New Education Policy and the issue of free education;

It is impressive to have a free education to all students but the education effect may result on free education which is free of knowledge since we have witnessed that, the policy being introduced in primary schools and considered as good one resulting to high enrollment of students in primary schools, yet I still wonder why the quality of education is dropping each year. This depict that public schools are free of knowledge and centers of education for the poor who cannot afford the cost of education in private schools since those who endorse these policies never dare take their children to public schools, let education service be free but not free of knowledge.

Let us wake up now and liberate ourselves from the chains of social classes which divide the society in the right to education; Nelson Mandela, First Democratically Elected President of South Africa once said;  

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."

On the same token from which perspective do we consider education being free? Parents and households still incur other unnecessary costs when sending their children to public schools. The Educational Sector Analysis (ESA), (2011) points out that, the volume of household contributions to education varies according to whether the child attends a government or non-governmental institution. However, even for government schooling, households contribute to costs such as uniforms, school fees, school materials and transportation. Estimates based on the Household budget surveys of 2007 (HBS, 2007) reveal that in FY 2008/09, the amount estimated to have been invested in education by households amounted to Tsh. 205.1 billion, equivalent to 0.76 percent of GDP.

Take a look in Finland. Finnish comprehensive school is a formal and fully publicly financed system and ‘a matter of pedagogical (educational) philosophy and practice’ (Välijärvi et al., 2002, p. 29) as cited from (Sahlberg, 2007). This philosophy is based on the principle of equity, on which Finnish education policy has been largely premised since the early 1970s. Well-equipped schools are typically small, with class sizes ranging from 20 to 30 students. Primary schools (grades 1 to 6) typically have fewer than 300 pupils. In 2004, more than one third of Finnish comprehensive schools had fewer than 50 pupils; just 4% of all schools had 500 or more pupils (Sahlberg, 2007).

Many primary schools therefore have become learning and caring communities rather than merely instructional institutions that prepare pupils for the next level of schooling. The fact that all children enroll in identical comprehensive schools regardless of their socioeconomic background or personal abilities and characteristics has resulted in a system where schools and classrooms are heterogeneous in terms of pupil profiles and diverse in terms of educational needs and expectations (Välijärvi & Malin, 2003). Comprehensiveness, the leading idea in implementing the basic values of equity in education, also means that all students receive a free two-course warm meal daily, free health care, transportation, learning materials, and counseling in their own schools (Sahlberg, 2007). 

The question is; are we prepared to offer free education to all in primary and secondary schools? (The basic education), are we economically stable to bear the cost of running public schools? Is this real not a political agenda?