[lg policy] Tanzania: Education policy ‘not realistic’. Public education is only for the poor

[Steve Sharra]

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http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Education-policy--not-realistic-/-/1840340/2646476/-/1271q9fz/-/index.html
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Education policy ‘not realistic’

By Mwassa Jingi

Posted  Sunday, March 8  2015 at  19:47

IN SUMMARY

This policy replaces altogether about four old policies on education,
covering almost all levels of education in the country.

Dar es Salaam. After a public outcry for many years on a gradual
decline in the quality of education, at last the government has
responded with affectation and has launched the new education and
training policy, 2014.

This policy replaces altogether about four old policies on education,
covering almost all levels of education in the country.

This could have been the government’s effort to salvage the education
system from collapse. But is there anything new in this policy, which
the old policies on education failed to achieve and why?

Generally speaking, there is nothing new in this policy. Like the
other policies, the new policy won’t make any better improvement in
our public education system because there is neither will nor
determination to do so. We all know that public education is now left
for the poor, who cannot afford sending their children to better
schools privately owned by either individuals or religious
institutions. Our leaders are only paying lip service to public
education as their political agenda to keep them in power, but in
reality it’s not their major concern.

We know that for many years now children from poor families have been
sitting on the floor in classrooms despite the trees we have that can
be used to make good and affordable desks. The ratio of one teacher to
45 pupils has for many years remained unrealised dream. Does having at
least 100 pupils in a 45-pupil capacity classroom need a new policy?
We could first solve all these problems before embarking on
formulating the new policy.

While technocracy might not be a big problem in running our
educational institutions of all levels, the political system is a
hurdle in the development of our education because it is responsible
for giving us the country’s leadership. If we will continue having the
kind of political leadership as we have now, I do not think we will be
able to change our education for better through formulating new
policies here and then. We should ask ourselves how many good policies
and laws do we have and what have we done with them before having the
new ones?

What could be said as a new thing in the policy, is that, it has
merged together all old policies pertaining to education in one volume
and the first one to be published in Kiswahili as the original
language. The rest is just lip service to devising policies and then
shelve them until a time of revising or writing a new policy comes.
The new policy has focused mainly on rephrasing policy statements, a
culture which has become our habit in formulating national policies.
Half of this policy contains policy statements. Policy statements are
now the style of formulating our policies.

Another thing, which the policy has featured is a legal structure of
the education system. We had the Education Act, 1978, which I think
the new policy will speed up its amendment or even require a new law
on education. To my knowledge, the law has never been an issue in our
leadership and management of the country. We are very smart in
formulating policies and enacting legislation. The issue has always
been the implementation of the policies and the laws we make. If we
could have committed public leaders and proper management in the
education sector, we wouldn’t have repeated similar mistakes now and
then in primary and secondary schools. The policy has once again
failed to resolve the long standing controversy of which should be our
language for instruction - Kiswahili or English! Using two different
languages for teaching in the same country is an awkward thing.

While we have not yet solved the crucial and persistent problem of
lack of desks and latrines in both primary and secondary schools, now
our leaders have started politicking again by promising poor people
that they are going to be furnished with well-equipped laboratories
and in the short-run their children will be furnished with laptops.
This is a white lie and joke for poor and ignorant people, who have no
alternative when it comes to the education of their children.

We must first ask ourselves, what have we achieved through the old
policies? If we did not achieve much, was it because the policies were
bad or we had no political will and determination to implement them?
Every time we launch anything new, our leaders and in particular, the
President, will say that the newest is the best. Newness of a policy
cannot by itself change the situation. I believe, we have been
formulating good policies accompanied by good strategies and
programmes, but the problem has always been lack of political will and
determination. As a nation, we often fail to realise what we want to
achieve because we lack political will and determination.

For instance, the old education policy for primary and secondary
schools of 1995 was good enough to guarantee our children to get best
education if our leaders had political will to implement it as per
letter. A government that cannot afford feeding schoolchildren even
with porridge, how can it provide them with laptops? A government that
cannot rehabilitate old school buildings, how can it provide
schoolchildren with the best education as it pledges in the new
policy?

The author is a lawyer/journalist. He can be reached at
mwassajingi at yahoo.com, 0756 440 175.


-- 
Blog: http://mlauzi.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @stevesharra
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Global Voices: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/author/steve-sharra/
TEDxTalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-otnO33fMhQ
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