An Identification and Assessment of the Needs and Necessary Conditions for Transferring Students from Informal to Formal Education System, a Case Study of Complementary Basic Education (COBET)

Abstract

Complimentary Basic Education in Tanzania (COBET) is a community-based programme that provides opportunity to over aged children to be enrolled in formal education system. COBET was a programme initiated to provide opportunity for the acquisition of basic education to out of school children aged between 8 to 18 years. Dar es Salaam is one of the Tanzania regions which lead in terms of children wondering in the street.  Therefore, studying the situation of COBET, identify and assess the needs and necessary conditions for transferring students from these COBET centres to formal education system is very important as it will give chance to street children and those pupils dropout from formal primary schools back to formal education system through COBET. In this study a sample of 424 eligible COBET students from Dar es Salaam region were used  Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to study the needs and necessary conditions for transferring COBET students to formal education. The study reveals that 53% of the total respondents were males whereas females were 47%. PCA reveals that the needs and necessary conditions for active COBET centers were being explained by three components in each dependent and independent variables. The findings suggest that, the needs and necessary conditions for active COBET centers include availability of students/pupils, books, desks, premises (classrooms) and COBET facilitators.