The impact of initiatives for heavily indebted poor countries [HIPC] on basic education in Tanzania

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the extent to which resources freed by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative helped to improve primary education financing, hence, improve access as well as quality of learning in Tanzania. The study was conducted in Dar es Salaam region with 93 respondents. Sampling techniques including Snowball, Stratified, Random and Purposive were used so as to obtain dat from the desired sample. The study employed a quantitative as well as qualitative research approaches, using questionnaires, interview, documentary guide as well as observation methods. Data collected were subjected into percentage and context analysis. The study revealed that only some funds mentioned by the government were released. Meanwhile, released funds from the Central Government, including HIPC initiative resources, have helped to finance public primary schools to some extent since pupils’ enrolment has increased as well as by the fact that some classrooms have been built. Although the overall school environment is not persuasive, schools suffer due to shortage of toilents, desks, teachers’ houses and the like. Thus, such a situation affects attainment of good quality learning thereby becoming difficult to undertake poverty alleviation measures in the education sub-sector. It is recommended that in order to ensure good quality learning in primary schools, enough resources should be allocated to the sub-sector. However, this could not be successfully implemented without a full debt cancellation for the country. Thus, revenue collected could be used to solve countries’ problems including provision of free with high quality, basic (primary) education to citizens.