AfricaPress-Tanzania: IN a move aimed at motivating female students to pursue science studies, the government on Friday said that it intends to build one secondary school for girl students in each region, which will be special for teaching the subjects.
According to the government, the implementation of the plan will go along with offering special training on mathematics, science and language to 20,000 specialised teachers.
President John Magufuli said in Dodoma while inaugurating the 12th Parliament that the move is expected to increase the number of female students in the field of science.
“In the next five years, the government will put much emphasis on science subjects, especially to girl students by building one secondary school in each region, which will be special for teaching the subjects,” President Magufuli said.
The government will also establish training centres of excellence in education institutions in order to produce competent personnel with skills suitable at national, regional and international levels.
“A total of USD 75 million has been set aside for executing the plan in which, the Dar es Salam Institute of Technology (DIT) will specialise in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Mwanza Institute of Technology will specialise in hides, National Institute of Transport (NIT) in aviation services and Arusha Technical college will deal with renewable energy,” he said.
The Head of State noted that despite achievements recorded in education sector in the past five years, the government will continue to improve the sector, by allocating more budget on higher education students’ loans to increase the number of beneficiaries.
He added that the government will also renovate and construct education infrastructure, including schools, classrooms, hostels, laboratories, libraries, offices, teachers’ houses and lecture halls.
According to the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board, the government has set aside 464bn/- for the 2020/2021 academic year for 145,000 beneficiaries, of whom 54,000 will be first year students and 91,000 for continuing students, which is an increase of about 15bn/- compared to the previous budget.
CCM election manifesto 2020-2025 indicates that the number of students who get loans from HESLB, has increased from 98,300 students in 2014/2015 to 130,883 students in 2020.
Dr Magufuli further said that the government has successfully managed to provide free education and will continue implementing the policy in order to improve the sector and performance in the next five years.
He said the implementation of fee-free education policy has massively increased the number of children joining secondary education across the country.
Official statistics from the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PoLARG) shows that in 2016, a total of 1,896,586 pupils (960,877 boys and 935,707 girls) were enrolled to standard one class against the initial projection, which was 1,433,840 pupils.
In addition to that, secondary enrolment increased from 1.8 million to 2.4 million between 2015 and 2020 respectively due to provision of fee free education.
In the past five years, the government also constructed 905 primary schools, 228 secondary schools and employed over 17,000 teachers. The government also constructed laboratories, dormitories, teachers’ houses and many other educational infrastructures.
On higher learning education, the number of students who are enrolled for studies has increased from 65,064 students in 2015 to 87,813 students in 2020.
