A staggering 50% of Form Four graduates in Tanzania failed the Form Four exit examinations in 2010. That 50% equate to approximately 175,200 students.
What is wrong with this picture?
This trend of increasing failure rates year after year with no end in sight has been continuing for over 2 decades now. It really needs to be stopped.
This is a multifaceted problem and needs a multifaceted solution. Just pouring money to it will not resolve the underlying causes. Without a careful analysis of the causes, the challenges will continue to plague the Tanzania Education System for a long time.
The fact that the government has been allocating more funds to education has to be applauded but the increase in funding has unfortunately not resulted to more quality education.
There is no correlation between the increased government funding and the result in terms of students’ performance at the form IV level.
I will summarize the form IV education performance 2010 result in table below: (Sorry The Table Could not be supported here hence the snippets)
2009 Form IV Pass Rates = 72.51%
2010 Form IV Pass Rates = 50.40%
Passing Rate Drop 2009-2010 = 22.11%
Total Candidates 2010 = 441,426
Girl Passed = 69,996
Boys Passed = 107,025
Did Not Sit For Exams = 16,688
What are your thoughts on the form IV exams results? What needs to be done to change the outcome? Is lack of English proficiency for both teachers and students contributing to this? Is it time to start using more than one test to determine if students have learned something?
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Pass rates are indeed low. But a drop that dramatic in one year is surprising. Given that this year’s students would have studied under largely the same conditions as last year’s, with largely the same teachers, I am more inclined to think that there were some anomalies in this year’s test design. Regardless, a complete secondary school curriculum overhaul is needed, together with significant upgrades in teacher quality. Teaching in 2011 with British curricula from decades past, with few textbooks, limited primary school student English proficiency, and teachers dedicated to drill-and-repeat rote learning will not give our youth the skills they need to succeed.
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Looking through the number and previous policies regarding secondary schools in Tanzania, two things seems to have contributed greatly to this significant drop. 1) Social promotion for form two students that happened two years ago has a major impact on this year’s results. Previously, if a student did not pass form two examination, was held back until they could pass the exam. But due to policy changes 2 years ago…these students were allowed to move on and now we see what the consequenses of that policy on the form four results. This trend will be even worse next year as more and more of the socially promoted students seat for the form four exam. 2) The Kata secondary schools are finally getting their students to seat for the form four exams. Since these schools are ill-equiped and poorly stuffed….hence we start seeing the drawbacks from that combination.
Hopefully someone is watching these numbers and looking for a quick and robust solution to fix the problem sooner than later.
Again, thanks for your comments Rehema>>>!!
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