Government bans education NGO

The government of Tanzania has banned a local NGO from undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding schools claiming it had been disparaging the country's education system and teaching profession, officials said on Wednesday. The Ministry of Education and Culture issued a circular on Tuesday prohibiting the NGO, Hakielimu, from "undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding Tanzanian schools". The circular said the decision was taken because Hakielimu had repeatedly disparaged the image of the education system and the teaching profession through the media. The ministry also accused the NGO of repeatedly failing to comply with directives given by it. In response, Hakielimu said it had done nothing wrong as it worked within the laws of the land. "Our role includes mobilising and enhancing community participation through advocacy for accountability and sharing information regarding educational issues to and from schools," Rakesh Rajani, the Hakielimu executive director, said in a statement issued on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam. "Independent analysis, right to access and impart information, spearheading transparency and debate on accountability of government to the people are among principle approaches of our work. And we believe that in so doing we will be promoting good governance," Rajani said. He added that the NGO was still studying the circular and had also sought legal advice on the matter. He urged Tanzanians to focus on critical issues and challenges that the nation was facing. "These," Rajani said, "are the well being and freedom of the people of Tanzania." In August, Education Minister Joseph Mungai threatened to deregister Hakielimu after it produced a report critical of the government's efforts to reform primary education. He had said: "If Hakielimu continues to issue sensational statements on the performance of the education sector, I will lodge my complaints to the Registrar of NGOs and ask for its deregistration." The 21-page document reviews reforms began in 2002 in the education sector. It found that enrolment was lower in 2004 than in 2003, and that a lower percentage of girls had enrolled. "The proportion of girls in primary schools fell from 49.3 percent in 2001 to 48.8 percent in 2004," Hakielimu said in the report. However, the report does offer some praise for the reforms, which did away with school fees. "There is no doubt that the implementation of PEDEP [primary education development programme] has brought about positive changes in primary schools," it said. When the programme began in 2002, it said, enrolment rose more than ever before and schools received more textbooks. The government also succeeded in recruiting 32,325 teachers in 2002, which are 1,064 more than the target set. Even so, there are still fewer teachers per pupils now than before, the report said, as well as a glaring difference in the teacher-pupil ratio in various parts of the county. The eastern region of Kilimanjaro has an average of one teacher to 44 pupils while in the remote western region of Shinyanga the ratio is one to 87. However, according to Mungai, Hakielimu's report does not help the system. "My teachers work very hard and under difficult conditions. They should be encouraged and not intimidated," he said.