Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE government is looking forward to introduce counseling services to secondary school students, especially those in adolescent stage to help them cope with changes without affecting their academic development.
Deputy Permanent Secretary in the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government, Gerald Mweli said on Wednesday that the services will be provided by teachers from within the respective schools.
“The government will ensure that each school has at least two teachers who will be providing counseling to students, especially those at growing stage … these services are expected to commence this year,” Mr Mweli said during the 56th graduation ceremony of the Institute of Adult Education of the academic year 2019/2020 held in Dar es salaam.
The graduation was also held concurrently in Morogoro and Mwanza campuses, where the graduates were conferred with degrees, diplomas, certificates and other academic awards. He said teachers who pursued their studies at the IAE were in better position to provide the services because they have also been imparted with additional skills on parenting.
“It is my expectation that you will bring changes to your respective schools, especially on student’s behaviour because you have additional skills on child rearing,” he said.
Institute of Adult Education (IAE) Director, Dr Michael Ng’umbi said that a total of 1,786 students for 2019/2020 academic year from the three campuses of Dar es Salaam, Morogoro and Mwanza have been conferred with various academic awards.
He said that the graduates were well equipped to execute their roles, where some of them are going to be teachers and managers of various adult education programmes and distance learning while others will oversee community development programmes and other cross cutting issues.
Dr Ng’umbi, however, said that apart from increasing the number of experts, IAE in collaboration with RALG and other stakeholders has prepared a National Adult Literacy and Mass Education Rolling Strategy which aimed at reducing the number of youths and adults who don’t know how to read, write and arithmetic.
He further said that IAE in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and RALG through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) funding is implementing an Integrated Programme for Out of School Adolescents (IPOSA).
“The programme is implemented in eight regions in the country, covering adolescents who never attended school, dropped out of either primary or secondary school or completed primary school but did not transit to secondary education,” he said.
He noted that most of the projects and plans were being implemented in district councils where most of the graduates have been employed, thus “we expect them to effectively implement the projects”.
