Globalisation And Primary Education Development In Tanzania: Prospects And Challenges

1. Overview of the Country and Primary Education System:
Tanzania covers 945,000 square kilometres, including approximately 60,000 square kilometres of inland water. The school system is a 2-7-4-2-3+ consisting of pre-primary, primary school, ordinary level secondary education, Advanced level secondary, Technical and Higher Education. Primary School Education is compulsory whereby parents are supposed to take their children to school for enrollment. In the education sector, this goal was translated into the 1974 Universal Primary Education Movement, whose goal was to make primary education universally available, compulsory, and provided free of cost to users to ensure it reached the poorest. By the beginning of the 1980s, each village in Tanzania had a primary school and gross primary school enrollment reached nearly 100 percent, although the quality of education provided was not very high. From 1996 the education sector proceeded through the launch and operation of Primary Education Development Plan - PEDP in 2001 to date.

Learning Strategies

Author: Daniel J. Boudah and Kevin J. O'Neill
Date: August 1999

What are Learning Strategies?

As students shift from the skills emphasis of elementary grades to the content emphasis of secondary grades, they face greater demands to read information from textbooks, take notes from lectures, work independently, and express understanding in written compositions and on paper and pencil tests (Schumaker & Deshler, 1984). For students who haven't acquired such important academic skills, the task of mastering content often comes with failure, particularly in inclusive general education classes. In response to this challenge, many students with learning problems, including those with learning disabilities (LD), have acquired and use specific learning strategies to become successful despite their knowledge and skill deficits.

Simply put, a learning strategy is an individual's approach to complete a task. More specifically, a learning strategy is an individual's way of organizing and using a particular set of skills in order to learn content or accomplish other tasks more effectively and efficiently in school as well as in nonacademic settings (Schumaker & Deshler, 1992). Therefore, teachers who teach learning strategies teach students how to learn, rather than teaching them specific curriculum content or specific skills.

What Does the Research Say about Learning Strategies?

Benefits of Vocational Education

Author: Michael E. Wonacott
Date: 2000

After a decade of decline, the 1990s have seen a resurgence of vocational education enrollments. Of 39 states surveyed in recent research, 70 percent reported an increase since 1990 (Husain 1999). Nevertheless, secondary vocational education continues to suffer from a negative image among students, parents, educators, and policymakers. This Myths and Realities examines some popular beliefs about secondary vocational education, along with some related beliefs about the labor market and about college degrees-and some facts that may or may not support those popular beliefs.

"Voc Ed Is for Dummies and Misfits!"

Perhaps the most enduring belief about vocational education is that it's only for the noncollege bound, the potential dropouts, or other students with special needs (Stone 1993). And this belief is not confined to students and their parents; it is often shared by other educators and policymakers ("What Do People Think of Us?" 1997)-perhaps explaining why postsecondary vocational-technical education scholarship money sometimes goes untapped (West 1996). But do the facts bear it out?

International Perspectives on Adult Education

Author: Susan Imel
Date: 2000

Adult education is practiced throughout the world. Although the adult education enterprise varies in scope, philosophy, and structure in different nations, it is not unusual for approaches to adult education developed in one region or country to spread. Certainly, adult education in the United States has been influenced by the ideas of international adult educators such as Paulo Freire and Roby Kidd and by practices such as the English University Extension Movement, Swedish Study Circles, and the Danish Folk Schools (Reischmann, Bron, and Zoran 1999). Currently, a number of perspectives on adult education are evident in the international literature. Some of the trends and issues from this literature are highlighted in this Alert.

Publications from the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education held in Hamburg, Germany, in July 1997 are a particularly rich source of information on international perspectives about adult education.

Addressing Diversity in Special Education Research

Author: Cheryl A. Utley and Festus E. Obiakor
Date: June 1997

Over the next two decades, American society will become increasingly multiethnic and multilingual (Rodriguez, 1990). The number of children living in poverty will substantially increase, and there will be a significant increase in the number of homes where children speak a primary language other than English.

Students are at greater risk of needing special education services when they are poor or of a minority race or language (Baca & Almanza, 1991); therefore, it is critical that special education researchers address these issues if their results are to apply to the special education population. This digest reviews scientific and methodological problems related to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Three areas warranting specific attention include:

• Defining terms with precision and accuracy.
• Examining epistemological considerations as they relate to the study of racial and ethnic groups.
• Developing unbiased research methodology and procedures.

Schools' budgets may be frozen

By Gary Eason  BBC News Online education staff

Some schools in England can expect to have their budgets frozen under new government proposals to reform the funding system.

Four options have been published for consultation, suggesting different ways of calculating extra funding on top of a basic entitlement.

Different areas would benefit or lose out - depending on the option - in a range from +5.3% to -3.2% of current funding, on average.

The effect will depend on how much the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, gives to education - ministers are promising only that no school will actually be worse off in real terms.

Students 'stressed by exam overload'

The continuous assessment of young people aged between 16 and 18 has been attacked as "barmy" by the head teacher of an independent school.Gwen Randall, head of Framlingham College in Suffolk, said it was little wonder that medical staff at the school had seen an increase in the number of young people suffering from stress.

Reforms to the new AS and A2 system have amounted to no more than mere tinkering

Gwen Randall, Framlingham College

Speaking at the school's annual speech day on Saturday, Mrs Randall attacked the government's review of AS-levels following complaints last year, saying it had failed to make any real improvement."Last year, I expressed my concerns about examination overload in the lower sixth year."Education Secretary Estelle Morris had indicated that there would be a review as already - even before AS results for the first cohort were collated - the cracks were beginning to show," Mrs Randall said.

Exam treadmill

Year 9 - English, maths, science tests Year 11 - GCSEs Year 12 - AS-levels Year 13 - A2s

"The frankly barmy practice of subjecting pupils to examination assessment in Year 11, then in Year 12, then in Year 13 continues unabated.
"Reforms to the new - and rightly maligned - AS and A2 system have amounted to no more than mere tinkering."The minister's crusading words were hollow," Mrs Randall said.