Proposal for Aligning the National Examinations Council of Tanzania’s Roles with Principles of Education for Self-Reliance

Abstract

The paradigm shift from content to competence-based curriculum in the first decade of the 21st century had brought with it the inevitability of transforming the National Examinations Council of Tanzania (NECTA) towards competence-based assessment (CBA). Although the council has a success story of fulfilling its mission of providing fair, efficient, and effective educational assessment, it does not seem to have fully shifted its attention to those educational reforms made. This study was undertaken to highlight the need for transforming NECTA so that its operations are in line with the principles of Education for Self-Reliance (ESR) and CBA. It employed the bibliometric strategy; the study retrieved information using the Google Scholar tool using keywords such as education for self-reliance, national curriculum framework, NECTA guidelines and education policy, CBC, and NECTA Act. Although a total of 63 were retrieved, only 8 documents met the inclusion criteria. content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that although NECTA claims to have shifted its attention towards competence-based assessment procedures, it has not fully integrated those CBA procedures to grasp the principles of ESR. It concludes that NECTA’s current operations are not aligned with the objective for which it was formed. The study recommends a need for transformation of NECTA’s assessment procedures to be able to match with the 21st century situation.