Contact
Details
Postal Address: P.O. Box 20679
Dar es Salaam
Tanzania
Telephone: +255 51 150838
Fax: +255 51 150836
Contact: J.M. Mayoka (Director)
Introduction
The Institute of Adult Education is a social parastatal organization
under the Ministry of Education and Culture. It was established under the parliament Act
No. 12 of 1975, with the major objectives of providing and promoting adult education in
the country. The Institute offers training to adult educators, administrators, and other
personnel. It coordinates adult education activities, offers advisory and consultancy
services to organizations and individuals, and offers mass education both through
face-to-face and distance education. It also conducts research and evaluation on adult
education programmes.
The Institute has four departments:
- Department of Training and Library Services;
- Department of Mass Education and Women Development;
- Department of Regional Coordination; and
- Distance Education Department.
This report focuses on the work of the Distance Education Department.
Distance Education Department
The Distance Education Department, as it is now known, started in
November 1970 through financial and technical support provided by the Swedish
International Development Agency (SIDA) and other donors. The broad objectives of the
Department are as follows:
- Equip Tanzanians with knowledge and skills they need to meet the manpower needs of the
country.
- Help Tanzanians understand the nation’s policies and thereby be prepared to
participate fully in carrying out national policies and programmes.
- Supplement efforts being made by the leaders and adult educators in various departments
of Government to bring about economic and social development in the rural areas.
- Offer new courses not available in Tanzania and extend these courses to people
throughout the country.
To fulfil its objectives, the Department runs various categories of
courses:
- Mass education or community education (such as elementary English, elementary
Mathematics, bean production, and civic education);
- Secondary education courses (including Mathematics, English, IsiSwahili and other
subjects, offered from Form One through to Form Six or A Level); and
- Professional courses (including production management, elements of bookkeeping and
elements of auditing).
Costs of courses vary from TS5000 to TS12000.
These courses are made available using correspondence education. Each
course is broken into various units (courses range from ten to 35 units), each of which
has a study guide and a workbook. On enrolling, students are provided the first five units
of the course, and are then sent new units as they complete the workbooks for each unit.
This process allows the Institute to monitor the progress of students, as each workbook is
marked by Institute tutors. In order to progress, students are required to achieve a
minimum mark of 50% for each workbook. The Institute works to ensure that courses are
completed within two years of enrolment wherever possible. Courses used to be supplemented
by face-to-face tuition, but this is no longer financially viable. Consequently, all
communication currently takes place via the postal system. This creates problems, not only
because of delays in delivery of materials and lost postage, but also because for many
students posting assignments back to the Institute is a major additional expense.
Development of course materials is done by course tutors, supported by
broader writing teams. New courses are developed according to student demand (which is
monitored by letters of request from students). There is a total of 23 courses offered by
the Institute. Courses review would ideally take place every five years, but this is
hampered by resource constraints.
Since its establishment, the Department has enrolled over 75,000
learners (over 80% of whom have been male) and currently has approximately 11,000 learners
enrolled. The dropout rate is fairly high, because of financial constraints that the
Department faces that have adversely affected the provision of its service. It has had to
raise student fees twice and anticipates raising these again in the near future. This
problems has been worsened by a reduction in donor funding since 1988. Further, there is a
shortage of trained distance education staff to design, write, and produce course
materials and handle student services. There is, therefore, a need for short-term training
programmes in various fields for the staff of the Department. |
