TANZANIA: WB NODS TO BETTER AND INCLUSIVE EDUCATION LOAN

By Osoro Nyawangah, Mwanza TANZANIA

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved a credit from IDA, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, which will enable millions of young Tanzanians to access and complete secondary education in safer and better learning environments.

This is according to today’s WB press release. 

Early February this year, Tanzania civil society groups and opposition political leaders called on the World Bank to suspend the loan agreement in hopes that the bank could use its leverage to advance democratic and human rights policies with the country’s government.

According to a World Bank document outlining the loan, about 5,500 girls were not able to continue their secondary education due to adolescent pregnancy and young motherhood in 2017.

The $500 million (1.155 trillion shillings) Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project (SEQUIP) will directly benefit about 6.5 million secondary school students by strengthening government-run schools and establishing stronger educational pathways for students who leave the formal school system.

The WB Country Director for Tanzania, Mara Warwick, said that every child in Tanzania deserves a good education, but thousands are denied this life-changing opportunity each year. Adding that “the project puts the country’s young people front and centre; it also dedicates two-thirds of its resources to better and safer learning environments for girls,” 

Tanzania’s fee-free basic education policy has led to more children entering school: primary enrolment rose from 8.3 million to 10.1 million between 2015 and 2018, while secondary enrolment increased from 1.8 million to 2.2 million.

But despite better access, the secondary education system suffers from low quality and high dropout rates.

Nearly 60,000 students (30 percent) fail to complete their schooling each year, and children are not learning enough, particularly in mathematics and science, due to a lack of skilled and motivated teachers, large class sizes, and a poor learning environment.

The Global Director for Education for the World Bank, Jaime Saavedra, said that Tanzania, like many countries around the world, is suffering from a learning crisis, where children are either not in school, or are in school but not learning. 

He said that of 100 children who start school in Tanzania, less than half will finish primary and only three will complete their upper secondary schooling. “This is a crisis! This project will support better quality secondary education, while helping make school a safer place where children can thrive, and where all girls, no matter the circumstances, have a pathway to complete their secondary education.” He stressed.

According to the WB release, over the past two years, about 300,000 children, half of them girls, have been unable to continue their lower secondary education due to insufficient space in public schools.

WB Country Director for Tanzania, Mara Warwick

In addition, an estimated 5,500 Tanzanian girls who are pregnant drop out every year. SEQUIP has been designed to enable more adolescent girls and boys to transition to upper secondary education.

WB said the project will give pregnant girls, young mothers, and other vulnerable children who leave school early, the possibility to return to the formal system and complete their education. It tackles the issues facing pregnant girls with an approach informed by civil society organizations and NGOs, in Tanzania and around the world.

Caren Grown, the Senior Director of the Gender Group at the World Bank said that the project design strives to give pregnant girls and young mothers a better chance to complete their education.

“The Bank has stepped up its work to create a new generation of education programs that emphasize safe school environments for girls and boys, including measures that reduce gender-based violence, corporal punishment, bullying, and other forms of violence in and around schools. It gives girls better quality choices and opportunities for completing their secondary education.” Caren said.     

The project will be implemented under the Bank’s new Environmental and Social Framework; the government has committed to offering all stakeholders opportunities to engage in consultations during project implementation and to supporting construction of school infrastructure that is safe and built to good environmental and social standards. Citizen engagement in the project will be enhanced through civil society input and strong mechanisms to redress grievances.

The population of secondary education students in Tanzania could double to 4.1 million by 2024. The five-year SEQUIP operation will help address this demand through four components, with disbursement of funds linked to clearly defined, measurable, and independently verified results through four components.

The WB delayed the scheduled vote to approve the loan due to concerns about Tanzania President John Magufuli’s enforcement of a law that prohibits pregnant girls from attending state schools.

Magufuli, who took office in 2015, left little doubt about his stance on this policy after he was lobbied by civil society groups to overturn it.

“In my administration, as long as I am president ... no pregnant student will be allowed to return to school. We cannot allow this immoral behaviour to permeate our primary and secondary schools,” Magufuli said in June 2018.

Tanzanian civil society groups, politicians opposing Magufuli’s policies, and international rights groups pushed back on the plan, however, arguing that the Tanzanian government had eroded institutions that might provide independent oversight of the project’s implementation and had done nothing to reverse the policies that made the project untenable in the first place. - Africa