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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EDUCATION SECTOR REFORMS AND OTHER NATIONAL POLICIES The education reforms in Tanzania have been taking place in a rich ambiance of related policies. Ever since the liberalization and privatization processes of the late 1980s, the Government has taken bold measures to align social policies with the new circumstances, ideology and global developments. The measures range from a search of a national vision to sectoral social policies. Tanzania Vision 2025 Vision 2025 targets at a high quality livelihood for all Tanzanians through the realization of universal primary education, the eradication of illiteracy and the attainment of a level of tertiary education and training commensurate with a critical mass of high quality human resources required to effectively respond to the developmental challenges at all levels. Education is treated as a strategic agent for mindset transformation and for the creation of a well educated nation, sufficiently equipped with the knowledge needed to competently and competitively solve the development challenges facing the nation. In this light, the education system is restructured and transformed qualitatively, with a focus on promoting a science and technological culture from its lowest levels, giving a high standard education to all children between age of 6 - 15. Basic sciences and mathematics are accorded great importance in keeping with the demands of the modern technological age without losing sight of the humanities. The vision emphasize the need to ensure that science and technology education and their application for promoting and enhancing productivity permeate the whole society through continuous learning and publicity campaigns. In addition, the poor communities are targeted to ensure their access to basic education. The resource base is being broadened to ensure adequate funding for primary education up to the university. More resources are being allocated to tertiary and higher education while management capacity to cope with the requirements of the education sector is enhanced. The vision also points out the need for enhancement and encouragement of pre-school education. All these challenges will be met through the following strategies:
In short, Tanzania aspires to be a nation with high quality education at all levels, a nation which produces the quantity and quality of educated people sufficiently equipped with the requisite knowledge and skills to solve the society's problems, meet the challenges of development and attain competitiveness at regional and global levels. The Macro Economic Policy Framework The education reforms in Tanzania are taking place when the economy is at crossroads. From 1980, it has been going through a quite stressful transformation, from a centralized command economy where the state did not only own some major means of production, but also was the main provider of social services such as education and health. Thus momentous strides have been made in the rationalization of investments, liberalization of the economy, and privatization of publicly owned enterprises. The broad macro economic policy context is characterized by a deliberate government policy to:
Poverty Eradication Agenda The three publicly pronounced permanent struggles in Tanzania since independence in 1961 included the eradication of ignorance, disease and poverty. The three are intrinsically related since ignorance is likely to lead to illness and poverty and vice versa. To date, Tanzania has not gone very far in these struggles, and therefore there has been an upsurge of interest in combating poverty in the country. The 1998 document on poverty eradication entitled " Mkakati wa Taifa wa Kusimamia Utekelezaji wa Sera za Kuondoa Umaskini" estimates that 50 percent of Tanzanians fall under the poor category, defined as having a disposable income not sufficient to buy the basic necessities of daily life. Today about 36 percent of all Tanzanian are categorized as being in the hard core poor, hardly able to sustain a decent life. Poverty is more pronounced in the rural areas where 60 percent of the people are classified as poor, compared to only 39 percent of the urban people. Education is clearly identified as one of the strategies for combating poverty due to the personal benefits and other externalities articulated elsewhere in this document. Specifically, the poverty eradication agenda in education include:
The Education and Training Policy The National Education and Training Policy formulation exercise started in 1989 when the Ministry of Education and Culture established a task force to map out an education strategy for the 21st century. The task force presented its report in November 1992 upon which the Ministry embarked on the formulation of a national education policy that culminated in the February 1995 promulgation of The Education and Training Policy. Consistent with the broad macro economic policy environment, the thrust of the policy initiative is liberalization, privatization, and facilitation as opposed to state ownership and provision of facilities and services. Specifically, the policy emphasizes:
This pages policy document has 125 policy statements touching on systems, access and equity, management of the sector, the formal education and training system by levels, curriculum and examinations, vocational training, tertiary education, non-formal education and financing. While there are specific aims for each level - pre-primary, primary, secondary, tertiary and higher education, the policy has some generic aims of education, which include:
The Higher Education Policy Up until 1992, there had been no coherent national higher education policy. The newly created Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education in 1992, observed the following problems pertaining the to higher education sector:
