Why review of Tanzania's education policy is inevitable

Dar es Salaam. It has been revealed that the Education and Training Policy of 2014 is out of sync with what is being implemented.

This is among reasons that prompted President Samia Suluhu Hassan to direct a review of the education policy and curricula to strengthen the quality of education in the country.

The process of reviewing the Education and Training Policy of 2014 and curricula follows directives issued by President Hassan during her maiden speech in Parliament last year.

She also made it clear that the matter as one of her priorities insofar as the education sector was concerned following complaints about what was viewed as the obsolescence of some elements within the education policy and curricula that do not meet the needs of the labour market.

Speaking on Friday in a session with media editors, the Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Prof Adolf Mkenda, said important things in the 2014 policy have never been implemented.

He explained that this was why the President ordered a review of the policy to bring harmony to the current needs where she wanted Tanzanian education to be better by producing a graduate with ability to lead his life as soon as he finishes school.

The minister said that his ministry has already formed a team of economic experts led by Prof Joseph Semboja to review the policy, while reminding of the report by Makweta commission in which the main information is contained in the 2014 education policy.

Prof Mkenda noted that the 2014 education policy had been worked on for a long time where experts travelled to various countries including the United States, Germany and others and there was a huge consultation before the policy was passed in parliament.

He explained that the policy wanted compulsory education in Tanzania to take 10 years which will be divided into two parts; six years of basic education, then four years of secondary education and that every Tanzanian child was required to study for 10 years.

The minister said the existing system in the 2014 policy is recognized as 6-4-2-3+, meaning six basic education, four secondary education, two advanced secondary education and three plus universities respectively.

“These are the contents of our current policy and they were never deleted.”

Prof Mkenda said, instead, what is currently being implemented was seven years of compulsory education where once a child finishes the seventh grade he/she is not forced to continue further regardless of his age.

The current formation is 7-4-2-3+. “So what is being implemented right now is different from what the policy says. That is why the President ordered us to review the policy and make it inform the curricula…”

He noted that there were questions to be asked about changing what was being done outside the policy to be in line with the policy or the policy should be changed to be in line with what is required or another alternative should be sought.

“We want a child who completes school to be employed or self-employed because the biggest grievance in education has been that graduates cannot be employed or self-employed because they lack required skills,” Prof Mkenda said.

He explained that with the current system (7-4-2-3+) a child starts school at six years, if you add seven years of primary school (compulsory), he finishes at 13 years old. Thus, Prof Mkenda says children, at the moment, need to finish school at the age of 13 and they are not forced to continue. “Is a 13-year-old child employable?”

He pointed out that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) laws that Tanzania has also ratified talk about the age of a person to be employed.

Prof Mkenda said that like other countries, Tanzania has signed the international agreement on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, where goal No. 4 says, it is to provide free education up to secondary school, meaning that compulsory education should go up to secondary (not end at primary as it is currently in the country).

“Now when we review the policy, we must ask ourselves, are the policies and what we signed of our own accord compatible?”

Further, Prof Mkenda revealed when he entered the ministry he asked about the confusion and what prevented the implementation of the 2014 education and training policy, and was told the cost was the reason.

“I was told, it seemed to be expensive to implement the policy in 2014. Therefore, the budgetary implications had not been worked out and this is what we have to do now,” he said.

He said the team under Prof Semboja continued with a collection of opinions from mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar with the aim of coming up with answers that will inform better and long-term decisions for the sector.

“What they need to do is to prepare the actual costs so that when decisions are made, they will be more certain,” noted Prof Mkenda.

Also the ministry focused on six other areas which they believe will remove the complaints that have existed for years pertaining to the quality of education.

In the process, he explained that another policy that was being reviewed was the Science and Technology policy of 1996. After that, the Education Act of 1978 and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech) Act of 1986.

Along with that, the curriculum was also being reviewed and that the opinions that will be proposed would have to be informed by the policy.

“Sometimes the speed of expansion of education compromises the quality of education...we have told them to tell us how we can go there without lowering the quality of our education,” he said.

He said that education and skills were among the important measures and strategies that the government was developing because it recognizes that despite education and skills being useful, it is also an easy way for everyone to be self-employed or employed.

“In the future, we hope to see education and skills taking their toll to ensure that every student uses his knowledge for the benefit of society and the nation as a whole,” he said, adding that such ventures require enough teachers, trainers and lecturers with quality and ability.

Prof Mkenda noted that along with the policy focusing team, there was another team focused on reviewing the curriculum, and so they extended the time to gather opinions from June to October, this year to give the team time to harmonize before the report is unveiled to the public as a draft.

“By December, my hope is that we will already have a full draft. The draft will enter the government’s decision-making process, which will also have the opportunity to put inputs,” he said.