Secondary schools in Tanzania are facing many problems which hamper students' learning. This in turn affects their performance in the national examinations hence reducing the growth of a learned society.
Tanzania like other developing countries is facing tremendous challenges in management of valid data of its citizens for establishing information on various social, political and economic decisions for national development.
Tanzania's National Identification Development Agency (NIDA) explains government's effort to establish a national database from which to extract crucial information for managers in respective sectors to base their decisions in executing their daily duties in building the nation, among them are education sectors managers.
The observation was made during the sixth international conference on ICT for development, education and training by Black-mark Corporation Limited Officer, Berthold Msita.
Tanzania has no single integrated secondary schools information management system. General academics statistics such as the number of enrolled students, student's continuous assessments, students transfer records and school fees records are getting harder to track for monitoring and evaluation as well as timely and appropriate decision making procedures.
Up to November 2009, Tanzania had a total of 1,408 non-government schools of which 588, representing 48 per cent were primary and 820 which make 52 per cent were secondary schools.
"This number alone represents a huge management challenge of such critical academic records," he said.
For her part Ellen Kalinga, University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) college of information and Communications Technologies (CoICT) said African countries adopted the world Declaration of Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which emphasize on meeting the basic learning needs of every person.
"Some of the initiatives undertaken to cope with the expanded enrollment in schools include teachers' training, constructions of buildings and availing teaching and learning resources," she said.
In Tanzania there is a developed policy framework related to the education sector. The policy initiates education reforms since 1997 by developing the Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP).
The minister for Education and Vocational Training, Dr Shukuru Kawambwa, said to operate ESDP in 2002, the government launched a primary education development program (PEDP) followed by secondary education development program (SEDP) 2004 to improve access with equity, quality, management and delivery of basic education.
The implementation of PEDP and SEDP had been realized in terms of access and equity. He added that a number of government and non government primary schools had increased from 12, 142 in 2002 to 15,816 in 2010, while the number of secondary schools increased from 1,291 in 2002 to 4,266 in 2010.
The enrolment in primary schools increased from 5,981,338 in 2002 to 8,419,305 in 2010 while enrolment in secondary schools increased from 328,318 in 2002 to 1,638,699 in 2010.
However despite achievements related to the huge increase of access to education as a result of PEDP and SEDP among them increased enrolment in primary and secondary schools had created need for more teachers, teaching materials, classrooms and other requirements necessary for a conducive learning environment.
"ICT has a key role to play in addressing the educational challenges facing African countries. In realizing its potential, African countries are investing in ICT as end users and in most cases such investments are addressing service delivery as well as creating new jobs in the technical and other sectors," he said.
Dr Kawambwa said Tanzania had launched an ICT policy for Basic Education in 2007 which guides in the development and use of ICT which will create more opportunities for development of the youth in skills and employment as well as enhancing the teaching and learning environment in schools.
To further the ICT policy, the government has a program for e learning for secondary schools named Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow (TBT) aiming to integrate the use of ICT in delivery of basic education. TBT is expected to harmonize and coordinate all ICT interventions in basic education.
Vice President Dr Mohamed Bilal said in order to prepare the youth to become employable, African countries had to engage in expansion of education and skills training at different levels.
However he said ICT sector in Africa was weak and faced many hurdles related to policy, finance, technical support, expertise, high cost, unreliable connectivity and source of power, unmatched ICT facilities with the demand.
Citing examples on Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) education program officer Rachel Ogibe said the general education situation in Africa was low enrolment, retention and completion rates, high adult illiteracy rate (about 39.7 per cent against average of 23.4 per cent for developing countries), and twin problems of quality and cost of education, gender disparity and high teacher-pupil ratio.
She said there was need to address extension of education and training facilities with a bias on ICT facilitated learning as a means of providing skills, removing ignorance and causing a participation in the information society and inclusion of the disadvantaged population.
She said measures undertaken include priority Areas including TVET adoption of e-Learning as a further priority, inauguration of a regional e-Learning Task Force by the President of ECOWAS Commission in 2006 and Survey of e-Learning in 2008.
Countries that had harnessed the potential of ICT had attained significant social and economic development. Kenya's ICT industry is growing at a promising rate which is a direct result of the positive changes being experienced in the business environment following the decisive steps taken by the government in 2004.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Rosemary Mirondo
Quelle/Source: Afrique en Ligue, 07.06.2011
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
