Nyakahu Irene Marungu
The 16-year-old girl from Baobab Secondary School in Coast Region topped the list of 196,805 candidates who sat for the examination last year with a distinction pass mark of 5.1 points.
She told The Guardian on Sunday at her parents’ home at Kitunda in Dar es Salaam that she had expected good results but not as the best overall.
Nyakaho who was in a jovial mood after the National Examinations Council of Tanzania (NECTA) announced the 2014 exam results was full of praise for her teachers and the learning environment at the school.
“With all the determination, hard work and serious preparations that saw us studying up to midnight, we knew that only sky would be the limit,” she cordially said, noting that the school is well equipped with learning materials.
It has well equipped modern laboratory facilities that enabled us to concentrate on science subjects, an area she expects to take up in high school subject combinations.
“I used more time for studying because I knew success could only be attained after concentration,” she said, specifying that her ambition since she joined secondary school in 2011 was to pass the examination.
Yusto Kaizelege the Headmaster of Kaizirege Secondary School in Kagera Region, the overall best ranking school, yesterday fell short of words but attributed the stunning victory to commitment and hard work laid by school teachers.
He praised the teachers for closely monitoring students’ studies and guiding them, while acknowledging that working in a private school is different from public schools.
“If the teachers’ commitment is extended to public schools, the education sector would yield good results,” he said.
Professor Gaudence Mpangala of Ruaha University at the Iringa Catholic Church noted that a number of public schools perform well in the national examination than private schools.
However he noted that the increasing competition of students in education sector leads private schools to scramble for students in order to benefit from tuition fees.
He advises the government to equip public schools with textbooks, laboratories and providing a comfortable environment for the teachers including salaries.
Mpangala explains that at the beginning school teachers were psychologically motivated and being guided by ethics that made them abide by professional commitment. Education as a sector is a sensitive area that needs discipline and regular teachers’ attendance in the classroom.
The don elaborates, nowadays; teachers have initiated other means of getting income by introducing private tuitions and direct their efforts to make their ends meet.
On the other hand Dr Bashiru Ally of the University of Dar es Salaam, sees no hitches for public or private schools to achieve the best results in national examinations.
He said they are both using one policy, one law and they have strategies of achieving similar goals.
“The most important thing is for both sets of schools to perform better,” he stressed.
He said the problem is that private schools have been investing more in the education sector than the government.
“Private schools are driven by profit motive that automatically creates classes within the society, he reflected, worrying that poor citizens can’t find enough funds to place their children in private schools.
Mpangala said there is proportionality of resources and manpower in private schools, giving room for students to have access to books, laboratories and teacher consultation.
“In public schools there is a scarcity of resources, something which has been always pushed them back to square one” he said.
He therefore suggested that in order to achieve best results the government should invest more in education and put more effort to rural education development.
The newly unveiled education policy will be meaningless if it remains to be theory lacking effective strategies for implementation, the don added.
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