Getting a decent education is a complicated matter for girls in Tanzania. A new ActionAid project aims to transform their school days – and their futures.

Every day Baby walks an hour to school, after just a cup of tea for breakfast. Her favourite subjects are English and science, and she’d like to be a teacher when she grows up. Baby lives with her aunt, Flora, who is passionate about education. “Everyone should know how to read and write and Baby, if she does well, could go on to higher education and learn a lot about the world. It is wrong for girls not to go to school,” says Flora.

Baby is lucky. She has a school dress, which she washes every day, and her grandmother sells bananas to earn the 2500 Tanzanian Shillings (£1.15) they pay each year for a daily school lunch of maize and beans.

And her guardian is enthusiastic about education.But in an area where people struggle to get enough to eat, not all parents can afford to think the way Flora does.

Sofia Larumbe is 13 and recently got engaged. She has never been to school. “My father keeps telling me that my main responsibilities are those of a future wife and mother, and I don’t need education for that,” she says. “I would really like to go to school one day and be like other girls. I envy them so much.”

Sofia’s mother Kombola is in a difficult situation – she knows that an education can make all the difference to Sofia, but she cannot go against the word of her husband. “When we have so many problems, we just have to persevere,” she says. “Right now I tell Sofia that unfortunately her father has refused for her to go to school and we cannot go against his word.”

Few girls in Tanzania have access to a decent education. In 2005 the government abolished school fees, resulting in a huge leap in the numbers of children attending school. But the quality of education on offer is a different matter.

For a start, there are still plenty of other costs for parents to contend with – uniforms, books, exam fees – and if these don’t get paid, children get sent home. Classes can average 60 children, led by teachers with little training or apparatus. Lessons sometimes take place outside as there are too few classrooms, and many children can walk up to nine kilometres just to get there.

Few schools provide meals, and children struggle to learn with no food inside them.

Zainabu Athuman is 13 and goes to school, but she is often so hungry she cannot concentrate and falls asleep in class. “In my family, we are generally very poor and my mother cannot afford even my school uniforms. Sometimes we sleep without eating at all or just have porridge for dinner,” she says.

Despite this, Zainabu is extremely keen to keep learning. “I like English, maths and science. If I study well I can go far in life; I can become the president or the prime minister.” And the positive effect her education has on the family is already being felt. Her mother, Asha, cannot read or write, so now Zainabu can read her mother’s letters or explain what the medicine bottles say when she has to go to hospital.

Making quality count

Baby, Sofia and Zainabu are all part of a new project led by ActionAid that aims, over the next three years, to transform education for 30,000 girls across 60 schools in northern Tanzania, and get more girls into school in the first place.

“The first step comes in trying to change the attitudes of parents and community and cultural leaders, who often fear that education will turn girls away from their faith and their responsibilities,” says David Archer, ActionAid’s head of education.

ActionAid has trained 216 community development facilitators to run ‘reflect’ workshops. This style of debating helps communities identify the problems they face and work out how to demand what they need – such as lobbying local governments for new schools. An important aspect of this approach is to empower women and improve their literacy. "It’s enabled them to stand up and say, 'We believe in the education of our daughters'," says David. “It's been very important because without their support it is difficult for such changes to take place."

For the girls themselves, there are now clubs which offer them a safe space to discuss issues that directly affect them, such as HIV and AIDS, sexual health and female circumcision.  Out in the wider community, there are campaigns cautioning against early marriage, and supporting re-entry to school for girls who have left due to poverty or pregnancy. The project is also working alongside five teacher training colleges and three training centres to ensure a higher quality of learning in the classroom.

Improvements are already beginning to be noticed. “Now we see the importance of giving girls equal opportunities that were only given to boys before,” says David Medime, chairman of the school management committee at Makuyuni Primary, Arusha.

“I’ve met girls who you would like to see in school but their fathers didn’t, and that’s the major problem. But we have been able to talk to the people on the ground and now the girls are in school.”

It is the beginning of a process that will improve girls’ chances in life, and offer them the opportunity to escape a cycle of poverty that threatens their futures. And it is not just the girls themselves we hope will benefit, but their families, and their whole communities.

“If I have an education,” says Zainabu, “It will better help the situation at home. We will be able to have the things we need. If I continue to stay home, we will just go on living in poverty.”