Wayne Sandholtz, originally from the United States and currently a resident member of NOVAFRICA visited NCID to give a seminar entitled “Secondary School Access Raises Primary School Achievement in Tanzania”. The speaker explained that when school fees are abolished for secondary education it results in more kids going to school.

Our guest saw an opportunity in Tanzania`s 2015 policy change in which secondary school fees were abolished. He started his paper based on the following question: “Are there students in Primary who could perform better than they do but do not because they don’t have access to secondary school and so they rationally disinvest in their primary education?”

According to the studies of Sandholtz, “children who were more constrained by school fees prior to the reform see commensurably bigger gains in the rates of passing their primary school exams than other kids in the country”.