Tanzania became one of the firstlow-income countries to abolish fees for lower secondaryeducation (grades 8-12) in 2015. One of the pledges of anew, reformist government, the policy built on the country’sprevious experience of abolishing primary fees in 2002. Thenew Fee-Free Basic Education Policy (FFBEP) extended theabolition of formal fees to lower secondary education, andprohibited both primary and lower secondary schools fromlevying informal fees, such as for inspections. Theintroduction of FFBEP has already enabled a large increasein the proportion of students entering primary school, andthe proportion transitioning to secondary level. Over thenext few years more than a million additional lowersecondary places will be required to meet the increase indemand. This rapid expansion of lower secondary education isa boon for access and an important step for Tanzania toachieve its goal of attaining middle-income status by 2025.However, such a pace of expansion poses a significant fiscalchallenge. Careful planning is required at this stage todevelop a model of lower secondary education which can bescaled up in a sustainable way. In partnership with thegovernment of Tanzania, the authors have developed asimulation model to estimate the fiscal impacts of variouspolicy parameters with relevance to the implementation ofFFBEP at lower secondary level. The findings presented inthis note are based on the simulation tool developed for useby the government.
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