Author: DEOGRATIUS KAMAGI
AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE government is finalising the process to employ 12,000 teachers in continued efforts to strengthen the education sector.
The massive recruitment drive will considerably address the shortage of teachers in primary and secondary schools across the country.
The move will make a total of 30,100 teachers, who have been employed in public schools during the first phase of President John Magufuli’s administration.
Minister of State, President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PORALG) Selemani Jafo said yesterday that the government has so far recruited 18,100 teachers for primary and secondary schools.
Mr Jafo made the remarks during the event to explain achievements attained by his office in the education sector, just a day after doing the same on the health portfolio.
“The government is highly dedicated to improving the education sector basing on its importance in the development of the country. Apart from the employment opportunities, we have also been renovating old schools and disbursing funds as budgeted on time,” he said.
He said the government has also been improving the working environment of education officials at district and regional levels as well as ward education coordinators.
Considering the important roles of education officers, the government in the past five years managed to provide vehicles to all 30 regional education officers, while the ward education coordinators have been supplied with a total of 3,303 motorcycles.
“So we have addressed transport challenges that were facing our education officers, and in fact, they are now doing a good job… the outcome can be seen by everyone,” said the minister.
Expounding further, he said President Magufuli has recently released 170bn/- for construction of various education infrastructures such as classrooms, school administrative blocks, dormitories, laboratory rooms and teachers houses.
In the past five years, the government has spent around 1.09tri/- on financing fee free education policy, while 501bn/- was spent on renovating old schools, construction of 17,125 new classrooms and over 2,000 dormitories.
The minister went on to explain that all these investments have contributed to the improved performance of students in their final national examinations.
“The average performance of standard seven pupils has improved from 67.8 per cent to 81 per cent, form four shot up from 67.5 to 80.65 per cent, while performance for form six has reached 98.5 per cent,” said the minister.
Official statistics from POLARG shows that in 2016 a total of 1,896,586 pupils (960,877 boys and 935,707 girls) were enrolled in standard one class against the initial projection of 1,433,840 pupils.
With the implementation of fee-free education, the enrolment for standard one pupils increased from an average of one million in 2015 to 1.6 million this year.
Also the number of secondary schools has increased to 5,330 from 4,708 that were recorded in 2015, making an increase of 622 schools, a move that has increased access to education for Tanzanian children.
Due to this, the number of form one to four students has increased to 2,185,037 in 2020 from 1,648,359 who were recorded in 2015.
Attending the event, the Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology Dr Ave Maria Semakafu said the recorded achievements are the results of team work and dedication of all staff within the education sector.
“We have worked together throughout, thanks to all staff and stakeholders who played their role towards this achievement, that are seen today,” she noted, encouraging players to maintain the hard working spirit.
