Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the ward secondary schools policy conducted in Tanzania since the mid-2000s as an education policy that has renewed the conditions of distribution of educational rights and entitlements across social groups in a context of quasi-universal primary education

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid-2000s, Tanzania has recorded a tremendous expansion of lower secondary education following the government's decision to build one secondary school in each ward. Between 2004 and 2011, the number of students enrolled at O'Level grew by 325%. However, from a learning perspective, the expansion has brought adverse outcomes. This policy geared towards universal secondary education has constituted a rupture with the post-independence educational settlement that posited public secondary schooling as a quality education reserved to a minority, delivered on a free and meritocratic basis. The policy can be interpreted as the negotiation of renewed conditions of distribution of educational rights and entitlements across social groups in a context of quasi-universal primary education. The paper shows how the modalities of funding of the ward secondary schools - mainly through communities' contributions - coupled with their poor performances vitiate the egalitarian credentials claimed by decision-makers. At the same time, the symbolic system that has construed secondary schooling, since the colonial period, as a site of access to modernity is being reworked in a 'globalisation' hybrid idiom that conceals domestic and international elite's lasting concerns over youth domestication. It also obscures social differentiation mechanisms at play within an increasingly dual education system. The paper is based on the analysis of budgetary and qualitative data collected through a multi-level fieldwork: international level (donors' education strategies), national level (interviews with policy-makers), and district level (interviews with district staff and local 'big men', visits of schools and interviews with teachers, parents and students in Lushoto).