Fix defects in education policy draft, government told

 

Minister for Education, science and technology Prof Adolf Mkenda. PHOTO | COURTESY

By Jacob Mosenda

Education writer/journalist with The Citizen

Mwananchi Communication Limitted

Summary

·         Experts want the document reviewed to address quality issues in the sector

Dar es Salaam. Experts and education activists yesterday identified what they said were shortcomings in the draft of the education policy released recently

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They called for its review to ensure that the expected improvements address existing quality issues in the sector.

The government earlier in the week released the reviewed draft of the new curricula and policy, with the curricula indicating that compulsory education will include primary and lower secondary education and will be provided for ten years in the 1+6+4+2/3+3+ system.

Education, Science and Technology minister Adolf Mkenda launched the draft, opening the door to stakeholders to review and give their opinions on further improvements.

Even as stakeholders start meeting in Dodoma today for three days of deliberations on the draft, some groups have given their suggestions on the same.

They commended the government, but also identified areas in need of further improvement.

The Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) listed a number of important areas that the draft did not address.

LHRC’s executive director Anna Henga said that despite the fact that the government had done a commendable job that was complained about, there were still others that the policy remained silent on.

According to Dr Henga, some cultural education officers, technical education officers, IT education officers and secondary education officers were not recognised by the draft despite the existence of such positions in the country's education system.

“We would like to see these positions recognised by the policy or if they do not exist in the administrative structure, they should be deleted so that they do not confuse the people,” she said.

Dr Henga noted that the draft did not provide a detailed explanation of the concept of informal education system, what kind of education is it in order to eliminate the confusion that exists.

They also wanted the policy to explain how students who passed through the informal education will be recognised in the formal education system.

According to LHRC, the policy should be linked with other policies that speak in one way or another about skills and knowledge such as science and technology policy, small scale industries policy; to have graduates with more skills and knowledge.

Dr Henga also explained that it was important for the next education policy to have an evaluation element every seven or 10 years on the implementation of the policy rather than waiting just to overhaul the entire policy.

TEN/MET’ national coordinator Ochola Wayoga said despite the fact that the government touched many important areas in the draft, it still did not make it clear about the strategy of providing education during disasters such as Covid-19 and floods.

“In this draft, there is no provision of what is to be done during disasters to protect the right to education for every student,” he said, while citing the recent floods that killed many people in the DRC and Rwanda and hindered the provision of education to a large extent.

Mr Wayoga pointed out that the biggest challenge in the 2014 Education Policy was weak implementation that led to only one issue of free education being implemented leaving many others, thus calling for execution strategies for the next policy to be put in place.

“We have seen in this draft that the subjects that will be taught are listed, including Chinese, Arabic, French and English, but nowhere is it indicated how the teachers of these subjects will be found,” he cautioned.

“The state of the infrastructure is a challenge for the provision of education at the moment while our kind of investment is far less than the requirement. If we don’t change the modus operandi, we will find ourselves implementing only a few things and carry on with the same situation.”

For his part, Dr Beatus Mkiraya, an education expert, said that one of the biggest challenges that has led to the deterioration of education in the country is the confusion in the language of instruction from pre-primary to university not being clear.

According to the draft, Kiswahili will be used to teach in pre-primary and primary education, except for foreign language lessons and in schools that will request to use English language.

English will be used to teach from the lower secondary level, except for foreign subjects and in secondary schools and colleges that will be allowed to use Kiswahili for teaching.

"Making this issue optional is creating loopholes for confusion. We need a position so that the actors, including teachers, concentrate on specialising in the relevant area," he said.