A little more light on the education system in Tanzania

Day 3 Appendix

The long, precarious walk down the muddy road from the school gave the headmaster and I a chance to discuss some of the differences in the school systems in Canada and Tanzania. In particular, I was curious as to the seemingly nonchalance of everyone with respect to the late arrival of teachers and subsequently the classes that just seem to get tossed out the window.

The headmaster explained that the teachers needed a fair bit of “encouragement” to do their jobs properly. Many of them were not fully qualified teachers but simply those who had graduated from Form VI and needed work. He said that in many fields, employment opportunities were limited (unemployment here is extremely high) but there was always a need for teachers so many people slid into the “profession” without really having any desire to teach.

This contrasted with my experience in Ontario where nearly all of my classmates, and especially all of those who were planning to get a job teaching next year, were dedicated to the profession and the welfare of the students.

Adding to the problem is the low salaries of the teachers. Dedicated teachers are less motivated to work for poor wages, not to mention those who don’t really want to be teaching at all. All of this translates into teachers who are lackadaisical about showing up on time, getting to class on time when they are there, or doing other work such as preparing exams that need to be submitted to the regional education office. When I asked if there were disciplinary procedures for negligent teachers, the headmaster replied that there were, but they were long and drawn out since, while there were regional education offices, the hiring and firing of teachers was conducted by a national office. Thus, it’s very difficult to have a teacher fired. Furthermore, doing this would simply leave him without the teachers he needs to teach the students.

Tanzania has a serious shortage of teachers, qualified or otherwise, and this stems in part from a directive issued last year by the national government that each ward build a new school (to deal with the shortage of schools for the growing number of students). It’s a fine idea, but it’s important to note that the government only funds 50% of the schools’ construction and operational costs, while the rest must come from the community (which isn’t always possible). The result is new schools with little more than the bare classrooms built (i.e. staffrooms, lunchrooms, toilets incomplete) that are seriously lacking in materials and supplies as well as the teachers necessary to teach all the classes. The headmasters are left to find teaching staff whichever way they can.

If all this isn’t bad enough, I read today in the newspaper that the teachers union has decided to postpone to July a strike that was to start tomorrow. The bone of contention is the government’s failure to pay the salaries of many of the teachers, most notably those of the temporary and lower-qualified teachers. There are accrued arrears of billions of shillings. Indeed, the headmaster said that despite it being the end of the month, he’d had no notification of his salary going in to his bank account. In any case, it’s a good thing for me that the strike is not on; otherwise my internship would have been up in the air!