How NECTA PRem Operates, According to the NECTA’s Executive Secretary, Dr. Charles E. Msonde, PReM provides a stable and integrated system that cuts costs related to printing of various pupils’ reports, particularly through the
current TSM9 “Takwimu za Shule za Msingi Fomu Namba 9,” literally meaning “Primary Schools Statistics Form Number 9,” or pupils’ enrolment data system, that costs up to TZS 3 billion annually.
The unit cost of TSM9 form per pupil in Standard Seven used to cost TZS 3,000, totalling to TZS 3 billion for one million pupils. The operational cost for PReM
is roughly TZS 0.2 billion annually, thus cutting the costs by almost 93%.
Dr. Msonde further said that PReM helps to collect and store enrolment data and assessment results for pupils from Standard One to Seven. Enrolment data include pupil’s names, date of birth, vaccinations,
distance from home to school, parents or guardian address and many other particulars.
“It should also be noted that annual results for all subjects for each year are captured and stored into the system along with pupils’ particulars. NECTA is now in a position to retrieve instantly, national examinations registration data for Standard Four and Seven.
In the past, NECTA used to collect registration data using fragmented systems installed to local unreliable and unstable machines from each district every year. The fragments of the systems are difficult to support, and it used to take about three months to complete registration; but with PReM, everything is simplified,” said Dr. Msonde.
At the moment in Tanzania, pupils are manually transferred from one school to another; the process takes too long and is prone to impersonation. It is usually very difficult for education officers at all levels,
to verify pupils’ records that are manually stored.
The Head of Information and Communication Technology Department, Dr. Joseph Mbowe, said, with the help of PReM, transferring of pupils from one school to another will speed up since all the records will be stored digitally and centrally. “Since
transfer requests are done and approved online and transparently, this will increase accountability to officers responsible for the whole process. Moreover, it will make it possible to track pupils’ history at any time. In addition, tracking information can be used for selection to higher levels of education during record verification,” emphasized Dr. Mbowe.
How NECTA PRem Operates Tanzania
He added that PReM is also used for NECTA’s assessment purposes for it stores pupils’ particulars from Standard One to Seven. Dr. Mbowe said the school’s annual results for each pupil is uploaded. This means that, school’s performance progress can be evaluated even before they sit for Standard Four and Seven National Examinations. In addition, the raw enrolment and results data can be used to provide some statistical data to other educational stakeholders.
Let us embrace the new technology because it will help to facilitate other initiatives like equipping Tanzania with school performance data, and also doing away with the manual system, that we used in the past.
