forms of fees . The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training is expecting to issue a circular that will clarify the extent to which a parent can be allowed to contribute for his child’s education. 171. In its efforts to effectively and meaningfully invest in education, the State Party’s introduced the Big Results Now (BRN) initiative that strive, inter alia, to enhance various programmes which helps to improve the quality of basic education (pre-primary, primary and ordinary secondary education). Specifically, the initiatives have to do with the following measures: (a) strengthening the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms by building the capacity of teachers and providing support to struggling student (slow learners/ under achievers); (b) improving school infrastructure by constructing basic school facilities. Eg. Construction of laboratories, classrooms, toilets, staff houses, water reservoir and provision of power; (c) enhancing school management through training of heads of schools; and (d) providing incentives to teachers and students to increase morale hence performing better. 172. There are several achievements in respect of the foregoing measures undertaken by the State Party, including: (a) revising the trend of performance of national examination results from PLSE (2012) 31% to (2013) 51% (2014) 51%-57% and Ordinary Secondary Certificate Education (2012) 43% to (2013) 58%, (2014) 50.09% -68.33%; (b) training of secondary school teachers 4,064 for first year of the initiatives on how to identify underperforming student and carry out enrichment classes; (c) conducting 3Rs assessment in reading, writing and arithmetic’s skills for pupil on November 2013 to establish baseline. Henceforth MoEVT were able to prepare 3Rs teacher competence framework, student competence framework, assessment framework and preparation of modules of teaching 3Rs; (d) ranking school into various bands to help channel the resources where they are needed most; and (e) construction of basic facilities in 131 secondary schools. (b) Teaching Staff 173. About two-thirds (67%) of all teachers are in primary schools (190,957 (2014) out of 285,086) which is the biggest sub-sector compared to 28% (13,600) (2014) in pre-primary schools and 26.7% (73,407) in Secondary schools. 47.5% of secondary school teachers are graduates compared to 4.3% in primary and 4.5% in Pre-primary schools. Secondary school teachers have increased very fast by 291.4% from 2004 to 2013 compared to other levels due to rapid expansion in secondary education. 60.6% of primary and 83.5% of secondary school teachers are aged under 40 years. This shows that most of these teachers are young and are expected to work for more than twenty years before reaching the compulsory retirement age of 60 years. The pupil-teacher ratio varies from 1:83 in pre-primary to 1:43 in primary to 1:25 in secondary education. The standard norm is 1:25 for pre-primary and 1:40 for primary and secondary education. Non-Government Schools have better improved Pupil Teacher Ratios. (c) Budget allocation 174. For the year 2013/14 the State Party allocated Tshs 1,758,840,000,000 to the primary education, Tshs 491,753,000,000 to Secondary education and Tshs 55,303,000,000 to teachers’ education. Notably, the primary education subsector has been receiving over 55.5%, and secondary 15.5% in the allocation of education sector budget. Pre-primary education budget is included in primary education.60 60 Prime Minister’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government, Statistics 2014. 48 Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Education