Savouring the complexity of policy making at the Uwezo report launch in Tanzania

[av_heading tag=’h5′ padding=’10’ heading=’By Dr. John Mugo, Director, Data and Voice Twaweza East Africa’ color=” style=” custom_font=” size=” subheading_active=” subheading_size=’15’ custom_class=”][/av_heading] [av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”] Monday 10^th April 2017 was a momentous day in Tanzania, and worth noting for the Sustainable Development Goal 4, as the Uwezo Tanzania Learning Assessment Report  was launched in Dodoma. Based on an assessment conducted in November 2015, the report posed the same old question – are our children learning? Over 100 members of parliament followed the presentation, keen and alternatingly taking notes. Zaida Mgalla, the Uwezo Tanzania Manager shared the findings organized along ten key facts. Literacy and numeracy skills among primary school children are still well below the curriculum expectations.

Only 35 per cent of the children in grade three could complete the grade two test in its totality – read in Kiswahili, read in English and do simple multiplication. More than a quarter of learners are exiting primary school without the literacy and numeracy skills of grade two level, and less than half of the learners in grade seven could read English at grade two level. Overall, learning outcomes have not changed over the period 2011 to 2015. Inequalities in the distribution of learning outcomes persist across socio-economic strata, geographical location and parental education levels.

Then came some good news, welcomed by heavy parliamentary applause from a cross-section of the lawmakers, with livelier note taking. The report saw a positive trend in the Kiswahili reading outcomes, steadily progressing from 29 per cent in 2011 to 56 per cent in 2015, in the proportion of grade three children that demonstrate grade two level competency. The chief guest, an assistant minister welcomed the findings as extremely informative and worthy for the government, and urged that everyone reads and acts on the evidence to improve learning, and equip learners for the increasingly competitive global space. The shadow Education Minister welcomed the findings and dared the dissenting voice: “If anyone wants to oppose the Uwezo findings, then let them conduct another study and produce contrary evidence.”

The open session that followed exposed the challenge of policy-making, each response matched perfectly with a contrary opinion. “The government is now on a positive response path, with the free education policy. As we read from the report, learning outcomes were lower among the 19 per cent of children not enrolled in any learning institution. With this new policy, we already have 800,000 new children enrolled”, shared a participant. “The government must be honest to Tanzanians and tell them that education is subsidized, but it is not free. The ‘free’ narrative has disengaged the parents and yielded an even greater learning crisis. If there is such a rich enrolment boost, and no extra teachers, who will teach them?” was the response from another participant.

The debate continued; “We welcome the improvement in Kiswahili reading as this is what matters most to Tanzania. We must enforce the language policy, and ensure that the Kiswahili literacy gains are exploited by instituting Kiswahili as the instructional language all through to the end of secondary. English just introduces unnecessary disruption; our children can always learn physics in the language they know best. Who says that it is easier to learn physics in Chinese, or Arabic, or German than in Kiswahili?” But this idea was questioned: “Saying that our children should now not learn English, because learning outcomes are lower here, is self-destructive. If learning physics in Kiswahili is such a great thing, how many discoveries have come from Tanzania? We all know that languages are better acquired when children are young and we know that bilingualism works, why use misquotations from PhD’s to mislead the nation?”

The intensely animated discussion went on for 60 short minutes, raising arguments for and against the current teacher distribution, for and against the teacher motivation policy and practice, for and against grade repetition, for and against the school governance structure, for and against the efforts to provide school feeding and sanitary towels, for and against regional comparison among many more debates. Yet, each one of them had a point, but with little reference to what works. The discussion left me thinking on how policy-making must truly be an extremely daunting experience.

Perhaps its because of the effort and time it takes to make it, that we move from policy formulation, to further formulation, to policy review, to re-formulation – with little energy for and attention to actual policy implementation. At one point, one member of parliament raised my hope through his punchy comment: “Even if Uwezo does 100 more assessments, it will not improve learning outcomes, until we all sit down and answer the question – what education do we want for our children in Tanzania?” Then I thought, this must be false hope, as it quickly dawned on me that we had sat in this Treasury Square building in Tanzania’s rapidly expanding capital city for two hours and I had not detected any agreement.

However, the Uwezo Tanzania report is out, a large cross-section of parliament has heard from us first-hand and received the report direct into their hands. We rest with the hope that something that works will be done soon, to address the learning crisis in Tanzania.

Dr. John Mugo is the Director, Data and Voice with Twaweza East Africa.
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