Exams are extremely important in Tanzania. Tanzanian students must pass a national exam to enter Secondary School, and after they have finished Form II they must pass another exam another exam to move on to Form III (as of the end of last year). At the end of Form IV they take a national exam in all the subjects – 10 at my school – with serious implications for the rest of their lives. There is a complicated point system that determines whether students can move on to High School for two years (Advanced Studies), and what they can study there, but basically students need to score the Tanzanian equivalent of a “C” average (41-60%) on their national exams to move on. Only four students at Ngara Secondary managed to do so, all in this “C” average range. Nationally, 240,903 students out of 397,136 failed.
The night after the results from the Form IV exam results were released I received a despondent text from one of my former Form IV students. His dreams of High School and University were dashed. He was a student I thought was absolutely capable of both of these goals – driven, dedicated, intelligent, and very conscientious. He, and a number of his peers (many, no doubt, like him), both at Ngara Secondary and across the country, can no longer dream of being a doctor, engineer, or lawyer. His options (as a student in the high “D” range): vocational school, teaching at the primary school level, low level civil service, or a life like his parents (in this case, being a tailor, for many others, being a farmer). There are two primary reasons for his failure, and both of them are abhorrent.
First, the Tanzanian educational system fails students on a fundamental level at both the national policy level and in local implementation. Students are expected to begin learning English in Secondary School, and simultaneously learn and be tested in English for all their subjects. The syllabi for all the subjects is outdated, requiring students to learn fundamentally useless material, and leaving no room for slow learners to be taught a different curriculum at a different pace – all the curriculum is aimed at university bound students. Locally, schools are chronically understaffed, teachers do not teach (or teach poorly), and classes are frequently interrupted for a variety of silly reasons.
If students manage to deal with all of these issues and actually learn, they then face another serious problem: the national examination system run by NECTA is fundamentally flawed. There is no dialogue between this organization and the Ministry of Education, which develops education policy. The exams are not only extremely difficult, containing sections of abstruse knowledge and testing on areas of knowledge that even I, a native speaker, have to think twice about, but often contain errors, grammatical mistakes and confusingly worded questions.
Dealing with these issues is a big hurdle for students, but even the smallest of changes could enable more students to succeed. Another 47 students at my school scored in this “D” range. Not all of these students realistically had a chance at getting to A level, but many of them did. However, split between 4 different classes at my school, being taught alongside students who – in many cases – can barely speak English, their ability to learn the material is diminished. If students with higher ability were in class together they would not only be able to tackle more difficult material in a more efficient manner, but they would be able to learn together, challenging each other to do better
This morning I asked my headmaster if the school had ever thought about streaming students by ability, like I have outlined above. “Yes,” he said, “but the government thinks that doing that makes the other students feel inferior.” As if they don’t end up feeling inferior when they get beat for getting the lowest marks on their exams, or as if every student who doesn’t do well on their exams doesn’t feel inferior when they can’t live their dream of a better life.