The Influence of Parental Support on Child ' s Learning of Literacy in Tanzania

Abstract

In the past few years, the Tanzanian government has made several commitments and efforts to improve the provision of basic literacy and numeracy skills the country by executing various programmes, including the Primary Education Development Plan (PEDP), under which primary school teachers were trained on how to teach numeracy and literacy. The government ' s emphasis on literacy has also been evident in the country ' s crucial policy documents particularly the Education and Training Policy (ETP, 1995, 2014), which clearly states in one of its objectives to enable every child to acquire basic learning basic literacy and numeracy skills. Despite various efforts and initiatives executed over the years, aimed at laying a solid foundation of literacy skills for children aged between five and 13, little seem to have been done in harnessing the potentials of parents and families support in teaching of literacy and numeracy. In fact, there is evidence that there are still many children without proper numeracy and literacy skills. Yet, there also seem to be limited empirical studies in the context of Tanzania focusing on examining innovative ways for engaging parents in supporting child ' s acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills, including exploring the factors that could effectively foster the parents ' contributions towards their children ' s acquisition of literacy skills and the inhibiting factors. This study attempts to understand the contribution of parents to supporting their children ' s acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills in Tanzania ' s primary education. Key words: literacy, parents ' engagement, numeracy skills, parental support