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Suggestion for secondary education project
2007-08-27 08:14:02
By Editor
Right after independence, Tanzania realized that fighting rampant ignorance was crucial. The state thus chose to offer free education from primary to university level.
It also opted for Universal Primary Education, an ambitious programme that was undertaken by constructing schools as well as employing primary school leavers as teachers on on-the-job training and fast-track basis.
This was accompanied by an aggressive adult education campaign that was largely successful.
Come the mid 1980s, there was a decline in public spending on education, with gross enrolment in primary schools falling sharply.
The apparent reason was that public resources for primary education were limited, at a time when there was already excess demand for secondary schools.
Sensing that the situation did not augur well for the future, in the 1980s, the government adopted policies to stimulate private sector growth in education, especially at secondary level.
It was expected that this move would go a long way to address the gap.
Sad to say, time, that tireless teacher, revealed that in order to register giant strides in education, the government was still required to spearhead the development of secondary education.
This did not imply that the entrance of the private sector in Tanzania`s education sector was not without tangible fruits.
The problem lay in the fact that the greater majority of the primary school products came from poor families, which couldn’t afford to pay the tuition and accommodation costs in private secondary schools.
When the third phase government took over, it immediately picked up from the previous administration plans for expanding secondary education.
Since then, hundreds of secondary schools have been built at break-neck speed.
The government has clearly staked its future reputation on the success of this grand project.
As part of efforts to address the needs of teachers in the newly built schools, a crash programme of enrolling and job training high school graduates is underway.
The inadequate number of TTC graduates and existing competition for scarce staff resources have made the task rather difficult, but not impossible.
Ex-Form Six students--who have been taken on board after undergoing a short teaching methods course—are going to form the bulk of available staff.
The above situation has invited a lot of criticism to the effect that the standard of our secondary education is going to fall.
We should remember that the government needed to start from somewhere, because the most immediate requirement was to have the buildings in place first, after which the question of competent staffing would be fully addressed.
Yet both those who have fears about the current school staffing quality and the government are right in what they are advocating, as their differences only point a way towards a practical solution.
The answer is none other than the government looking for adequate funds so that the straight from school teachers can undertake further tailored training until they are really ripe.
We hope the state, while doing its best to attain universal secondary education, has already set up strategies to create an atmosphere for employment of tens of thousands of secondary school graduates who shall be churned out year in year out by the new schools we are currently building.
This has to be done right now, otherwise we shall only succeed to produce large numbers of idle, educated people, and political, social and economic problems that come with them.
We pray that this does not happen.
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