Tanzania’s new Education and Training Policy, with an improved curriculum goes into force from February this year.
The official launching event for the refurbished policy, on the other hand, is to be graced by the head of state, President Samia Suluhu Hassan in Dodoma, at the end of January 2025.
The Minister of Education, Science and Technology in Tanzania, Prof. Adolf Mkenda revealed that the launching event takes place at the Jakaya Kikwete Convention Hall in Capital City on the 30th day of January.
“The new and improved education has taken into consideration the shortcoming experienced in the previous teaching guidelines, anticipated future developments in the labor market and addressed the empowerment of scholars for self-employment,” Prof Mkenda explained in Dodoma.
The new Education and Training Policy (ETP) formulated and adopted by the Government of Tanzania improves upon the old and the upgrade in the latest guidelines starts right from grassroots level.
Under the new developments, the country anticipates major reshuffle and positive transformation in the previously ailing education sector.
More than 4000 new teachers will be employed while existing ones are to be trained and empowered to implement the new teaching guidelines.
The advancement of the new policy in formal training was undertaken by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, following the directives by President, Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan during her state of nation address in Parliament shortly after taking power in 2021.
The Head of State had called for major overhaul in the country’s education system in order to prepare pupils and students for the latest development in the world, especially in creativity, employability and science and technology.
Following the presidential pronouncement, the ministry, professional experts, related institutions, international organizations and other learned stakeholders went back to the drawing board and came up with a new blueprint for the reformation in the education sector.
They toiled for three consecutive years and eventually came up with the soon to be unveiled ‘New Education and Training Policy, 2023 edition,’ coupled with an Improved curricular.
Some of the improved areas, according to the minister, cover the fields of science and technology, engineering, Information Technology (IT) and the application of artificial intelligence (AI).
“The new curriculum focuses on making our education system capable of molding young people into well-equipped future human resources to fast track socioeconomic development across the country,” Prof Mkenda expressed.
To ensure the sector is handled as per the new policy and curricular, Prof Mkenda said the ministry is executing a program for refresher courses towards the teachers, at different training levels, across the country.
“The purpose is to ensure all trainers are familiarizing with the new developed policy and curricular,” he expressed.
The new policy which has started to be rolled out at low education level, will be implemented in different phases before reaching full scope of secondary and advanced secondary education.
“During the development of the new policy and curriculum, our experts had ample opportunity to visit some countries to borrow good leaf, we’re remaining optimistic that the improved policy will help to improve our education status into new heights,” he insisted.