Rewriting the Rules of the School Uniform: Insights into Power and Policy in Tanzania
Item
-
Title
-
Rewriting the Rules of the School Uniform: Insights into Power and Policy in Tanzania
-
Description
-
Non-formal education (NFE) in Tanzania has experienced a recent swell of government support at the secondary school level, where efforts have focused on mainstreaming teenage mothers back into formal education. NFE is defined as any instruction outside of formal schooling that involves the acquisition of basic education; it is used as a complementary feature in most education systems around the world because it provides flexible and accelerated pathways to learning. My doctoral research examines how the political economy arrangements in Tanzania’s education system shape the delivery of NFE at secondary school centers known as, ‘open schools.’ This piece draws on findings from my fieldwork, including policy analysis and in-depth interviews, to narrow in on the reappropriation of policy rules for the use of school uniforms in open schools. In Tanzania, government cohesion around education policymaking exists but the institutions that regulate and distribute education priorities are highly personalized, giving way to policy misalignments that allow for ground-level actors to redefine policy rules. In the case of the school uniform, policies stipulate that NFE students are exempt from wearing them but, in practice, open schools enforce strict uniform rules for their students. School uniforms serve as powerful social signifiers of age and authority. Schools and teachers at the frontline of NFE provision are attuned to these social norms and rewrite the uniform rules accordingly. My reflections on uniform use in Tanzanian open schools are helpful for a broader analysis of how ground level actors can correct for policy misalignments. However, more research is needed to better understand how political economy shapes these misalignments. Furthermore, reforms need to be grounded in local knowledge, as policy priorities are often too far removed from the realities on the ground.
-
Creator
-
Guzman Correa, R.
-
Subject
-
Non-formal education
-
policy implementation
-
political economy
-
governance
-
school uniforms
-
Publisher
-
CERJ, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
-
Cambridge Educational Research e-Journal
-
Date
-
2024-12-20T12:34:35Z
-
2024-12-01
-
Type
-
Article
-
Format
-
application/pdf
-
Identifier
-
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/377859
-
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.114548
-
Language
-
eng
-
Rights
-
Attibution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DEED)
-
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/