Challenges and Opportunities towards Provision of Quality Early Childhood Education in Tanzania

The main objective of this research was to assess the challenges and opportunities towards provision of a quality early childhood education. Ifakara Town in Morogoro Region was selected as case study. A total of 36 participants were purposeful selected as respondents. Data were collected by using semi-structured interview and documentary review to obtain qualitative data from respondents. Data analysis was done qualitatively and presented by using texts, moreover, demographic information of participants were presented descriptively by using frequency and percentages. Based on the empirical evidences of this study, the findings show that there is no doubt the fact that provision of Early Childhood Education in Tanzania is faced with diverse challenges. Poverty is the major challenge; others are contributed by poverty which include; shortage of classrooms, inadequate teaching and learning materials, absence of qualified teachers, long distance from home to school and readiness of parents. The study findings also show that there are some opportunities towards provision of early childhood education. The government support is described as the major opportunity which contributes to others such as community supports and free education. Based on the findings, it is also shown that teachers have different perceptions of how provision of early childhood education could be improved. The study also establishes some recommendations based on how the government through its Ministry of Educational and Vocational Training would improve and introducing new strategies for implementing the early childhood programs to improve the provision of pre-primary education