The Paradigm Shift from School Inspection to School Quality Assurance: Perceptions of the In-service Trained Teachers on the Achievements Made

Improving the quality of education is a Tanzania strategy towards preparation of innovative, creative, competent and competitive workforce required for economic transformation from low agricultural productivity to middle income and semi-industrial country by 2025. Therefore, the paradigm shifts from school inspection to school quality assurance in basic, secondary and teacher education in 2017 was an imperative intervention towards the national development vision. This study therefore, sought to evaluate the perceptions of the in-service trained teachers on the achievement of the paradigm shift from school inspection to school quality assurance in Tanzania education as empirical feedback for the government commitments and investments. Through convergent parallel mixed-methods design, data were collected through semi-structured questionnaires from 76 in-service teachers trained in School Quality Assurance, followed by interviews conducted with in-service teachers trained in Education Leadership, Management and Administration both at Diploma level, between 2019 and 2021 years. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the respondents’ categories basing on their professional training in relation to education practices. The descriptive statistics and content analysis techniques were used to analyze, present, and discuss quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The study found that, the in-service trained teachers perceive the paradigm shift's significant achievement is institutionalizing a collaborative, transparent, holistic and friendly mechanism compared to its predecessor school inspection. However, such achievement has not impacted positively on the quality of education provided as expected due to inadequacy of resources to meet quality standards as recommended by school quality assurance officers, limited quality assurance competencies among teachers, little attention given to teachers’ welfare services and lack of legal power to school quality assurance directorate to enforce their recommendation in schools. Therefore, the study recommended improving resources to meet school quality standards, developing quality assurance competencies among teachers before they graduate, exceptional attention to teachers’ welfare services, and constitutionalizing the school quality assurance directorate into an autonomous entity reporting directly to the parliament. Further study can be conducted on evaluating models for developing quality assurance competencies among pre-service teachers in colleges.