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| Illiteracy rises to 30 percent in Tanzania
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Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) -
Despite Tanzaniaâ?s efforts to expand and impr
ove both primary and adult education, the illiterate
population in the country has swollen to 30 percent, according to Education and
Vocational Training deputy minister Mwantumu Mahiza.
The minister told the current session of the National Assembly (parliament) that
the illiteracy rate was alarming, and that the government had
laid down several strategies to address the situation.
Mahiza said the strategies include programmes that address illiteracy, ignorance
and poverty alleviation in rural and urban areas. Tanzaniaâ?s
population is currently put at 40 million.
Implementation of adult education programmes, however, depends on volunteer teac
hers who are paid honoraria by the ministry through local
government administrations. The programmes aim to keep up the peoplesâ? capacit
y to read, write and master numeracy.
Some legislators noted that delays in payment of honoraria to teachers had contr
ibuted to the decline in attendance of adult education classes.
Tanzania had almost wiped out adult illiteracy in the early 1980s but its gains
in this field were reversed due to a number of factors that combined
to hit the economy and social sectors hard, including the HIV/AIDS pandemic and
the fall in commodity exports.
Meanwhile, education stakeholders in Tanzania have called on the government to i
mprove salaries of secondary school teachers and ensure the
schools are adequately equipped to discharge their task.
A recent expert survey showed that many secondary schools in the country faced a
myriad of challenges, including lack of essential facilities
for improving the status of education.
Though the number of schools under the central government and local administrati
ons markedly increased in the last four years, the study found that
the number of qualified teachers was falling annually for various reasons while
schools faced a serious shortage of laboratories, books and housing for teachers
and dormitories for pupils.
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| Dar es Salaam - 10/02/2010 |
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