LEO TUONGELEE SEKTA YA ELIMU TANZANIA. Zijue changamoto KUBWA katika sekta ya Elimu Tanzania {bahati mbaya sijapata ya Kiswahili} Read the full Education Sector Analysis here: unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002152/215247e.pdf The 2011 Education Sector Analysis (ESA) also points to key challenges in the coming years for the development of the education sector in Tanzania, including: 1. Achieving greater efficiency gains (or implementing cost-saving strategies) in the use of public education resources. Indeed, it is unlikely that the current level of budget priority given to the education sector will be maintained over the next decade, due to competing demands by health, agriculture and infrastructure; 2. Increasing the public resources allocated to secondary education. Tanzania’s secondary cycle receives 35 percent less funding than countries who are equally close to achieving universal primary education. This situation should be carefully reviewed to avoid affecting quality as the sector expands. Secondary schools already display high pupil to teacher ratios (49 to 1); 3. Ensuring children enter primary school at the right age. Approximately 13 percent of primary school-aged children were still out of school in 2006, 88 percent of which had never attended. Although poverty is a constraint, age appeared to be the main reason for nonattendance. Late primary entry is common (only 36 percent of Standard I students were of official school age _ seven years _ in 2006) and is known to have a detrimental impact on schooling paths; 4. Improving access to and retention in secondary cycles. Although considerable improvements in access to secondary school have been noted, especially at O-Level, they are still limited. In 2009, half of children had access to O-Level and 23 percent were able to reach the last grade of the cycle, up from just eight percent in 2003. A-Level access is still strikingly low, at five percent. Whereas lack of supply is a major hindrance to O-Level and A-Level access, economic difficulties and cultural issues among certain population groups also contribute to fragile school demand. The policy to have a secondary school in each ward has had a very positive impact on secondary access and on primary retention rates; 5. Supporting pro-poor schooling. Important disparities in access exist according to gender and area of residence, and they increase with successive levels of education, but the most discriminatory factor in schooling patterns is families’ level of income. It has also been shown that households’ contributions to education are still significant at the primary level (equivalent to a quarter of public resources), despite the fee-free primary education policy. Furthermore, disadvantages tend to be cumulative. Poor rural girls face the worst access and retention conditions; 6. Taking affirmative action to enhance girls’ participation in school to ensure gender parity at postprimary levels. Insistence on girls fulfilling their traditional role in society, early marriage and pregnancy all favor dropout. Trends could be reversed by: (i) awareness raising campaigns to sensitize parents on the value of educating girls beyond primary, and on the negative impact of early marriage and pregnancy on schooling and female health; (ii) greater numbers of female teachers and the provision of community-based hostels to avoid girls the long journeys to and from school, addressing security concerns; and (iii) scholarships and cash transfers targeting bright girls, reducing direct and opportunity costs, mirroring the government’s programme targeting the most talented primary graduates from poorer backgrounds; 7. Improving pedagogical management to raise the quality of basic education. Although the improvement dynamic observed in primary education learning outcomes between 2000 and 2007 is very encouraging, and better than in neighboring countries, learning achievements are still modest by international standards. In addition, national examination pass rates are dropping, and the results of those who graduate are low, especially at primary and O-Level; 8. Reducing disparities between regions, districts and schools, that persist despite decentralization, highlighting the need for effective planning and monitoring tools to allocate education inputs more efficiently. A decentralized information and monitoring system could help by providing decision makers with timely, accurate and reliable data on the education sector. In addition to an EMIS system, financial and human resource management systems would improve fiscal management and accountability. A first response to this challenge was given in 2009, with the development of a pilot decentralized Basic-Education Management Information System (BE-MIS). Tested in 28 district councils in 14 regions, the BE-MIS is to be scaled up to all councils nationwide by 2014; and 9. Adequate planning of TVET and higher education expansion. The increase in primary and secondary school enrollments is already placing much strain on secondary, TVET and higher education institutions. An urgent response is required to ensure the smooth and manageable development of these sub-sectors. The challenges faced by higher education are of particular importance: 10. It is essential that funding mechanisms be improved. Higher education is blatantly inefficient, paying little attention to potential economies of scale. In addition, approximately 28 percent of the level’s budget is devoted to badly targeted social expenditures, particularly loans transferred directly to students: 48 percent of students benefit from a loan, yet less than 10 percent come from the poorest quin-tiles, which calls for an improvement in the loan targeting mechanisms; and 11. Students’ career objectives and the distribution of graduates by subject area must be adjusted, to achieve better relevancy of higher education programmes to the labor market and enable Tanzania to keep abreast of rapid technological development and needs. Science subjects in particular attract too few students (only 24 percent of students for the 2007/08 academic year, down from 34 percent in 2003/04). Adequate analytical tools should be implemented, such as labor market tracer surveys. Technical education and vocational training will also be key to Tanzania’s development. Some of the key required actions that this ESA highlights for the sub-sector include: 12. Strengthening the subsector’s coordination mechanisms. Although regulatory and quality assurance bodies provide important guarantees for the controlled development of the TVET subsector, it still faces a series of challenges, including: (i) the diversity of training demand linked to the heterogeneity of the target population; (ii) the institutional fragmentation of technical education, under the umbrella of various ministries; (iii) the fragmentation of vocational education and training service delivery, involving two ministries and a parastatal agency; and (iv) the practical continuity between vocational and technical curricula and programmes, although theoretically bridges do exist, as defined by the national qualifications’ framework; 13. Revising subsector budget trade-offs. The Tanzanian TVET system as a whole is not as underfunded as in many other African countries. However, technical non-higher education absorbs almost 57 percent of all TVET resources, against just 37 percent for vocational training, and six percent for folk education. This funding imbalance should be reduced in order to scale-up vocational education and training activities; and 14. Defining a funding formula to rationalize the allocation of resources among technical institutions. Surprisingly, it has been noticed that planning and welfare courses are twice as expensive as health and allied science courses. However, even for a given subject area, and among institutions with comparable levels of enrollment, variations in the resources allocated are sizeable. This situation merits an improved funding formula and for more coordination in planning and budgeting among parent ministries. More broadly, this ESA offers valuable and comprehensive resources to anyone interested in the education sector in Tanzania. It is however a snapshot of the system at a particular time. As the sector makes progress in implementing its sector plan, this report’s findings are therefore likely to become outdated, although many features will remain valid. It is the hope of both the Ministry of Education and development partners that this document will be of use to all stakeholders in the education sector. READ FULL REPORT HERE: unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002152/215247e.pdf
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 02:31:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015