It was in the context of these problems and the paucity of a coherent philosophy for the development and management of higher education that the Ministry Science, Technology and Higher Education (MOSTHE) initiated a concerted policy-making exercise that resulted into the Higher Education Policy (1998) whose major thrusts include:
Technical Education Policy Technical education in Tanzania has evolved from the traditional trade schools of Ifunda, Moshi and Dar es Salaam Technical College to the current set up where there are eight regular technical secondary schools under the Ministry of Education and Culture, four technical colleges (Mbeya, Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Karume-Zanzibar) as well as enlarging the Engineering Faculty at the University of Dar es Salaam. In addition, vocational education is given under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour and Youth Development and Folk Development Colleges under the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children. A multiplicity of NGOs and few parastal organizations are also active in the provision of technical education. Characteristically, the traditional spectrum of skills subsumed under technical education includes bricklaying and masonry, carpentry and joinery, plumbing and pipe fitting, painting and sign writing, electrician and wiremanship, and engineering mechanics. Currently, more trades such as those in domestic science and rural development social skills, are incorporated in technical education. It was a mark of recognition of the importance of technical education, both in the formal and informal sectors, that in 1996 the government under MOSTHE issued the first formal policy called " The Technical Education and Training Policy in Tanzania". The impetus to develop a formal policy came from:
The policy objectives include:
The policy statement gives a strategy for achieving these general objectives that include prescriptions for what is to be offered in primary and pre-primary education facilities, post primary technical centres, vocational training programmes, apprenticeship, technical secondary schools, colleges and universities, teacher education and in adult education programmes. The National Science and Technology Policy Science, both as substantive areas or bodies of knowledge and a way of thinking, and technology, as the application of the bodies of knowledge and skills, tools for the conquest of the environment and the improvement of productivity, are both central to the development and well being of any nation state. In Tanzania , the need for a science and technology policy was recognized as early as 1985 when the first National Science and Technology Policy was promulgated. It was recognized that a national science and technology policy was needed in order to consciously tilt and direct the use of science and technology towards the economic, social and political objectives of the country. The current policy, which was issued in April of 1996, under the title " The National Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania" has sixteen objectives which, inter alia, include:
The policy statement recognizes that the formal education system can constitute the most efficiently organized way of imparting the skills and inculcating the appropriate scientific and technology attitudes and orientations. The production of the appropriate and quality human resources gravitates around the national education system. The scientific and technological human resource includes artisans, engineers, technicians, scientists and managerial personnel. Thus, the familiarization of all people with the scientific ways of thinking and knowing and the exposure to relevant scientific and technological products had to start quite early in the school system as follows:
Other Related Public Policies Public Sector Service Reform Programme The Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP), which is the precursor of the Public Service Reform Programme (PSRP) was initiated in 1993/94, involved six general reforms: retrenchment and re-deployment, personnel control and management reform, capacity building, pay reform, Local Government reform; and Ministry organization and efficiency reviews. These reform activities have had some effects across all government ministries. In the MOEC, organization restructuring and efficiency enhancement has been attempted and is part of the ongoing reform process. The main achievements of the CSRP are:
The issues that were not addressed sufficiently by the CSRP Phase I included:
The CSRP is not complete but the results so far are encouraging. A new phase called Public Service Reform Programme (PSRP) was initiated. The new initiative started in 1998. It will focus on performance improvement in the delivery of public goods and services. The reforms, once completed are expected to introduce capacity building and strategies for improving services. The emphasis will be:
Tanzania Public Service organizations will adopt results oriented management practices as a guide. Education and training will need to adjust to these new orientations and challenges. Local Government Reform Programme The vision of a future local government system is summarized and elaborated in the Local Government Reform Agenda 1996-2000. The central features of the Local Government Reform Programme are in the decentralization and devolution of functions and financing within the framework of a unitary state. Decentralization of state functions to local levels entails the devolution of powers, integration of previously centralized service sectors, and creation of real multi-functional governments at the local levels. Therefore:
