Copyright © and Moral Rights for this PhD Thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright

344 Pages·2015·4.29 MB·English

by  Helen Porter

Languille, Sonia (2014) Secondary education expansion in Tanzania, 2004-2012 : a political economy perspective.
PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London.

http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/20313

Copyright © and Moral Rights for this PhD Thesis are retained by the author and/or
other copyright owners.

A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior
permission or charge.

This PhD Thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first
obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s.

The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or
medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

When referring to this PhD Thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title,
awarding institution and date of the PhD Thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of
submission) "Full PhD Thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD PhD Thesis,
pagination.
Secondary Education Expansion in
Tanzania, 2004-2012:
A Political Economy Perspective

Sonia Languille

Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Development Studies

2014

Department of Development Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis

I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that
all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me,
in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase
from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in
the work which I present for examination.

Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________
2
Abstract

This thesis explores the policy of junior secondary education expansion in Tanzania
between 2004 and 2012, implemented through a large-scale process of community
mobilisation. It uses a political economy approach that defines education systems as social
constructs, products of history, with material and ideological dimensions, embroiled in the
politics and economy of a country and forged at the intersection of internal and external
factors. The primary analytical vantage point is the elite. Four main dimensions of the
policy are studied. First, the thesis sheds light on the politics of educational policy-making.
The expansion policy is the outcome of intra-ruling class conflicts tied to competing
modernisation philosophies. Yet, elites’ educational choices are also underpinned by a
widely shared symbolic system, rooted in the ideological history of the country but
entwined with contemporary global discourses. Second, the thesis investigates the budget
for secondary education, pitting the stated desire of elites for quality secondary education
for all against their actual financial effort. Donors’ interventions are also scrutinised to
understand how they have contributed to shaping the policy and its narrow fiscal space.
The thesis then examines local renegotiation of the policy at district level and unveils
power struggles unleashed by its implementation in the local arena. Finally, this work
studies the relationship between education and the economic sphere through an
investigation of the textbook sector and documents the formation, at district level, of a
politico-business complex around educational resources. The secondary education
expansion occurred against a background of job scarcity, quasi-universal primary education
and quality private education available to the wealthy. In this context, the thesis argues that
under-resourced and under-performing community secondary schools may be interpreted
as a renewed educational settlement to attempt to resolve the structural tension inherent in
education systems between the integration of the youth and social differentiation.
3
Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Christopher Cramer, for
the support and advice he provided throughout this research. His meticulous reading of
chapters and insightful comments were decisive in shaping the thesis. His brilliant mastery
of English and his sense of style were, for a French student, a great pleasure. I also thank
him for allowing my theoretical eclecticism to thrive and gain in coherence.

I am also very grateful to Olivier Vallée who has closely engaged with this research since its
inception and provided, all along, comments on chapters. His intellectual guidance and
complicity over the years, and his generous friendship have been invaluable. I would like to
thank Samuel Wangwe, Director of the Tanzanian research centre REPOA, and his
colleagues for generously hosting me during my fieldwork in Tanzania. I would also like to
thank the Tanzanian authorities in the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training and
in the Prime Minister’s Office – Regional Administration and Local Governments for their
openness and kind support. The fieldwork in Lushoto would not have been successful
without the support of my research assistant and friend, Mercy Mushi. I am also very
grateful to all my informants, in Dar es Salaam, Dodoma and Lushoto, who took the time
to share their views and knowledge about the Tanzanian education system and the ward
secondary schools. Finally, I would like to thank my friends Yasmine Degras and Bernard
Oiffer in Paris, and Rebecca Engel and Luiz Vieira in London, for being present along the
way: their friendship has been precious.

I dedicate this thesis to my parents, Colette and Michel Languille, and my uncle, André
Languille; their enduring belief in the power of education and of social and political
struggles to advance the cause of social justice has been a primary source of inspiration.
4
Table of Content

Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis 2
Abstract 3
Acknowledgements 4
Table of Content 5
List of Figures 11
List of Tables 13
List of abbreviations and acronyms 15
Map of Tanzania 17
Map of Lushoto District 18

Chapter One The Tanzanian ward secondary schools policy: An introduction 19
1. An exceptional enrolment expansion 20
2. Ward secondary schools and the Tanzanian ‘learning crisis’ 25
3. The ward secondary schools in historical perspective 28
3.1 Ward secondary schools: a rupture with the historical trajectory 28
3.2 Educational colonial legacy in Tanzania 29
3.3 The post-independence educational settlement and secondary education 30
4. The ward secondary schools policy: emancipation from international aid agencies? 34
5. Statement of the problems, research questions and dissertation outline 35
Chapter Two Secondary education, human capital theory and the education aid
agenda 42
1. Human capital literature 1960-2012: core tenets and main alterations 43
1.2 The core theoretical framework: the fathers of the theory 43
5
1.2 Rate of Return studies or the elusive quest for scientific criteria for education
resource allocation 45
1.3 The cognitive-skills enriched human capital model or the shift to ‘learning’ 47
2. A critical reading of human capital literature and its institutional policy prescriptions 49
2.1 Utilitarian and atomistic education 49
2.2 Human capital theory and the employability paradigm 51
2.3 Human capital theory and educational policy prescriptions 53
3. Secondary education and the global education agenda 59
3.1 The World Bank and secondary education: from neglect to the promotion of
‘public-private partnership’ for mass secondary education 59
3.2 The ‘secondary education-quality-skills’ shift and the international community’s
competing agendas 62
3.3 Managing quality secondary education by numbers? 66
Conclusion 70
Chapter Three Political Economy of Education: Theory, Context and
Methodology 72
1. Political economy of education: definition and theoretical sources of inspiration 73
1.1 Political economy of education: a definition 73
1.2 The social function of schooling: overview of theoretical sources of inspiration 74
2. The state and the elite: clarification of key concepts 79
2.1 The state: elements of theory 79
2.2 Elite or ruling class? 81
3. The organisation of the Tanzanian education system: elements of context 84
3.1 The Tanzanian state and the education administration 84
3.2 The organisation of secondary education in Tanzania 85
3.3 The education aid arena in Tanzania (2004 – 2012) 87
4. Methodological framework 89
4.1 Delineating the fieldwork: issues of scale and time frame 89
6
4.2 Empirical investigations at national level 90
4.3 The local: Lushoto District in Tanga Region 92
4.4 A multi-sited and multi-level fieldwork: the researcher’s positionality challenges 97
4.5 Treatment of data 101
Conclusion 101

