The ratio of students to textbooks in Tanzania has increased adversely in the past few years to as much as 1:14, according to a recent study conducted by the country's publishers association.
The study by the Publishers Association of Tanzania has found that the student to textbook ratio had widened from an official national average of 1:3 in 2004 to between 1:4 and 1:14 in primary and secondary schools.
The study did not give a national average.
Of the 26 administrative regions of Tanzania, Dodoma has the highest textbook sharing ratio of 1:14, followed by Kigoma, Lindi,Mwanza and Mtwara where the student-to-textbook ratio was between 1:10 and 1:13.
In better-off regions like Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Iringa, Kilimanjaro, Manyara, Mara, Mbeya and Morogoro, the ratio was between 1:4 and 1:9.
Local English newspaper The Citizen has tried without avail to seek and cite governmental ratio to this effect.
Tanzania started a new syllabus in 2006 and textbooks prepared for that syllabus have not reached students as expected in that budgetary allocations to the purchase of textbooks has dropped since 2004, according to Andrew Moshi who chairs the Publishers Association of Tanzania.
Source: Xinhua
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