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Next step for school building projects
2008-02-19 10:09:02
By Editor
Over the past ten years, notable progress has been accomplished in an important area of Tanzania`s education system.
Through public and private initiatives, or most importantly, through community efforts propped up by government support, the physical capacity of the national education system to accommodate increased intakes has creditably expanded.
We are talking about physical capacity at basic education level whereby Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP) has achieved measurable results.
Evidently, the Secondary Education Development Programme (SEDP) has also gained extraordinary momentum just after the 2005 general elections. It seems the target that each ward should at least have a single secondary school within its vicinity is now realizable.
Likewise, at tertiary level, we have witnessed huge public and private efforts in the direction of enhancing physical capacity.
These developments are most welcome in an environment where population grows at the leap of 2.8 per cent and basic education has been made mandatory.
This much acclaimed achievement may be reversed unless similar efforts are directed at relentless mobilisation to consolidate quality of education at all levels of teaching and learning.
Some analysts have suggested that about 90 per cent of all current resources now appropriated for education should now be diverted to enhancing quality, that no more physical expansion should be undertaken.
The PEDP effort stands best to illustrate what the future of investment in education should be looking like.
Similarly, the academic performance for most of the newly built ward secondary schools is yet to reach the required level while university performance is not up to the mark.
We have to come to facing the stark reality that school development is not all about putting up buildings alone. The most important aspect of any school system is to ensure that effective teaching-learning processes are continuously happening.
In other words, we should now put a break on construction efforts and instead embark, even with greater tenacity, on raising as well as maintaining education quality.
This means directing expenditure to training more qualified teachers, away from the current wanting fast-track strategy, whilst ensuring that they are well motivated.
The nationwide school-building project, much as it has achieved a lot, needs extra financial injection. This is due to the fact that investment in education is a costly venture.
Some of the recently built-up secondary schools are lacking teachers’ quarters, or worse still, may have only a single poorly roofed house for the school head only, although the newly built classrooms are roofed with corrugated iron sheets.
We must move further by making sure that schools have modern libraries and laboratories, all teaching aids, including information and communication technology (ICT) tools.
The quest for quality education should be taken as a sustainable process.
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