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Education planning requires overhaul
2007-01-04 09:41:36
By Editor
Last year, persistent power crisis overshadowed other equally painful emergencies, like the one that beset Tanzania’s public education sector.
It began to steam up just after the results of the general elections, when loans to higher learning colleges became unmanageable.
In the end, not all who possessed right pass marks got access to undergraduate placements, while overcrowding and thin staffing was becoming a chronic hitch in attaining expected efficiency at tertiary levels of education.
Some associate colleges, like the Institute of Journalism and Mass Communication (IJMC), are grossly understaffed and ill-equipped to mould journalists who can effectively tackle the issues of the day.
The lower levels of education we are experiencing both basic and secondary have not been spared from the quandary.
Primary schools are overcrowded in many places while teachers in some rural areas are hardly available.
While government and community based efforts to build secondary schools at every ward was commendable, structures alone will not provide the necessary material conditions for the sector to prosper.
By the look of things, these crises are due to lack of proper planning on the part of responsible authorities.
It doesn’t click in the mind that authorities discovered serious shortage of teachers and classrooms just after examinations results were out!
Thence thereafter, planning and implementation of programmes are carried out like when a commander of an area’s fire brigade gets a call about an outbreak of fire in the locality.
So, we have ‘crash’ training scheme to produce teachers, and another ‘crash’ plan to build classrooms and what else of the coming crashes?
Dealing with the ensuing crisis in that style is not bad at all, because at least something of public interest is being done.
Nevertheless, it reflects serious weakness on the part of education planners as well as executives who command resources in the sector.
Well planned systems are spared undue crises but also resilient enough to manage contingencies as they arise over time.
Now, because we are handling crises, the overall goal has been hoodwinked by the politics of ‘quantities’ rather than the logic of ‘quality’.
Without effective care to quality education, it is unlikely that our graduates will be able to compete in globalized work environment.
So, our plea focuses on proper planning, and that should also involve consultation of the private sector which knows how to run the affairs more efficiently.
For a long time, medium-to-long term enrolment forecasts have not been made public, something which is not healthy for planning purposes, in both private and public sector education systems.
We re-iterate that what is significant to any system is the output. When the process of managing inputs into a system is a ‘crashed’ one, we end up with ‘crashed’ results.
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