Classroom shortage hits free education plans

Efforts by the Tanzanian government to offer free basic education to the country's school-age children are being hampered by a serious shortage of education facilities, the BBC reported on 22 January.

Although the compulsory Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, reintroduced by Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa in 2001, required all seven year-olds to register for primary education, many schools were ill-prepared to accommodate a large increase in numbers, the BBC said.

"We have followed the government directive, the children have been registered, and now they sit under trees," Yasin Shaaban, head teacher at Kiburugwa Primary School, Dar es Salaam, was quoted as saying by the BBC.

The school, which normally accommodated some 3,500 children, had been required to enrol an additional 1,200 under the UPE programme, he added.

Paula Tibandebage, a senior social research fellow at the Dar es Salaam-based Economic and Social Research Foundation, told IRIN on 24 January that the current education crisis in Tanzania was mainly attributable to international pressure on Tanzania to fulfil its obligations under the international Education For All (EFA) agreements, to which it is a signatory.

"There is external pressure. The idea itself is good, but I am wondering if it can work without the proper mechanisms first in place," Shaaban said.

The EFA initiative was launched in 1990 at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand. Representatives from 155 countries - including Tanzania - adopted the seven main goals of the EFA, which include universal access to basic education, and enrolment of all school-age children by the year 2000, according to the web site of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

A global assessment - the EFA 2000 Assessment - was subsequently carried out in some 180 countries to determine progress made towards the stated EFA goals.

According to the Tanzanian government's EFA 2000 country report, despite the expansion of basic educational opportunities in Tanzania between 1990 and 2000, many eligible school-age children have remained out of school.

The EFA 2000 assessment exercise in Tanzania has shown quite clearly that the government has been striving to achieve EFA goals, but "the problems facing primary education include variation of regional enrolment patterns, shortage of essential resources, irrelevant curriculum, late school enrolment, and lack of qualified teachers", the report stated.

Policies on universal education were first introduced in Tanzania during the 1970s under the government of Julius Nyerere, and led to improvements in school enrolments and education standards, the BBC said.

"Official figures put the literacy rate at 96.8 percent in 1986 and the country was hailed worldwide as a model [for] success for adult empowerment to read and write," according to the UNESCO web site. "Tanzania had almost wiped out illiteracy."

However, severe economic difficulties in the 1980s and spiralling foreign debt meant that the relatively high level of financing for education became unsustainable, the BBC said.

The primary school Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) dropped from 98 percent in 1981 to 76.4 percent in 1998, according to Tanzania's EFA 2000 report.

Despite recent economic reforms, Tanzania is still one of the world's poorest countries, and is ranked 140th of 162 countries on the UN Human Development Index for 2001.

The Tanzanian government's finances received a boost in November 2001, however, when the IMF and World Bank announced US $3 billion in debt relief for the East African country.

The debt relief, which forms part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, of which Tanzania now becomes the fourth beneficiary after Mozambique, Bolivia and Uganda, was expected to secure more funds for social services such as health and education, Tibandebage said.

Tibandebage added that she hoped the government would allocate a good amount of the funds saved under the HIPC initiative for the UPE programme.

"I am not sure if we [Tanzania] have the capacity to put up the infrastructure which can meet the demands of UPE, but I think it depends on the amount of HIPC funds the government will allocate," she said.