The National Training Policy While there is a significant overlap between education and training, often a distinction is made between these two highly related processes. While education should remain highly organized, with great emphasis on thinking and broad analytical skills, training has to emphasize the acquisition and perfection of skills for performing a particular job; the changing of a job or attitudes consumerate with the ever changing environment and job ecologies. Tanzania , right from independence in 1961, strongly placed training at the centre of its development ideology. She believed that the Africanization and localization programmes heavily depended on quick and thorough training of the indigenous people. This belief in the centrality of training in the national development processes resulted in the mushrooming of numerous training institutions in the country and an unbridled utilitarian attitude towards education. In due course, manpower plans were developed and education was supposed to be closely linked to the manpower requirements of the country. With the coming of liberalisation of the economy, the country had to come to terms with the fallacy of manpower regimes and centralised human resources development planning. The 1994 National Training Policy takes cognizance of the new circumstances and recapitulates the significance and importance of training as follows: Training:
The National Training Policy evolved the following relevant training objectives:
The policy statements emphasize the responsibility of employers to train their workforce. Taking into account needs of special groups, priority is to be given to the indigenous people, involvement of all institutions such as NGOs and private firms, concentration on in-country training, cost sharing with beneficiaries, significance of research and practice, autonomy of training institutions, and co-ordination by the Civil Service Department. Training categories and approaches identified in the Policy include:
The National Employment Policy The relationship between education and employment was underscored in the 1967 seminar policy on Education for Self-reliance where educators were urgent to make education relevant for rural employment and participation in the informal sector. Since then the problem of unemployment among school leavers from primary level to the university has become quite serious. Consequences of unemployment and underemployment are quite predictable and include the lack of harmony and peace in the society, and exacerbate a state of insecurity, major and petty crimes. It was in this context that the Government issued the 1983 Human Resources Deployment Act No.6 as one of the strategies to address the problem of employment opportunities and unemployment. A formal policy statement contained in the 1997 version of the National Employment Policy followed this. The centrepiece of this policy is to address the question of both wage employment and self employment. The long-term perspective is to improve the per capita incomes of the majority of the people, which in turn will reduce the level of poverty and hence unemployment abated. The policy statement identifies 13 aims and objectives, which inter alia, include:
While the policy statement does not directly address the linkage between education and employment, under a section on Employment Promotion for Special Groups, a strategy for youths employment is quite relevant. It stipulates, among other things, the following actions:
The Government Pay Reform Policy Public service pay reform is vital for the effectiveness and efficiency of government service, and critical for improving capacity for the delivery of public goods and services. For Tanzania , most employees receive wages below subsistence level. The government pay reform becomes even more critical to keep pace with the changes in the open economy where there is free mobility of labour, especially the technical and professional groups. Without a planned and deliberate policy to reform the salary structure of the civil service, the government will run the quality risk of failing to retain the professional and technical personnel. However, considering the prevailing budgetary constraints there are no simple options, especially in the short-run. However, the Government has issued the policy goals for public service pay reform from the long and medium term perspectives. The Long-term Policy goals are to:
The medium term policy goals are: (a) For technical and professional staff. There will be a deliberate move or policy to significantly enhance pay levels so as to ensure that the government has a critical mass of appropriately skilled and experienced officers for its efficient and effective management of the economy and improve quality of public services. b) The Government will develop a special core professional and managerial cadre, comprising of highly qualified, highly capable and well-compensated officers to take over the expensive services provided by expatriate personnel as that route is not sustainable. c) Sustainable civil service staff rationalization and efficiency measures. The size of the civil service will further be reduced by 17% in the next three fiscal years and remain with a maximum of about 225,000 employees. Rationalization of donor's compensation for civil servants is expected to start in the FY 1999/2000. Those whose salaries are to be topped up by donors will be recruited transparently and the laid down procedures to be adhered to. Other reform measures to be undertaken include:
