Should Yohana Lameck Change What We Think of Ward Schools In Tanzania?

There is nothing more powerful than a good story and I am about to tell you one. In the first week of 2020, the ministry of education in Tanzania released the long-awaited national examination results (NECTA). 

With such results came a David slaying Goliath kind of story. A boy, Yohana Lameck Lugedenga, from less-privileged interiors of this country, scored straight A’s in the national exams. All nine subjects! 

With his father being distant from the family, and his mother struggling to make ends meet, Yohana comes from a very poor family. But that did not stop him from being the hero of the family. 

Yohana attended what we call ‘Shule za Kata‘ (Swahili for Ward Secondary Schools) located in rural Bariadi, Simiyu region. They are the type of schools that are known to be highly underfunded, overpopulated, and with unmotivated teachers. They are the source of mass failure in the country. 

Ward Schools are those secondary schools that were constructed and established in each ward by the directives of the government through local communities participation whereas they were purposely introduced to meet the need of an increasing number of students in need to join secondary education from primary schools. 

If you don’t know what exactly these schools look like, I am going to paint a picture for you. I attended the same type of school in my ordinary secondary school education and I happened to teach in one of these schools during my internship at University in 2016. 

In my case, me and my classmates had dreams to change our lives and those of our families through education. But apart from those dreams, everything else was severely lacking. The government delayed bringing teachers until later when we were in the second term of Form Two. We had to keep learning from the limited resources we had. Laboratory was a foreign concept to us. Books were not enough, and there was no boarding even for girls. We had no lunch or breakfast at school.

The whole school had only two buildings with four classes in total. Even teachers had no office or toilet of their own. Most of my classmates had to walk or ride a bicycle for a long distance to and from school.

That is what most of these schools look like in case you didn’t know. That is what Igaganulwa Secondary School from which Yohana Lameck went to looks like. It even surprised my village folks and my teachers when I performed well in my final exams that I was selected to join a special school for academically talented students in Tanzania, Ilboru High School. 

Could Yohana change our perception of Shule za Kata? 

What moves our hearts is when an ordinary person does extraordinary things. It resonates with our daily lives as we face many obstacles but always looking for a way to overcome them.  

While students from private schools have every reason to perform better, students from ward schools are doing their best in the challenging situation they are in. They are not as dumb as their results look. It is just that everything else is against them; the environment, being forgotten by government support and overwhelmed teachers who work under limited resources. 

As Eliud Kipchonge would have said, No Human ls Limited. Yohana has just proved that. He has done the impossible and I believe he should be the catalyst to start making urgent reforms for better education in underprivileged schools across the country. 

As an agent of change, what do you think should be done to improve the quality of education in ward schools considering the current needs of the world?

Links in this post

• Read more about Ward Secondary Schools, PDF
• Mwanafunzi Fukara Aliyefanya Maajabu Kidato Cha 4 – HabariLeo
• No Human Is Limited, Eliud Kipchonge