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Govt ban on pre-form one course overdue
2006-04-12 07:38:42
By Editor
On Monday the government slapped a ban, with immediate effect, on pre-form one course conducted by certain schools in the country.
Announcing the ban, the Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Margaret Sitta said the move is designed to forge fairness in secondary school studies as the course was the same as the re-introducing of Standard Eight in the educational system that was abolished since early 60s. In other words the pre-form one course is an illegal practice.
In addition, Minister Sitta said, the course was unfair for students pursuing it, as it places them to be examined on equal basis as those not taking it.
She also warned that the course unnecessarily subjects parents to even more financial burden as they have to dish out between 150,000/- to 200,000/- per student per course that runs for about a year.
We hail the government for the decision which was in fact long overdue. We say this because we believe that for many of the schools that run the course, the main consideration is money alone, and not any of the so-called ’’preparation’’ of Standard Seven students who are aspiring to pursue secondary education.
This contention is proved by the fact that there is usually not much difference in the Form IV Examinations pass level between schools whose students took the course four years back and those who didn’t.
In many cases those schools whose students didn’t take the course performed better than their counterparts.
In essence, as the Minister said, the pre-form one arrangement widened the gap between poor and rich families, if one considers the fact that most of the pupils completing primary education come from poor families.
If it may be recalled, money was also the basic consideration for the mushrooming of the ’’tuition’’ craze in the early 90s, during which teachers, of both primary and secondary schools, used to conduct classes after official school hours for selected students who were ready to pay up.
Worse still, these private classes, dubbed ’’tuition’’ used to take place within the official school compounds and using school facilities such as classrooms, blackboard and chalk.
No doubt the arrangement proved that teachers were not concentrating very much on imparting knowledge to their students during official school hours.
Somehow, this deficiency was deliberately made known to parents, some of whom, consequently, were forced to buy the ’’tuition’’ idea.
The government, after a lot of complaints from parents, clamped down on the practice.
The pre-form one course by certain private schools should not be seen as the only ’’illegal’’ practice being undertaken by these schools.
Since liberalisation, education now appears to be fully commercialised.
In consequence, many private schools have sprung up over the years, especially in urban centres, with each advertising some specifics in its curricula designed to woo parents to enrol their students – at a price of course.
Needless to say, the government, through its Ministry of Education, should exercise close supervision of these schools because some of them could be all out to con unsuspecting parents.
As one walks around the streets in Dar es Salaam for instance, one cannot miss to see adverts pasted at bus stops, on walls and other places offering form one places and other courses by schools, some of which have queer names.
The government must be alert on these adverts as they could be presenting nothing but bogus schools whose perpetrators want to make some fast bucks.
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