Policy Analysis On The Primary Education Development Programme In Tanzania

In 2002,Ministry of Education and Vocational Training of Tanzania initiated a long-term Primary Education Development Programme,which intended to achieve universal primary education by eliminating tuition fees of primary school to enable all boys and girls to enter primary schools.The plan puts forward the goal and content of elementary education in three stages.Government strengthens the construction of infrastructure by increasing educational funds;optimize the allocation of teachers by teacher-training within education system and other public and private sectors associated with education;enhance management of government,community,education investors,school committees and other educational regulators to strengthen capacity building;decentralize government functions through the institutional reform in educational system,and by an increase in the budget for primary education funding to encourage more participation of social groups and other institutions;strengthen organization,planning and implementation support education services to further optimize the existing system using in education like human,material and financial resources.Through the efforts of government departments and other education participants,Tanzania has made many achievements in primary education,but also faces many challenges.This paper takes the Primary Education Development Programme as research object.At first,the paper sorts out and summarizes the content of the programme,and then analyzes the achievements.In the end,the paper further analyzes the challenges it encountered and the reasons.This thesis consists of following components:The introduction part discusses the reason of the topic,clarifies the research question,and defines the core concept "Tanzania education,primary education and Primary Education Development Programme";makes a review of the core issue of Tanzania’s education development policy and policy practice;and finally,discusses the focus and difficulty of this research.The first chapter introduces the background of the Primary Education Development Programme.At the end of the twentieth century,UNESCO presented the concept of EFA.In 2000,the goal of universal primary education was continued.In the same year,the United Nations put forward the Millennium Development Goals and pledged to achieve universal access to primary education in the world by 2015.As a result of universal primary education in the world and the needs of Tanzania’s domestic socio-economic,a new policy for the progress of primary education in Tanzania was proposed in 2001 under the promotion of a series of policies.The second chapter introduces in details of main contents of the Primary Education Development Programme,and analyzes characters of the primary education planning.The primary education development program is mainly to expand enrollment opportunities,improve teaching quality,enhance capacity building and strengthen institutional setting.The Primary Education Development Programme embodies completeness,fairness and scientificity.The third chapter summarizes and analyzes the achievements of the implementation of the Primary Education Development Programme in Tanzania.From 2002 to 2016,the completion of the development plan,Tanzania primary education has achieved some success.The enrollment number of students increased from 4,881,588 in 2001 to 8,340,128 in 2016;gross enrollment rate and net enrollment rate increased from 84.00%and 65.50%in 2001 to 96.00%and 89.70%in 2013;the number of qualified teachers increased by 2014,and the pass rate of Primary School Leaving Examinations increased from 28.6%in 2001 to 70.4%in 2016;facilities construction has also been greatly improved.In addition,in terms of capacity building and institutional setting,the management capacity of educational participants such as teachers and school committees has been strengthened;government functions have been decentralized,and the management functions of the school committees have been expanded.The fourth chapter analyzes the challenges encountered and causes in implementation of the Primary Education Development Programme.The problems encountered in the implementation of the Primary Education Development Programme are mainly due to low learning quality,unbalanced regional development,large urban and rural disparities,serious lack of infrastructure and high dropout rates.These problems on the one hand due to the impact of shortage of education budgets,on the other hand the simple pursuit of enrollment but ignoring the development of education quality.The fifth chapter is the conclusion and enlightenment.This chapter summarizes the achievements and challenges of the implementation of the Primary Education Development Programme and introduces the China’s assistance on education to Tanzania in brief.