Chapter Four Elite narratives and the ward secondary schools policy:
A specific formulation of the access-quality-equity nexus 103
1. The ward secondary schools policy and elites’ conflicting visions of modernity 105
1.1 Edward Lowassa’s electoral strategy rooted in a long-standing intra-ruling
class conflict 105
1.2 Ward secondary schools and the ‘rule of the experts’ 109
1.3 The educational ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the coalescence of Tanzania’s
political class 112
2. The ‘social demand’ for secondary education and elites’ egalitarian aspirations 117
2.1 Ward secondary schools: a government response to a ‘social demand’ 117
2.2 The enduring currency of Ujamaa egalitarian ideology 119
3. Ward secondary schools, a device for youth domestication 122
3.1 The youth threat to the social order of elders 122
3.2 Schooling and the youth threat: external and historical resonances 125
4. Secondary education and elites’ imagined globalisation 129
4.1 Ward secondary schools: equipping the youth with skills for the knowledge
economy? 129
4.2 Quality secondary education for the knowledge economy: between
international discourses and Nyerere’s legacy 133
4.3 The knowledge economy narrative: obscuring mechanisms of social
reproduction 137
Conclusion 143
7
Chapter Five In search of the secondary education budget 145
1. Setting the budget scene: actors and process 148
1.1 Main budget holders 148
1.2 Main revenues and expenditures 148
1.3 The budget cycle 151
2. External assistance and the fiscal space for quality secondary education for all 152
2.1 Donors’ lasting bias towards primary education in the budget support era 152
2.2 The World Bank’s SEDP I (2004 – 2007): introducing the SEDP capitation
grant in a time of uncontrolled expansion 157
2.3 Donors and the learning crisis (FY 2010/11 and FY 2011/12): enhanced
financial effort and the incommensurable fiscal challenge 160
3. Secondary education and domestic elites’ budget preferences 164
3.1 Inter-sector budget allocation: educational ‘consumption’ vs productive sectors 164
3.2 Intra-sector budget allocation sector: secondary education, the neglected child 167
3.4 FY2010/11 and FY 2011/12: a budget more responsive to quality and
secondary education 172
3.5 The secondary education budget as a site of intra-ruling class conflicts 175
4. Donors’ ‘value for money’ quest in education: contesting Tanzania’s sovereignty 178
4.1 The capitation grant saga: the quality secondary education episode 179
4.2 The contentious politics of the teacher wage bill 183
4.3 The ‘budget impasse’ and the reassertion of donors’ control over aid relations 187
Conclusion 191
Chapter Six Who owns the ward secondary schools? The politics of
implementation in Lushoto District 193
1. Community schools, the central state and the ‘local’: securing people’s ownership to
fight poverty 195
2. Communities and the district: straitened financial surrogates of the central state 201
8
2.1 Public funding of ward secondary schools: the impossible district budget
balancing act 201
2.2 Community contributions in practice: the private costs of ward secondary
schools and their precarious balance sheets 205
3. Local elites and the mobilisation of communities: coercion, educating the masses
and patronage 210
3.1 1980-2004, the early days of secondary education expansion in Lushoto 210
3.2 The notables and the exercise of the state coercive power 213
3.3 ‘Contributors of ideas’: Notables as Gramscian intellectuals 215
3.4 The notables and the iron sheet: an educational patronage 218
4. Ward secondary schools: a new political battlefield for local elites 223
4.1 Politicians’ battles for territory control: village competition and the ‘ghost
secondary schools’ 223
4.2 The district budget between technocratic rationality and spatial politics 226
4.3 The Headmaster and the Notable in decentralisation times: a power
reconfiguration 228
Conclusion 232
Chapter Seven Tanzania’s textbook sector: Aid agencies, multinational companies,
and the national political settlement 235
1. The Tanzanian textbook industry: historical trajectory and organisation in 2011-2012 237
1.1 An historical account: from state monopoly to state-regulated private sector 237
1.2 The Tanzanian textbook sector in April 2012: main organisational features 238
1.3 The textbook crisis and the single/standard textbook policy decision 246
2. Aid agencies and multinational publishing companies in Tanzania: an ambiguous
companionship 248
2.1 The Word Bank and the marketization of Tanzania’s textbook industry 248
2.2 Deconstructing the market myth: revising the Ujamaa textbook legacy 250
2.3 Aid agencies between book development and textbook provision 256
9