What are the differences between private and government schools in Tanzania?

The concept ‘private school’ means something very different to Tanzania and the rest of the world.

Our goal is to provide quality education to the poorest and this is one part of our strategy to support children to break the cycle of poverty.

Why we support 2 CHETI private schools in Tanzania

CHETI Primary School and Secondary School are private schools for disadvantaged children in rural Tanzania. In our experience and research, CHETI offer such a high quality education that their students will really have a chance of breaking the poverty cycle they are currently in. There are many government schools in rural Tanzania with teachers that are trying hard to give their students an amazing education. But, in our opinion, there is a big difference between the education frameworks in these two types of school.

Private schools play a vital role in the Tanzanian education system because there just aren’t enough schools for all the children in Tanzania. In 2003, the Tanzanian government introduced “free primary education for all children” and in 2015, “free secondary education for all”. Both of these policies are an amazing stepping stone in the development of Tanzania. Unfortunately, the Tanzanian government has such few resources meaning all schools quickly became oversubscribed and the level of financial support didn’t really change. We have visited government schools that have class sizes of 140 students with 1 teacher. As you can imagine, the teacher really struggles to give the children a decent education. These schools also have no or very little water, no or poor quality toilets, no school lunch provided and almost no money for school maintenance. The government appreciate private schools in Tanzania because without them, government schools would be even more overcrowded and poor quality.

CHETI schools have many of the facilities a student needs to learn and thrive in class including safe classrooms, toilets for the students, handwashing facilities, two school meals, clean water and high quality teachers. Whilst the schools are still no way near as amazing as schools in the UK, they are good quality. Made With Hope have supported almost all of these projects and are continuing to support these schools as this is a long term partnership.  

CHETI Secondary School: Built by Made With Hope

CHETI students learn in English

Teaching English is a way out of poverty

Although Made With Hope believe in respecting the culture of Tanzanians, we have found that the biggest difference in the quality of CHETI private schools and government schools is how much English they’re taught. CHETI teach all subjects in English so the children pick up the language very easily. In Tanzania, well paid jobs require English speaking skills which means it increases the chances of a child getting out of poverty.

Why are government schools often poor quality?

To cut a long story short, the schools receive barely any funding from the government because the country is one of the poorest in the world. The government schools we also support often have no windows so the children get wet when it rains, children are squashed 4 to a 2-person desk and teachers have no resources, and sometimes not even a blackboard! We are working hard to change this!

By contrast, CHETI give such high quality education by educating their teachers and fundraising to provide teachers more resources. CHETI Director, Zuma, and the school headteacher put in so much effort to provide resources for teachers and continue to train the teachers all the time. This means that the students get a really high quality education, hence 100% of children at CHETI Primary School pass their primary school graduation exams!

Mshikamano Primary School. We are renovating and supporting this school in 2019.

School fees and sustainability

The majority students at CHETI schools are extremely poor - they are often sponsored or allowed by CHETI to come for free because CHETI cannot bear a child missing out on a good education. Also, some families contribute small school fees (around half the price of most private schools). These families are poor, but they have some small income (often because both parents are still alive and within the family household). The families will often choose one of their children to go to CHETI school in the hope that they will go on to help bring the family out of poverty. CHETI also have some income generation activities to support the running of this school for disadvantaged children.

Home visits to some of the students at CHETI Private Primary who scrape together money to pay for one child to go to CHETI school and get a life changing education.

The future

From 2019, we are continuing to support CHETI private schools in the hope to continue supporting children with high quality education. Alongside this, we are supporting 3 government schools by improving facilities, providing water and sanitation.

We cannot wait to see what the students at our partner schools go on to do!

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