Why parents prefer English in schools

Ministry of Education and Vocational Training Director of Control and Quality, Mrs Marystella Wassena gives her views in Dar es Salaam yesterday during the launch of the Twaweza report on parents’ preference with regard to the medium of teaching and learning. Right is UDSM Lecture, Professor Kitila Mkumbo. PHOTO|VENANCE NESTORY 

Most parents want English to be used as the medium of instruction in schools from primary level, a recent Twaweza research findings show.

The research shows that nine out of 10 (89 per cent) parents said that children face difficulties in changing languages upon enrolling for O-Levels after finishing primary school.

Under the current policy, Kiswahili is used as a medium of instruction in primary education while English is used for the remaining levels up to university.

The Twaweza research, aimed at finding citizens’ views on education, found out that despite the new Education and Training Policy 2015 stipulating that Kiswahili should be used as the language of instruction for both primary and secondary schools, the majority of parents prefer English.

Presenting the study outcome on behalf of Twaweza CEO, University of Dar’s Dr Kitila Mkumbo, said the findings, which collected from 1,381 respondents from Tanzania Mainland only, show that the majority of parents who prefer English have said it takes time for their children to adjust from Kiswahili to English, something that affects their ability to learn.

He pointed out that the respondents have confidence in the provision of primary education as it has showed that 64 per cent of the general population believes that primary school adequately prepares students for secondary school.

“The data also tells the story of increasing access to education in a new way, one out of ten citizens (11 per cent) report having completed secondary school to O-level, one out of four (26 per cent) report having a son or daughter in secondary school, this implies that more young people have access to secondary education,” he said.

Commenting on the research findings, the director of schools quality assurance from the ministry of Education and Vocational Training, Ms Marystela Wasena, said the ministry acknowledges the challenge.

She said although the government has allowed the two languages to be officially used in schools, the country still needs to promote Kiswahili locally and internationally.

For his part, former Control and Auditor General (CAG), Mr Ludovick Utouh commended the government efforts but said the country needs participatory long- term policies on education.

“We see the challenges of English even to the teachers, which means that even as the majority prefers it to Kiswahili, we must have the good foundation in preparing teaching guidelines and even the human resources (teachers), so I would say we see the challenges on our monitoring, and the reports are already in the ministry for implementation,” she said.

“I cannot say the current system is bad, but we need to have policies that would be implemented for longer period, the policies that were participatory made involving extensive researches and diversity of stakeholders,” he said adding that as the country being bilingual is inevitable.
Source: The Citizen