IAE surpasses girls’ registration target
MOROGORO: THE Tanzania Institute of Adult Education (IAE) has successfully registered a total of 10,239 girls (equivalent to 114 per cent) in all Mainland regions over three consecutive academic years from 2021/22 to 2023/24 through the Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project Alternative Education Pathway (SEQIP-AEP).
SEQIP is a project funded by the World Bank that aims to increase access to secondary education, provide responsive learning environments for girls, and improve the completion of quality secondary education for both girls and boys.
This was recently disclosed by Amina Abubakar, the AIE Acting Project Coordinator, in Morogoro during a training session for coordinators from all 26 regions of Mainland Tanzania.
The goal was to enhance their ability to improve the administration and operation of secondary education training through an alternative pathway.
Ms Abubakar stated that the project’s success follows the institute’s surpassing of the target to reach 12,000 girls nationwide within a five-year timeframe.
She mentioned that the majority of the registered girls are aged between 13 and 21 years and had dropped out of secondary school for various reasons, including pregnancy.
The project, led by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in collaboration with the World Bank, is set to run from 2021 to 2026 with the aim of enhancing the education system in the country.
Ms Abubakar emphasised that the governmentinitiated project has been very successful in helping girls who dropped out of the official secondary school system to re-enter and complete their secondary education through the project’s alternative education programme.
She noted that despite being assigned a target of 3,000 girl registrations each year, the number of registrations has consistently surpassed the target due to increased awareness among the recipients.
In the first academic year 2021–2022, 3,333 girls enrolled, followed by 3,616 girls in the second academic year 2022–2023, and 3,299 girls in the third academic year 2023–2024 before the registration period ended on March 30 of this year.
“We (IAE) were given targets of registering 3,000 students, but fortunately, we have exceeded this target for three consecutive years. We were expected to enrol 12,000 students over five years.
However, we have already registered over 10,000 girls in this third year, which is a significant success for the project,” she said.
While highlighting the successes of the initiative, she also addressed several challenges faced by the coordinators of the centres in the regions during the project’s implementation.
One major challenge was the absenteeism of students from the study centres, attributed to factors such as distance, parental responsibilities, and family challenges.
In response to these challenges, some stakeholders have offered accommodations for the girls near the centres to reduce truancy and absenteeism, which hinders the programme’s success.
Fatuma Juma, the IAE Coordinator of the Sabasaba Centre in the Mtwara region, noted that the project has provided a beneficial alternative for girls who had to discontinue their secondary education for various reasons, allowing them to complete their education.
