Not so fast!
Whenever the secondary schools pass rates information comes out most educationists in Tanzania are fast to point their fingers to English as the culprit. The argument is always that “see I told you, we can’t test them in English. It is unfair to them. They don’t know English. Let us switch to Swahili alone as the medium of instruction.” I really do not agree with this argument. Let us look at this year primary school pass rates. The pass rate there is 30% to 70% effective failures. And, in primary schools Swahili is the only medium of instruction for most subjects. If English is the only reason for all these massive failures at the secondary level, then why are the students failing miserably at the primary level where every subject is taught in Swahili except for English?
I knew all along that there are many variables that co-vary with the language of instruction. These include: 1) teacher absenteeism, 2) a disconnect between the test and material taught, 3) lower pay, 4) instructional strategies used, 5) language of instruction, and the list goes on and on. Watch my videos on you tube under Kibogoji Conversations and read my other articles on the state of the education system in Tanzania on the http://www.kibogoji.com. In some of these articles I have attempted to explain in detail the solutions to this year in and year out problem in pass rates.
Here is a blog post with more information on the same subject. Click here to read the post.
To add salt to the wound, here are this year’s standard seven results as broken down by the IPP MEDIAs’ newspaper. Off-course, standard seven students are all taught in Swahili except for the subject of English. Below are the numbers showing how they did in the examination.
Total number of students who took the exam: 456,082.
Breakdown by gender: girls (52.68 per cent) and 409,745 boys (47.32 per cent).
Of those who passed: 3,087 candidates scored grade A, 40,683 grade B, 222,103 grade C.
Total pass rate: 265,873 (30%).
Of those who failed: 526,397 grade D, 73, 264 grade E.
Total failure rate: 599,661 (70%).
Now as the evidence shows, English is not the only variable that is ailing the Tanzanian education system. Maybe it is the right time to say that Swahili is the cause of all these massive failures. Perhaps.
Reading your article i find a gud flow of argument, but analysis is missing. Ok. Language is one of the reasons that students fail at secondary school level. Give us more meat: to what extent does it contribute to the students failure? What if you compare other hindrances and the language factor, what do you see? This is it. If all challenges are addressed except the language puzzle, would it guarantee good performance? I understand that one can learn in any language, but the bottom line is: YOU SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST A BASIC ABILITY TO USE THE LANGUAGE. We can stick to English if we want to, but we need to prepare our children and the teachers use the language appropriately in teaching and learning; or else we opt for the call of nature: SWAHILI. Unfortunately I didnt put analysis either.
Thanks for the comments Mr. Nyanda. I realize that many factors are indeed playing a role in the failure rates at both the secondary and primary school levels in Tanzania. My argument for this article was that language of instruction is not the sole source of all these failures. And changing just the language of instruction alone will not fix the problem as evidenced by the primary school scores. If language is the main problem we would see huge pass rates in primary schools where all the subjects are taught in Swahili….however, that is not the case.
Perhaps, more research is needed to pinpoint which of the factors i mentioned in my article is the leading cause? in my views…these factors confound eachother. Unless they are all addressed together, we will continue to see the pass rate going down year after year.
I hope my two cents make sense to you. I don’t think it would be wise to change the langauge of instruction alone and hopping for all the other variables to go away. It would be foolishness to be exact.
By the way…what do you mean by analysis? is it peer reviewed data or statistical conclusions from empirical data supporting my argument? To that effect, very little data exists on the topic in Tanzania. Therefore, calls for language of instruction change in the absence of empirical data suggesting otherwise are unwarranted.
You can also add to the list
- Government provided text books are inaccurate
- Students are taught to memorize, not to use critical thinking.
And the list goes on………! Thanks Christina.