Abdallah, Beatrice and the quest for a learning society

with Youdi Schipper, Twaweza East Africa

By June 30, 2025, Tanzania aims to be a “well-educated and learning society”, recognizing that “competitive leadership in the 21st century will hinge on the level and quality of education and knowledge.” This is one of the five goals of the Tanzania Development Vision 2025.

However, with just over a year left to the conclusion of Vision 2025, are we on track to be a “well-educated and learning society” in 16 months from now? And if not, can we improve the chances for reaching it before 2050 by investing in teaching in the early primary school years?

Early grade learning levels in Tanzania are low. In 2019, only five percent of Standard Two students in Tanzania could read Kiswahili fluently in the Standard Two National Assessment, and just seventeen percent passed addition and subtraction tests. These foundational learning outcomes are vital because they affect the whole of a student’s future school career and life outcomes.

...the share of students passing Standard Seven mathematics fell from almost 65% in 2019 to 49% in 2023.

In January 2024, the government announced that over 85% of the 572,000 students who sat for the Form Four national exams had passed. A deeper dive reveals decent Kiswahili pass rates – almost seven out of ten passed. But this was accompanied by a worryingly low pass rate for mathematics: just one in eight candidates or 13% passed the exam.

Lower down the school system, the share of students passing Standard Seven mathematics fell from almost 65% in 2019 to 49% in 2023. Admittedly, mathematical reasoning is just one among many skills, but it is an unarguably important one in a knowledge-driven 21st century economy.

Given Tanzania’s long-term vision and the current learning trends, it is worth noting that the science of learning interventions has made big strides over the past 20 years. We are understanding better what works – and what doesn’t – to improve classroom instruction and student learning, especially foundational learning outcomes.

Much of the scientific evidence emphasizes innovations that improve teachers’ ability to teach. Recent work by Twaweza and partners in Tanzania has focused on motivating teachers, under a program known as KiuFunza – a mashup of Kiu ya Kujifunza (Thirst to Learn). It shows that when teachers are offered cash bonuses linked to their students’ performance, it has a big effect on how well children learn the basics. And the cost per student is relatively low.

Let’s see how this works, using the example of Abdallah and Beatrice, two teachers in public primary schools. Their respective schools, Songambele and Mkuranga, are located at opposite ends of Tanzania, separated by 1,300 kilometers. Mkuranga is located in Mkuranga district, in Coast region, close to the district office, while Songambele can be found close to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, 100km from the district office in the Uvinza district of Kigoma region – it takes several hours to travel there.

But the two schools have some things in common. In particular, they both have large numbers of students relative to the teachers assigned to teach them, especially in Standards One, Two and Three. Songambele recently had 125 students for every teacher assigned to teach reading and numeracy in the three early grades. Mkuranga had 92 students per teacher. Beatrice has 131 students and monitoring each and every one of them individually is especially challenging.

These examples illustrate a fundamental imbalance in education: while reading, addition and subtraction – the foundations of students’ learning – are taught in the early grades, the resources provided at this important level are very limited. More than 83% of primary school teachers say that if they could choose, they would prefer to teach children in Standards 4 to 7 rather than the lower classes.

KiuFunza addresses this issue by transforming large student numbers from a problem into an opportunity. Currently, the program incentivizes teachers in 265 schools in 11 regions of Tanzania, focusing on Standards One, Two and Three (to boost foundational learning). These teachers receive a small cash bonus for every student that passes basic skill tests, such as reading or subtraction.

The key feature is that the payment is conditional: without students passing the test (60% is the pass mark) there is no payment. The payment goes directly into the bank account of the teacher responsible. In short, KiuFunza rewards teachers with large classes who are succeed at making their students learn basic skills.

Both Abdallah and Beatrice are navigating the student learning challenges, boosted by KiuFunza. Abdallah spends extra time helping children who learn slowly. He also finds and lends books suitable for children to read on their own at home. For Beatrice in Mkuranga, the incentive drove innovation. To address the challenge of individually monitoring over 130 students in her class, she divides them into groups based on ability, and prepares lessons accordingly. She also spends more time with those children who have less ability. After three months, they had caught up to their faster peers.

Compared to others, their students were between 11% and 16% better in literacy and numeracy.

This motivation effect translates into improved student results. In February this year, Twaweza paid TZS 577 million in bonuses to KiuFunza teachers in recognition of their performance in 2023. Compared to others, their students were between 11% and 16% better in literacy and numeracy. Independent evaluations confirm that students’ performance on basic reading and numeracy tests improves significantly and are independent of the starting level of the student. Other evidence shows that teacher classroom attendance improves, and that teachers overwhelmingly support the program.

Learning is key to Tanzania’s present and even more so, to its future. All children should be able to read and do the most basic of calculations by age 10. Of course, we need good schools, good teaching and good books, but we also need teachers who are motivated to put in their best efforts. Learning from initiatives such as KiuFunza will boost our chances of becoming a truly well-educated and learning country by 2050.

This article was first published in The Citizen newspaper of Friday March 22, 2024