Private Sector Reform Policy Before liberalization of the economy in the late 1980s' the Tanzania Government discouraged private sector development and free market economy. Under the socialist economy, most of the means of production were in the hands of the state. The state was the producer and supplier of many goods and services. Pursuant to redefinition of the role of the state to be that in mindset of a guide, facilitator, and enabler, the civil service automatically needs a drastic change among other things to facilitate and provide conducive and enabling environment for private sector development. In order for the private sector to be able to take its place in the economy the government shall take a deliberate move to ensure that the civil service has the capacity to facilitate the private sector. To make this happen the following actions will be undertaken. Change the behaviour and attitude of civil servants towards the private sector . This change entails a capacity building programme which includes skills training, the management of change, customers service programmes, exposure to client friendly behaviours. Improve the public image of the public service . Strategically this entails capacity building in the form of:
Community Development Policy The major objective of the Community Development Policy (1996) is to enable Tanzanians as individuals and as families, groups, and associations to contribute more to the objectives of self-reliance and national development. The policy aims at providing direction in ensuring that:
The policy will place special emphasis on poverty eradication by advising and training individual families and households as well as encouraging group or co-operative production activities. The informal sector will be consolidated through savings and credit societies while the needs of special groups of women children and youth will be addressed. Emphasis will also be put on furthering Governments' efforts to respond to and meet the basic needs of the community, including food and nutrition, health and sanitation, basic education, water and environment, low cost housing and appropriate technology for domestic energy. People will be mobilized to expand and improve the rural infrastructure as well as rural and urban environment. Local Governments will be strengthened to guide and promote development in different communities. Education, and especially basic education, needs to be consistent and complementary to these community development thrusts and objectives. Women Development Policy The Women Development Policy (1992) was formulated with the aim of providing a correct interpretation of the concept of women in development so as to assist in overcoming customs and traditional practices which militate against women, ensuring that the society recognizes and appreciates the various activities performed by women, establishing concrete gender sensitive plans for equitable distribution of resources, establishing a machinery for co-ordination, the implementation of women's development issues, and ensuring full participation and involvement of women in national development programmes. The policy emphasizes the need for women to have the freedom, knowledge, skills and resources needed for their active recognizable and valued participation and contribution. One of the strategies for achieving women's participation in all sectoral development plans as well as to involve them in administrative responsibilities and in decision-making processes is to eradicate all obstacles hindering women from having access to education and training opportunities to the level they desire. Consistent with this strategy is for the education and training institutions to incorporate gender specific elements in their curricula. The policy calls upon relevant ministries and institutions to avail more educational and training opportunities to women in order to increase their abilities, including training in management, planning, business and administration at district, ward and village levels. Training should emphasize the importance of planning, supervision of implementation, and monitoring the results with the aim of hastening women's development. Also, the laws and procedures, which govern the system of education, should be amended, with the aim of enabling women to attend courses, especially in the fields of science and technology. Child Development Policy The Child Development Policy (1996) has been formulated by the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children to safeguard the rights of the child. One of the rights of the child is the right to education. In Tanzania , basic education is a right to all children who are below 18 years old. The objectives of the policy are stated as to:
The policy emphasizes the need for co-ordination and collaboration between MCDWAC and MoEC to ensure that all school-going age children are enrolled in primary schools and that alternative programmes are set up for the older children. It also emphasize the need to introduce programmes which will enable children from the poor families to have access to education; that those who have dropped out of school re-enter schooling, and to ensure conducive teaching/learning environment for children. The policy calls upon the Ministry of Education and Culture to introduce guidance and counselling services in schools, to take legal action against those who curtail children education, and to provide adequate human, and material resources and relevant curricula which is meaningful and readily applicable to children's real life situations. The Social Sector Strategy The year 1992 was hectic in policy formulation in Tanzania . The Government, in collaboration with the World Bank, got into a process of a critical review of the social sector that was conceived to include education, health, water and sanitation, nutrition and family planning. Through an intensive process of reviews, research, consultations, and conferences, guided by a national steering committee of senior government officials, two products were realized. One was the Social Sector Review document of 1995 (Report No.14039-TA). The second product was the Social Sector Strategy which was a direct product of the Review. The sectoral review was triggered off by the discovery that while significant strides had been made in the 1980s, including high immunization coverage and universal primary education, some worrying signals were