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Performance of Secondary Schools in Tanzania

Almost the performance of O-level Government secondary schools is very poor compared to private schools. The main objective of this article is to find the causes for the mass failure of most form four students in their National examinations (NECTA). The most used method in Data collection is like direct interview and documentary sources where by a team of twenty students was selected to obtain data, ten gentlemen and ten ladies where interviewed. Below are causes identified:
Lack of School Fees Most of the Government o-level schools for Tanzania pays 20,000/= approximately to about a year. Most of them do not afford to pay for the school fees allocated by the Government. The act of the school management to suspend them to home by giving reason that these students has not paid a school fees demoralize the capacity for them to acquire better education.


Teacher’s problem. Many schools in Tanzania have very few teachers compared to the number of students they teach. Having that known, a school can have only two teachers or even one. Sometimes teachers do not teach by giving reasons that the salary is small compared to the work they do, FATAKI-Is a behavior for some of the teachers to have sexual relationship with the students they are teaching. This retards the progress of the education level in Tanzania. Most of the girls who have relationship with the teachers proud by saying that, once they finish their studies they will be married by these teachers and there is no need for them to study hard.

Temporary teachers are not respected for their work they do. You can found a form six leaver has a great ability to teach than a on a employed by the Government, but the problem arising when these teacher doing their work, they are not trusted but rather ignoring all the projects and tactics they employ to bring changes in educational category.

Infrastructure and working environment This include lack of chalks, electricity; Teaching aids materials, tables, Classrooms, books and poor environment of learning. Infrastructure and working environment Marginalized schools have fewer and sometimes no supportive infrastructure for carrying out school activities while on the other hand the working environment are not conducive to new employee hence they shift to other schools in urban areas. Other reasons may be: students studying with hungry, no care for the children, any treatment and general preparation to send children to school.

Geographical inequality Most school performing well are those found in urban areas whereby the provision of social service will accommodate teachers and workers +student themselves. Schools from rural areas lack some of important social services like water supply, power , teachers houses just to mention a few hence lack of motivation for teachers to go and teach in rural areas.

Curriculum is kind of education given to our pupils fit for our environment? It is said that the curriculum of Tanzania by this time does not fit with Tanzanian environment. Take these three scenario i) education soon after independence ii) education during 70's and 80's iii) education during the last two decades...........could you note something? Enrollment rate, dropout rate, completion rate, passes rate and marks.........the researches done by different researchers have shown how rate has been decreasing as days goes on and this has been a serious problem due to changing and advancement of the world technolodge and education.

Priorities refers to the status established in order of importance or urgency a good example is "national independence takes priority over class struggle" now the questions come are meeting MDGs alone enough? Rise in enrollment enough? How is the dropout rate? MMEM and MMES yes.....can we bridge the gap between the lower education and higher education? Can we accommodate all at higher educations......we need to address these and many more at this juncture.

Lack of seriousness of students with school and they lack motivation from the learned society. During an interview one of the students from SAUT taking Bachelor of Arts in Sociology argued:

“well if you say lack of fees there students who pay more than that and mind you the fee is a parental problem not student, if you say that teachers are not well paid what about the private school teacher?????????????Common people open your eyes” end of quoting. From this it is true that there are a lot of students who lack seriousness in their studies and they concentrate much on social sites like face book, twitter, watching movies most of their time, engaging in love affairs and joining in peer groups and tend to forget about what sends them to school.

Media of instruction; Mass Form four failures indicate need for Kiswahili language instruction Danielle says: I’m an Ed Volunteer near Karatu and by far English is the biggest obstacle in teaching — the students just don’t understand. But instead of switching to Kiswahili as the medium of instruction, what if they switched to English beginning in primary school? If the students begin learning English at an early age — really learning English — then by the time they reach Form one many would be quite fluent, most would know enough to understand the material and many would have confidence to speak the language. Students would graduate Form 4 as citizens prepared for the workplace and with their language skills they would be prepared to help Tanzania advance on the international stage.

As reported in Tanzania’s Guardian newspaper, former Member of Parliament for Kalenga, George Mlawa, has called for Tanzanian secondary schools to adopt Kiswahili as the language medium of instruction. Following the excessively large number of Form IV (equivalent of high school senior) failures in last year’s national examinations, it is time to reassess the current policy of English-language instruction. This remains an unpopular position among Tanzania’s foreign development partners who too often confuse English language mastery with competence. It is especially for their benefit that I reiterate the following defense of switching the language of instruction in Tanzanian secondary schools from English to Kiswahili.

Therefore the study finds that, there is serious mass failure of students especially in science subjects due to lack of facilities and poor background of students, the problem will continue unless there some crucial measures should be taken. This is evidenced by the mushrooming of ward schools with unfavorable learning and teaching environment. There is a need to add and improve educational inputs like books teachers, learning infrastructure in rural areas as well as to improve the primary education in order to produce the whole knowledge students who are ready to join secondary education for the betterment of our nation.
 
Utonga Gershom S.