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Tanzanian Schools Expel Pregnant and Married Girls

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Wednesday, February 15th, 2017
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“I liked to study so that I could have a wide mind. There was nothing I didn’t like [to study]. I had a dream to finish school and go to college, graduate, and work.”

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Like millions of adolescents in Tanzania, Imani, from Mwanza in northwestern Tanzania, wanted to study hard and to graduate, find a job, and support herself and her family.

From the age of 14, she traveled more than an hour and a half every morning to reach her secondary school. It was tiring, but Imani was motivated by her dream of becoming an accountant.

Her dreams were shattered at 16, when a secondary school teacher that her parents hired to tutor her sexually abused her. He disappeared after Imani informed him she was pregnant. She was expelled from school after a routine mandatory monthly pregnancy test.

A new Human Rights Watch report – “I Had a Dream to Finish School: Barriers to Secondary Education in Tanzania” – takes a hard look at secondary education in Tanzania. Over five million children ages 7 to 17 are out of school, including nearly 1.5 million of lower secondary school age. Formal vocational training is often unavailable. In 2013, Tanzania ranked 159 out of 187 in the United Nations’ global education index, which measures mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling.

Tanzanian children miss out on education for a number of reasons, including financial problems, long distance to schools, endemic corporal punishment in schools, or because they failed the primary school leaving exam. Government policy does not allow students to retake the primary school leaving exam, essentially blocking them from entering secondary school. Girls face additional obstacles, including negative attitudes about the value of educating girls, sexual harassment, and expulsion of those who become pregnant. Although there is near gender parity in Form One enrollments in Tanzania, fewer than a third of girls who complete primary end up completing lower-secondary school.

Despite these grim statistics, Tanzania is taking action to correct this situation and help more children attend secondary school. One important step was the abolition of all school fees for lower secondary education over a year ago, which the government says has significantly increased enrolment. The government is also committed to building more schools and improving the quality of learning, although there have been delays in implementation.

Unfortunately, these laudable efforts stand in sharp contrast to Tanzania’s failure to reverse policies that allow and even encourage schools to discriminate against female students and tolerate impunity for sexual harassment and abuse against girls.

Almost two out of five girls marry before they reach 18, and the routine expulsion of married girls means that is usually the end of their education.

Tanzanian schools also routinely force girls to undergo pregnancy tests and expels those who are pregnant, often bringing a permanent and premature end to their education. Some pregnant girls drop out   because they fear expulsion. The Center for Reproductive Rights, an international nongovernmental organization, estimates that Tanzanian schools expel over 8,000 girls every year as a result of pregnancy. Once they are pushed out, young mothers like Imani have few options to re-enter the formal education system.

Furthermore, the government of Tanzania has not taken vigorous action to combat widespread sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation against girls in schools by teachers, bus drivers, and other adults who often ask them for sex in exchange for gifts, rides, or money. Sexual harassment and abuse interfere with girls’ safety, health, and well-being, and in some cases cause them to leave school.

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