The Implications of Socio-Cultural Values on Educational Equity: The Case of Public Secondary Schools in Tanzania

Dr. Milka V. Otieno
St. John’s University of Tanzania.
Email: omilka@sjut.ac.tz

Abstract: This paper examines the socio-cultural values and their implication for educational policy implementation with an aim to address issues in educational equity and consequently social justice. A review of various gender equity research papers, Tanzania’s education policies and the discussion on social justice perspective are presented in the paper to argue for the need for culturally responsive educational policies as a step towards addressing equity issues in Education. The study adopted qualitative research methods involving a thematic analysis informed by social justice and the feminist theories. Data collection was purposive through one-to-one semi-structured interviews with four heads and four matrons of four secondary schools in Tanzania, and within the same four secondary schools, Focus groups discussions with four groups of school girls as well as two focus groups discussion with two groups of women from a local government and the central government were conducted. The data analysis included a triangulation of the interview and focus groups discussion data with evidence from documentary analysis of various educational policy documents and research based scholarly materials. The findings discussed in Otieno, (2016, 2020) provided the analysis of the outcome of current educational environment in Tanzania; challenging the neoliberal perspectives in what the study called ‘Edu-classification’ rather than education for girls due to unassertive political will in carefully financing education. The paper hopes to further stir political will towards timely review of relevant educational policies in support of social justice and, to realistically address equity in education.