of 211 registered students who sat for the exams scored division zero with only 15 scoring division three (3).
Besides the poor performance, the school also experiences shortage of toilets, desks, clean water, classrooms, and learning resources in general.
This was revealed by the school’s board chairman Mr Harrison Lukosi during a recent handover of 311 textbooks donated to the school by Rotary Club of Dar es Salaam, Oyster Bay—advocating for quality education, improved health and sanitation in the country.
The Club’s President Ms Maryanne Mugo during the event urged the students to effectively utilise the donated the learning resources, raising optimism that the donation would help the students to improve their performance in the exams.
In his speech, the school board chairman appealed to other education sector stakeholders particularly all former Oysterbay Secondary School’s students to join hands with the management of the school and the government in addressing the challenges.
“Many thanks to the contributors for this huge donation, also, let me take this opportunity to commend Kinondoni Municipal Council for its support of Sh32 million which was used to renovate the classrooms,” said the school chairman.
On behalf of the school students, Angela Benward, a Form Four student said the donated learning resources would help students to learn and increase performance especially in Mathematics subject.
Reached over the phone to respond to the shortage of learning resources facing the public school, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Dr Leonard Akwilapo told The Citizen that the government under a capitation grant (CG) scheme, normally sends a certain amount of money per student enrolled in public schools to address such challenges.
He questioned why the Oysterbay-based school was experiencing such challenges.
“The government through relevant education authorities distributes learning resources to all public schools. So if one school complains about the shortage of the resources, then something at that school is not right,” said the PS.