Tanzania ’ s Brief Report for SADC Regional OERs Policy Forum May 22-24, 2013 – South Africa .

1. Tanzania’s Brief Report for SADC Regional OERs Policy Forum May 22-24, 2013 – South Africa.

2. CURRENT EDUCATIONAL PRIORITIES IN TANZANIA: • Providing education for all; including individuals with special needs, rural based populations, etc. • Expanding tertiary and higher education, while as well enhancing research and publications; • Reducing illiteracy rates, through enhancement of adult education and open and distance learning; to include out of school youths; • Linking education and training to the development of the national economy; • Developing self-employment spirit among citizens through relevant competence based curricular; • Developing and improving educational resources; • Broadening financial base, cost effectiveness of education, and devolution of authority to schools, communities and Local Governments.

3. CURRENT EDUCATIONAL PRIORITIES IN TANZANIA Conts’ • Promoting use of ICT across all education levels to ensure effective communication and ensuring data processing- storage, retrieval, and sharing; • Ensuring staff competences through regular and effective training, motivation and equitable deployment; • Ensuring quality education and training by instituting QA agencies.

4. Current policy status and links to OERs While there is not yet a clearly defined national policy on OERs, existing policies and plans point to the essence and acceptance of OERs as reflected on the following policy related items: • Adherence to internationally agreed policy targets such as the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (EFA) and its follow up review at the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action; • Universal Primary Education (UPE) focus remaining key in informing the country’s Education Sector Development Programmes in primary and secondary education;

5. CURRENT POLICY STATUS AND LINKS TO OER CONTS’ • Considerations and acceptance of OERs as having capacity for an extensive reach to all who have access to OERs. This ties with the national Educational Policy and ICT Policy; • Focus on competence based curricula with the aim of equipping learners at all levels to develop capacity of learning to learn, and positive perception of learning as a lifelong learning endeavour. It is realized that OERs provide opportunities where these aims can be attained; • Continued emphasis on expanding student enrolment, improvement of quality education and capacity building in the education sector.

6. Possible reasons for interest in OERs • Scarcity of internally developed educational and training resources - this scarcity can be addressed through OERs; • Existing scarce educational and training resources cannot be accessed easily by clients due the rural character of clienteles’ locations – considerations of difficulty terrain and snail mail. Internet and mobile based OERs can serve individuals anywhere where there is internet connectivity and broad bandwidth; • The need to collaborate, share and partner with people and institutions locally as well as outside the country in the area of educational and training resources;

7. POSSIBLE REASONS FOR INTEREST IN OER CONTS’ • The need to eliminate, as much as possible, “re-inventing the wheel” where such ‘wheels’ already exist, e.g., research, publications and educational media technologies; • Adjusting and reacting to contemporary development and innovations as reflected through OERs; • Except for attempts to localize (contextualization) OERs to our local situations OERs can be adapted to simplify teaching, training and learning activities-pedagogy, content and management.