EMPOWERING YOUTH: Quality education needs huge investment

Let’s talk a bit about our curricula. How do you assess them?

I see Tanzanian children the same as children of any other country with huge ability in music, sports, drama, computer, and other talents apart from specialist subjects.

I reiterate that the curriculum must be as broad to cover other skill-based subjects and debunk the current stereotype that they don’t matter.

Maybe you will tell me that the time will come, but these subjects were there before.

Every primary school had a sports day, but very few do that now.

Students can forget what they learnt in History or Biology but will remember what they learnt in a play and who they were with and how they were applauded something that earns them confidence.

If allowed to recommend how better the country can plan and develop curriculum, what would be your advice?

We need to give alternatives.

For example, in my own country (Ireland), you have the system of two levels, let’s take a subject like a history and take the First World War as a topic.

Those who have low ability, they will learn what happened, what were the causes, what were the results, some of the main people, one or two of the maps, and that’s about it and they will be expected to know that inside out and will be examined on that amount.

The same course will be given with a lot more detail to those who are cleverer, they will be expected to know all the people concerned, many maps, many consequences and a lot of other details including to compare the war with another war and what is going on in the world today.

There is no stigma with this, the students learn happily at their level and do very well.

What is your view on free education launched by the fifth phase government under President John Magufuli?

There is no such thing as free education. When people talk about free education, they are talking about government-sponsored education.

The government sponsors the education through the taxes that the parents pay, the workers are paying high taxes, and you pay very high taxes on everything you buy, even food.

So it’s not free the way people think, its people who fund education through their government. Even though it is people who fund education, they are not getting what they should be getting.

You all the time get tired of the lack of good planning. You have seven thousand students in one school, what is that about?

Can this people-funded education offer a solution to universal quality education?

We have good staffing in both primary and secondary schools but they are not given enough resources nor are they given freedom.

In any country that I know, you don’t discourage parents from helping schools.

If the government provides you with the primary school or secondary school, in a normal situation the parents of that area needs to be proud and privileged to assist their school through their parents association which does whatever can be done to improve that school.

Can you imagine a school with 7, 000 students, even if the parents will contribute Sh1, 000 each, how much money would have been collected per month?

Discouraging the parents that they should pay nothing because the government has announced basic education to be free does not make sense.

There is this one headmaster I know, a very excellent one, who used to have a system of the teachers and the parents whose small contributions would help him to employ maybe half a dozen part-time teachers who were willing to do the extra work to make the school improve in performance.

But since the announcement of ‘free education’, that system died and he is handicapped by the government order asking the school heads to stop demanding contributions from parents.

So from your perspective, is fee-free education a blessing or a curse?

Any education is better than none, but I think the system itself is misunderstood. Its government sponsored through the taxes of the people.

My advice on free fee education is that the system is not to postpone, but it requires a huge investment for it to succeed.

What is your opinion about the single book model?

We have books from Tanzania Institute of Education in our libraries here and nobody uses them. I spent a lot of money on them but they are not user-friendly and have a lot of mistakes. Nowadays, there is a great choice.

How do you assess the government’s efforts towards inclusive education?

I think there are been very good examples here and there of the government sponsoring people with special needs and helping the deaf, the blind and the likes.

The government is doing great on that.

Let’s assume that this interview will be read Education Minister Joyce Ndalichako, what do you want to tell her?

She has done great in sorting out the long-existing problems in the country’s education sector. But she should strive for more investment in both primary and secondary education to ensure quality education. She also needs to encourage parents to contribute to the schools’ development for quality education their children can get from schools.