[stop-imf] TANZANIA PLANS TO RESTORE FREE PRIMARY EDUCATION (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

>From the World Bank's Development News, April 2, 2001


TANZANIA PLANS TO RESTORE FREE PRIMARY EDUCATION.

Tanzania plans to restore free education in primary schools,
CNN.com and Reuters report President Benjamin Mkapa
announced in a radio broadcast this weekend. "The government
plans to reintroduce universal primary education for children
reaching the age of seven," Mkapa is quoted as saying in the
broadcast.  Without giving a target date, he said plans were in
place to abolish the fees now charged by government primary
schools, and to increase both the numbers and quality of teachers
in the schools.

Julius Nyerere, founding president of Tanzania, introduced free
primary education for the first time in 1972, giving Tanzania one of
the highest school enrolments in Africa.  But government funds
diminished during the late 1970s, and by 1982 had been cut to a
fraction of their pre-1978 level, forcing schools to raise their own
money to cover operating costs.  Schools now call on parents to
pay a standard contribution of $8 a year.

Tanzanian officials said that the money to revive free primary
education would come from a reallocation of available resources.
They said prospects for such funds had been improved by
Tanzania's recent designation as a highly indebted poor country by
the World Bank and the IMF, with remission of substantial debt
repayments.

Current primary school enrolment is about 57 percent, official
figures show.