 Why we must support
free primary education
by Serah Naisoi
When the government declared primary education, free, there
seemed to be wide-spread feeling among parents that it was the government’s
responsibility to fulfill everything including building schools, buying desks,
textbooks, and even chalk. This is far from the truth. Ensuring the provision of
good quality education is the joint responsibility of all society. That includes
parents, communities, and children too: working together with teachers and
government.
But what we are witnessing today is a situation whereby some
children of school going age are still out of school despite primary education
having been declared free by our government. Why are these children not going to
school? Without a quality education these children are at risk of falling prey
to lives of crime, violence, and exploitation. Their survival strategies will
have serious implications for our livelihoods and our lives. It is our
responsibility to get these children into school and ensure that they become
productive and well adjusted members of society in years to come.
Caring for children means understanding their needs and
responding to them appropriately. It means giving them shelter, if they do not
have a home, giving them education if they are not in school, giving them
support when they are abused, and helping them to develop social behaviour if
they get into conflict with the law.
I know that getting every child into school is not going to be
an easy task and locating these children is the first of many challenges ahead
of us teachers.
Today, many children do not attend school because they fear
being stigmatized because their parents cannot afford school uniforms. And many
come from families with problems, in single parent households for example, which
have not managed to ensure that their children attend school. Of course, once
children start or return to school, getting them to stay is another challenge.
Classroom space, already severely limited, is put under additional strain when
more pupils arrive.
Even while the government is increasing its resource
allocation to the primary education sector, we still have parents who believe
the government has to provide more. These are the same people who cannot buy for
their children a simple textbook costing as little as Tsh,2,000.
In my view, parents must do more to come together and help
their children. We cannot expect the government to do everything for us while we
just sit watching.
The community has a responsibility to make sure that children
manage to go to school. And in cases where children miss school because they
feel stigmatized without school uniform, the community must see it as their
responsibility to assist these children.
There is a role for each one of us to support free primary
education and ensure that every child in Tanzania benefits.
Serah Naisoi is a teacher, Prime Primary school
Email:
naisoiv@yahoo.com
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