By Elias Mhegera
STRIVING to empower its educators in order to cope with the challenges of the fast advancing world in science and technology, Tanzania is facing a problem of setting priorities and a focus of where to start.
Reports of a gloomy performance in the education sector were issued recently by an NGO by the name of Twaweza which is working across the whole of East Africa. Twaweza is supported by a consortium of five donors who provide long-term support towards the overall program.
The current donors are Sida, DFID, the Hewlett Foundation, SNV and Hivos. The NGO provides one set of annual and half year reports to all its donors. Apart from education it has been also dealing with the health sector and many other crosscutting issues.
An education expert at the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) Dr Joviter Katabaro has responded to this report by calling for immediate intervention in order to get rid of the hindrances affecting the provision of quality education in Tanzania.
Dr Katabaro who is the dean of education and senior lecturer at the college concurs with the Twaweza report by saying that in many schools which he has visited there are congestions in classrooms, scarcity of books, houses and teachers themselves which hamper the proper dissemination of education.
He acknowledges that while the problem in urban areas might be classrooms and houses for teachers, in many rural areas many pupils spend many of their years in schools without classrooms as one can witness with the Lupa market primary school in Mbeya region photographs.
Statistics indicates that there is an acute shortage of houses both in urban and rural areas. For instance it was indicated at the Temeke Municipal Offices, department of educational statistics and logistics that schools go without enough teachers.
Nzasa primary school which has 4297 pupils has 57 teachers, whereby there are 12 male teachers and 45 female teachers and a single house for teachers. In Mchikichini primary school with 3033 pupils there are 43 teachers, 40 are female teachers while their male counterparts are three.
At Kilamba primary school there are 2259 pupils, and 48 teachers; 39 females and 9 males. All these schools have acute shortage of desks and toilets. It has become a common phenomenon that the teaching of primary school pupils is taken as a woman’s job.
An independent inquiry by this reporter at some schools in Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam revealed that there are many problems which needs to be tackled although teachers did not want their names to appear in print due to various reasons including the procedures pertaining to dissemination of information embedded in some Government’s departments.
“I can boldly say that the report by Twaweza is a reality on ground and this tells that there are many intervening measures that need to be taken in order to rescue education in Tanzania,” said Dr Katabaro.
Elaborating further he said that problems in the education sector can be seen as a twofold phenomenon, in the rural sector there are no incentives and motivations for teachers to the extent that a good number of them prefers to work in urban settings.
Again in the urban centres he sees a series of problems which could affect the provision of education. He mentions the problems as mapping of schools as there is concentration of schools in some few areas to the extent that pupils and students are forced to travel long distances from their residences in order to attend schools.
He sees another problem in the postings that many women teachers are allocated in urban centre due to a number of factors, one is the fact that married women teachers always get posted in such schools so as to accompany their male counterparts.
But even for the single women teachers they tend to prefer working in urban centres where they can have a guarantee of their greener pastures. To that effect, there is a lot of lobbying going on. He acknowledges the fact that rural life is more challenging to women teachers than their male counterparts.
He sees another problem at policy and implementation level whereby there are good policies in writing but they are never implemented. For instance misallocation of funds and at times misuse of such funds or delays in their allocation.
Lack of prioritization and focus of what is more appropriate for the time being tends to displace goals in the provision of education. While it is a good idea to provide schools with funds but there is a need to put in place proper management of such funds.
Dr Katabaro sees another problem in the storage of books and science kits. This has gone to the extent that head teachers prefer to store such teaching amenities in cupboards in their officers than distribute them to pupils because of poor storage ability.
Himself a former teacher before he rose into the rank of a lecturer he decries the tendency of labeling some schools as good and others as bad. “This trend is disheartening to the teachers whose schools are termed as bad,” says Dr Katabaro.
Bashir Shellimoh education officer for secondary schools at the Temeke Municipal within the city of Dar es Salaam warns that the quest for more teachers should not compromise the quality of education nor the ethics surrounding the profession itself.
The former headmaster is worried that of recent higher learning institutions have been producing teachers who are unethical serve for their ability to teach only. He sees the danger that such teachers who are unethical can affect their students adversely.
“The teaching profession must maintain its ethos even if we are striving to reduce the gap of teaching staff in schools, how can you recruit people who do not know what to wear in the classroom situation?” he asked in astonishment when speaking to this reporter.
He reveals that already there are many complains that recently recruited teachers reports to their working stations but when they get their allowances they just abscond from their duties not to be seen again.
He also attributes the random recruitment of teachers to the increasing cases of teachers who want to remain in urban centres because according to him they do not have a calling or devotion for such a career but they treat it just like any other form of employment, “there are just too many pulling factors in the urban centres,” he insists.
Shellimoh says it would be better to institutionalize long term plans that will help the Government to get teachers who are worthy being trusted otherwise the profession will be ridiculed because of scandals like rape attempts and impregnation of female students.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment