Tanzania announces extensive textbook improvements

The education system in Tanzania has experienced remarkable improvements in the last years. Basic education till the eleventh class is free, private schools are called to lower their costs and the rate of illiterates has been decreasing since 2010.

A new challenge among increasing class sizes and a lack of teachers is to ensure the quality of Tanzanian textbooks. Accordingly, the government announced an approach of taking charge of the textbook publishing role.

The recent situation: the responsibility of textbook quality management mainly lies in the hands of private publishers. They reacted in a critical way by stating that the new attitude might kill the private publishing. Nonetheless the Tanzania Education Authority (TEA) will supervise the development and publication of quality learning material since the flaws in some of the available textbook become prevalent.

Editorial team (sz)

Sources

Photo credit: Students in a Tanzanian Classroom by Seemannaufland / CC BY-SA 4.0
Information sources: allafrica.com, nbs.go.tz (Report on literacy)