Over 13,000 pupils shun ward secondary schools, says report

Over 13,000 pupils in Kinondoni District who were selected to join ward secondary schools in the past three years opted for private ones because parents and guardians have no confidence in the quality of education offered at the schools, a report has said.

A report issued over the weekend by Kinondoni District Education Officer (Secondary Education), Omath Sanga and submitted to the District Executive Director (DED), copy of which was availed to The Guardian shows that a total of 13,275 pupils did not report to the schools they were selected to join in the past three years.

Sanga said that in 2010 the number of pupils who did not report to the schools was 5,112 out of 15,700 who were selected.

In 2011 of the selected 14, 823 only 10,128 students joined ward schools while the remaining 3,695 opted for private schools.

Last year of the 13,955 chosen to join the secondary schools, only 9,487 reported, while 4,468 failed to do so.

Meanwhile education stakeholders have blamed the government for the poor performance of Form Two students saying that it was due to standardisation of the pass marks.

The stakeholders’ reactions come a few days after the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training released results indicating over 130,000 students are required to redo the examinations.

Speaking in separate interviews they said that standardization of pass marks has allowed pupils with low performance to join secondary schools.

Juma Mabuba a teacher at Bundikani Secondary School in Coast Region said students selected to join secondary education are of low academic capacity, but that the government is pushing them to fill the gaps in secondary schools.

He said almost 80 percent of students joining secondary schools don’t know how to read and write, creating a burden for teachers who have to start teaching them how to read and write instead of proceeding with the syllabus.

Mabuba however called on the government to raise the pass mark from 75 to 150 out of 400, so as to get better and qualified students to join the secondary schools.

He challenged district education officers’ programme of forcing teachers to run separate classes for better students and poorly performing ones as worsening the situation, since the poor performers lack support from the better pupils.

However, Annestazia Athuman a Form Two student at Mwanalugali secondary school blamed teachers and the government for the recurrence of teachers’strikes which affected their performance.

Athuman said the strikes affected them because teachers were not committed to teach since their demands have not been met.

“After the government forced teachers to teach while it has not resolved their grievances, they opted for go-slow she said.

For his part, President of the Tanzania Teachers Union (TTU), Gratian Mukoba said Dar es Salaam region deserves to lead in poor performance in the recent Form Two results because students are over-crowded, with almost 2000 per class, making it very difficult for a teacher to manage the burden.

He said the government should take note of the students claims that the teachers’ strike has contributed to the poor performance, and find a solution.

On Friday last week, the Deputy Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Philipo Mulugo said over 136,000 Form II students have failed the national examinations and are required to redo the exam in 2013 academic year.

The government reinstated the examinations were last year as one of the measures to contain cases of massive failures of students in the Form IV national examination