 By Bernard James
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. Tanzanian students are increasingly failing national examinations because curriculums are poorly implemented, according to a new report.
The findings coincide with a sharp decline in the number of students passing the National Form Four Examination in which the general performance has fallen for four consecutive years with the majority of candidates either scoring Division Four or failing.
For instance, half of the 354,042 candidates who sat the National Form Four Examination in 2010 (177,021) failed while 136,633 (38.6 per cent) scored Division Four. This means that almost 90 per cent of the candidates scored Division Four or failed.
Are students failing national examinations or are national examinations failing students? This was the main question asked in a study jointly carried out by HakiElimu and the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM)’s Department of Educational Psychology and Curriculum Studies.
“There is evidence that the curriculum is poorly implemented because the majority of teachers do not fully understand the requirements of the curriculum. The teaching and learning environments are also generally poor,” says the report.
But the government rejected the findings, saying it doubted the competence of the people who undertook the research.
“Are the people who carried out the research experts in curriculum? I think the Tanzania Institute of Education should have been given the task. They are the experts in this area,” said the acting Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Education and Vocational Training, Mr Celestine Gesimba.
He said it should be understood that examinations were prepared by teachers, not the government.
Since 2005, the government has been implementing a curriculum that emphasises the development of certain specified key competences.
According to the new findings, “very few teachers are aware of the concept and philosophy of this curriculum orientation”.
“While the content of the curriculum seems to be competence based, the assessment procedures are not wholly based on this philosophy,” says the report. According to the study, majority of teachers are not conversant with the concept and requirements of a competence based curriculum applied in schools.
Frequent changes of the curriculum without adequate preparations has also been blamed for poor performance of students.
But Mr Gesimba yesterday dismissed the claim. “You should have asked them how frequently the curriculum has been changed. If you go to the National Institute of Education, they will tell you they have not changed curriculum more than five times since independence,” he said.
Most of the curriculum developers and teachers who took part in the study said they were rarely involved in preparing national examinations, adding that they had no idea when or how the task was undertaken.
Presenting the research findings, Dr Kitila Mkumbo, a senior lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, said a major reason for the trend was the sidelining of teachers from curriculum formulation.
Additional reporting by Tibasima Mlanda |
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