apparent. These included failure to significantly reduce infant mortality, dismal expansion of post primary education and training opportunities, declining access to safe water, and regression in the enrolment of primary school kids. There was also a questioning of the systems of social service delivery that may have worked well in the 1970s and 1980s but needed to be adjusted to the new and changing conditions of the 1990s, that included liberalization and privatization. The review highlighted three supply side constraints that included: Heavy recurrent cost burden , following the heavy UPE capitalization such that now most resources went to personnel emoluments and not other charges for education. Weak managerial capability to co-ordinate the vast network of schools, compounded by apparently ambiguous or changing lines of responsibility, accountability, and authority between local and central government. Inadequate co-ordination of donor efforts , with vertical programmes and projects distracting attention of managers from their core supervisory functions. On the demand side, the review highlighted two problems:
As a result, the Government proposed several principles to guide investments and other actions. These included:
The social sector reform strategies proposed were as follows:
The Financial Management Reform Programme In recent years a number of studies have been undertaken along the lines of the public financial management reforms. More emphasis, however, has been placed in the field of financial and economic management. During the period 1993 and 1995 these studies identified a wide range of budget formulation, execution and accounting problems which serve to undermine good governance and stability of government in ensuring:
Currently the government has developed initiatives to overcome these problems by implementing with the support of the donor community, a number of initiatives at both macro and micro (institutional) levels designed to improve the management of public finance. These initiatives include:
The most elaborate of these initiatives is in the field of accounting and payment system. One conditionality is the establishment of an effective financial tracking and audit system within the central government and its subsidiaries. In that direction, the government (MOF) has established a system that will deal with the analysis of the effectiveness of budget control at central, sectoral, and district level, and the identification of factors behind leakages in the expenditure system. The system has two components: a) PLATINUM. The Treasury has installed a heavily computerized accounting system, initially dealing with ten ministries, MOEC, being one of them. The system has two servers attached to a modern radio system, with a wide network attached to each of the ten ministries. The system is equipped with a full range of finance modules covering all aspects of accounting, management, monitoring, and tracking of funds through an Internet system. By July 1999 all the departments of the central government will have been covered by this system. It is expected that through the Internet system centered at central payment office the government will be able to monitor the expenditure for projects and recurrent payment. b) Commitment Expenditure System. This is a measure deliberately taken by the government (MOF) whereby all funds must be committed before expenditure is effected. Once commitment is done one cannot spend the funds for other uses. Parallel to this system, the government is developing a modern computerized audit system. The aim of this initiative is to modernize the present audit system to be able to match with the computerized accounting and payment system in place. When these initiatives are fully operational, donors will hopefully develop confidence in the accounting and payment system of the government. It is expected that once confidence is restored, donors will avoid the present parallel system of funding, and pass through the government exchequer payment, accounting and auditing system. National Environmental Policy The lives of all Tanzanians are intimately and ultimately intertwined with the environment. Our survival and that of our future generations depends on maintaining a sustainable and harmonious relationship with nature. The Government has clearly recognized that the environment is a major terrain for inter-sectoral conflict and that the current state of the Tanzania environment was a matter of grave concern. The six major environmental problems identified are:
It is the recognition of these negative trends that has led the Government to give environmental conservation and management a high priority in its development operations. A National Environmental Policy has thus been developed with a central objective of arresting the above problems, through ensuring sustainable and equitable use of natural resources, preventing degradation of land, improving productivity of natural resources, recreating degraded areas, making new facilities that expand our natural heritage, raising public awareness of the vital significance of environmental management, and promoting international cooperation on the environment agenda. To this end, the Government Policy is to involve all segments of the society in responding to environment problems. In that regard, education has been clearly identified as the key cross-sectoral strategy that can effectively be used to promote and encourage environmental education and awareness, both through the formal education system from primary school to university level, and through the non-formal education for the youth, adults, and people in the professions and working places. The implications of this thrust to education are enormous, especially in curriculum design and teaching methodologies For More Information on Policies |
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