Parental Engagement in Early Learning Systems: The case of Tanzania

• In Event: Parental engagement in early learning systems: findings from Pakistan, Tanzania, Liberia and Ethiopia

Proposal

The Government of Tanzania, like other governments around the world, is investing in increasing access to early learning opportunities for young children to prepare them for learning in first grade and beyond. Tanzania’s most recent education policy calls for the implementation of one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education for all children, and this policy pronouncement led to an immediate increase in enrolment of 46 percent. The immediate challenge facing the country is how to align its early learning system towards producing learning, and not just broadening access.

One strategy which the government is proposing to improve learning is to increase the engagement and commitment of parents and communities to support early learning at home and at school. According to the Education Sector Development Plan, the government hopes to develop and implement a communication campaign to ensure parents are aware of the benefits of early learning and their role in supporting and promoting it, including through the development of community-based (or satellite) pre-schools (United Republic of Tanzania, 2017).

As part of the Early Learning Partnership (ELP) systems research program, our study uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the ways in which parents and caregivers engage with their children in the home and with pre-primary schools. We also studied the ways in which the early learning system supported meaningful engagement by parents, and whether or how the fee-free primary education policy has affected the accountability relationships between parents and the school.

We used quantitative data collected by the Measuring Early Learning Quality Outcomes (MELQO) assessment, which reached 684 children and 568 caregivers from 70 randomly sampled urban and rural schools in Tanzania (RTI International, 2017). The data from the MELQO was analysed using the statistical software, Stata. In addition, qualitative data was collected from focus group discussions (FGD) from caregivers from 17 schools in two districts: Dar es Salaam and Mkurunga. The analysis of data from the FGDs was informed by an abductive analytical framework—a framework that combines deductive and inductive reasoning to analyse data from the field. In this regard, the data from the FGDs were approached neither with a rigid set of pre-conceptions nor fully inductively, but rather with a combination of the two types of reasoning. The analysis proceeded through the following three main steps: data preparation and organization; creation of categories; and coding, presentation and interpretation.

The findings suggest that caregivers in Tanzania engage with the children at home in a variety of ways, such as playing; naming, counting; and drawing objects; and reading or looking about books. After controlling for socioeconomic status, there were no significant relationships found between reported parental engagement and child learning outcomes. Parental engagement with schools was more limited in scope and mainly involved monitoring attendance of child and teacher. From the FGDs, parents wanted more information about their children’s progress and in a more systematic way.

The findings suggest that there is an opportunity for government to strengthen home/school partnerships and accountability relationships between the school and parents. The planned communication campaign could help clarify the role of the parent in the home/school partnership and set standards or guidelines for improving information sharing between the home and the school.

Authors

• Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International

• Richard Shukia, University of Dar es Salaam

• Bidemi Carrol, RTI International

• Aneth Komba, Tanzania Institute of Education