Decentralization Of Secondary School Education And Effectiveness Of Inspection In Tanzania: A Case Of Dodoma Municipality

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to evaluate decentralization of secondary school education and effectiveness of inspection in Tanzania. The study specifically examined the changes that have occurred in the inspection after the decentralization of secondary schools, challenges facing school inspection, and explored possible initiatives that the Government can undertake to conduct proper and effective secondary school inspection, drawing references from Dodoma Municipality. The study employed a cross-sectional survey research design and both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed to obtain and analyze data for the study. Primary data were collected using interviews, structured and semi structured questionnaires were distributed by purposive, and simple random sampling were used to obtain data. Secondary data were collected from books, journals, articles and dissertations. A total of 65 respondents were involved in the study . Qualitative data were analyzed through description, explanations and quantitative data were analyzed using the SPSS software. The results indicated that, after secondary school decentralization, little improvement was attained in education delivery. Further, the school inspection programme was found to face different challenges, such as schools were not inspected every year as per the Ministry directives, no training was conducted to the inspectors, shortage of funds, lack of transport facilities shortage of manpower and the like. Therefore, no significant improvement was identified to have taken place in inspection after decentralization of secondary schools. Finally different initiatives were proposed by respondents, if the proposal will be well implemented, there will be academic excellence in secondary schools.