TANZANIA RETHINKS PUBLIC SCHOOL FEES

President Jakaya Kikwete

Morogoro — The government contemplates scrapping school fees for public secondary schools to ensure all primary school leavers have access to higher education.

President Jakaya Kikwete, addressing Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) academic staff, students and members of the public from the surrounding communities on Monday evening, took pride of his administration's resolve to construct ward secondary schools that has boosted the number of entrants to secondary education.

"Previously, only ten per cent of the primary school leavers could join secondary school," said the president, snubbing the mockery doing the rounds regarding ward schools, which some people have nicknamed "yeboyebo".

However, President Kikwete threwhis full weight behind ward schools. He commended them, saying they have recorded great achievements in the past nine years of his leadership.

He told hundreds of people who turned up at the public rally, including scholars from the higher learning institution that the government was seeking the best policy on education to improve the sector.

"For instance, we are currently considering the possibility to cancel fees in all public schools to enable all primary school leavers attend secondary school in the quest to address the problem of children dropping out of school due to inability to pay," President Kikwete said. He pointed out that for many years; the country had not built any new secondary schools.

"As you all know, British colonialists had never built a school. Instead, missionaries were the ones who played a great role in this. When my term started we came up with the idea of ward schools," he quipped.

According to official statistics, there were only 1,745 secondary schools, out of which 1,202 were public ones before 2005. Currently, the number stands at 4,576 secondary schools, 3,528 of them being public schools. As for the achievements of ward schools, Mr Kikwete pointed out that the schools had increased the enrolment rate to both secondary schools and higher learning institutions in which there were now 51 universities, including 15 public higher learning institutions.

"We have also increased the budget for Higher Education Students Loans Board (HESLB) from 16bn/- in 2005 to 345bn/- at the moment thus increasing the loans beneficiaries from 16,000 to 95,000 loans recipients," he observed.