Management and Administration of Education

In 2000 there were 207 government schools and 118-private owned schools. All government schools are administered and managed by the Department of Education.  The role of the Department is to provide management support to the schools, and also includes the deployment of new teachers. The Department also has the role of ensuring that all programmes at school level are well implemented. At district and regional levels the district and regional education officers are in-charge of their areas respectively.  The deployment of teachers is done at district level, but the process is coordinated at central level by the Department of Education.

From an instructional perspective, the school is divided into several sections.  At the primary level there are two sections.  Section one is comprised of Standard One to Three and section two comprises Standard Four to Seven.  Section three covers Orientation Secondary Class to Form Two. Moreover, each section has a section leader who is the supervisor and advisor to the teachers in the section.
                                          
According to the Zanzibar Education Decree No. 6 of 1982 each school must have a school committee.  The members of the committee are selected and appointed as follows: (a) a chairperson who is appointed by the District Commissioner.  Normally the “Sheha” (an officer in charge of a locality) is the chairperson; (b) two members appointed by the Sheha; (c) two members appointed by the District Education Officer; (d) three members elected by the parents themselves. The school head is the secretary of the committee.

The function of the school committee is two-fold, namely:

Although the formation of the school committees had been decreed, the committees have not been given legal powers to exercise their duties and functions.

The inspection of schools is administered by officials at national level. Between 1995 and 2000 a number of reforms have been introduced in the inspection and supervision of schools. The purpose was to improve the quality of teaching and learning.  Of these reforms, the two important ones were the revision of the inspectorate system and the introduction of teacher centre advisors. The inspectorate was revised to be in line with other systems in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries. The major changes in the system was the introduction of the basic inspection component whose purpose was to assess the overall strength and weakness of the school rather than pointing at the mistakes of a particular teacher. Secondly, the school heads were appointed as associate inspectors in order to make them more accountable.  The inspection was designed in a way that made it more transparent and the inspection reports are distributed and discussed with all stakeholders including school committees.

Since 1997, teacher professional development has been decentralized to the zonal Teacher Centers (TCs).  There are nine Teacher Centres and training is conducted by TC advisors.  The role of the advisors is to visit schools and identify teachers who need advice, provide such advice, and guide teachers in their particular subject area.  It is around the findings from these visits and discussions with teachers that training is planned and conducted.

See the SACMEQ reports for more information.