Joint school admission system now put on hold

BabuK

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Private school owners express doubts
Second selection now set for March 1




Prof Eustella Bhalalusesa, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training Commissioner of Education


Pupils not enrolled following double admission will now be slotted into public secondary schools during the second selection, after the joint admission system failed to take off.

Ministry of Education and Vocational Training Commissioner of Education Prof Eustella Bhalalusesa told The Guardian in an exclusive interview that the system hit a snag after private school owners showed reluctance to use it and instead kept asking for clarifications.

Permanent Secretary from the Prime Minister’s Office Regional Administration and Local governments (Education) Jumanne Sigini said that the government now plans to announce the second selections on March 1, this year for those students who missed the chance to join secondary education.

He added that classrooms are at final stage to be completed which give many students chance because some schools where yet completed.

Earlier Prof Bhalalusesa had announced the system would be applied this academic year to harmonise selection of students.

However in the interview, the commissioner said the government has realised that the system was introduced late when some schools had already completed admissions, adding that joint admission system will now be implemented next year, after clearing the doubts raised by private school owners.

Private schools have usually conducted student admissions before the national examination results were released.
Prof Bhalalusesa said:

“The Tanzania Association of Managers and Owners of Non-Government Schools and Colleges (Tamongsco) agreed to implement it, but they have been raising complaints which are reasonable and need to be cleared before the system is implemented.”

Prof Bhalalusesa said that the ministry was working to educate school owners on the importance of using the system to improve the quality of education in the country.

According to the commissioner the complaints about the system did not emerge from the private schools only, but also from public ones, who needed implementation guidelines, pointing out that the schools are categorised into national, regional and community levels.

Some private school owners are reported to have requested the government to change the education policy to assure them security of their service.

Tamongsco’s Nkonya said among concerns raised by private school owners in the Lake Zone is the failure by the education policy to state where such schools would find students for admission.

Nkonya said that there are a lot of challenges in the education sector which the government needed to address before introducing the new system.
Among the issues raised by Tamongsco is the average of 20 percent as pass mark announced by the government recently.

“We (Tamngsco) proposed 35 to 50 percent as pass marks which will match with Big Results Now (BRN), and challenged the 20 percent of the government pass marks that will not reap results on BRN,” said Nkonya.

Nkonya challenged the Form Four pass rate saying it is a result of lowering pass mark from 35 to 20 percent whereby he said if the old pass mark had been used the performance rate would have gone down from 43 of 2012 to 40 percent of this year.



SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

 
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