Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIANS are currently engaging in debates focusing on making reforms to the country’s education system. The determination to make reforms to the country’s education system is necessitated by the need to produce competent graduates capable of competing in today’s growing labour market.
For years Tanzania has been providing education to its citizens based on what experts describe it as traditional system of education.
Traditional education, also known as backto- basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society traditionally used in schools.
Experts who oppose the former system of education (Traditional System) believe that under the system teaching methods have always been focusing on rote learning and memorisation.
The primary purpose of traditional education is to transmit to a next generation those skills, facts, and standards of moral and social conduct that adults consider to be necessary for the next generation’s material.
As beneficiaries of this plan, which educational progressivists describe as being “imposed from above and from outside,” the students are expected to docilely and obediently receive and believe these fixed answers.
Teachers are the instruments by which this knowledge is communicated and these standards of behaviour are enforced. The major disadvantage of traditional system of education is that students’ proficiency is measured by subjecting them into examinations, an approach that has proven to be disadvantageous given the changes that occur every day in the labour market.
The Association of Tanzania Employers (ATE) has often complained of incompetence of locally produced graduates, calling for reforms in the education system.
In order to resolve the problem, experts say it is high time the nation turned into Competency based learning or education (CBE), an approach that has received much attention over the past few years as more institutions develop programmes.
CBE has gained popularity with learners due to its flexible structure and affordability. As the name suggests, these programmes are based on the development of competencies applicable to a particular career.
What is unique about CBE is that it focuses on what students learn and not on the time spent in the classroom completing credits.
In this approach, students work at their own pace to demonstrate mastery in the competencies necessary for their chosen field of study.
It is believed that under CBE students will be able to acquire skills necessary to conquer the labour market, including enabling them to employ themselves.
