Understanding the strategies street-level bureaucrats develop to deal with inclusive secondary education restraints in selected schools in Tanzania

Abstract

Currently there are voluminous public administration readings suggesting that a robust service delivery is the result of myriads of actors’ concerns, including policymakers, service recipients, and street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). However, this notion is likely to be contested because service delivery, particularly inclusive secondary education in Tanzania is still at a snail’s pace due to lack of mutual interface between aforementioned actors as the central government dominates decisions regarding service delivery. Normally such restraints have resulted in new means for street-level bureaucrats to execute their own de-facto policies. This stance is covered in street-level bureaucracy theory, which supposes that at the end of the policy chain, SLBs develop practices to deal with the status quo. Arguably, since the way SLBs respond to diverse contexts when faced with some hardships in executing service is diverse, unpacking the manner inclusive secondary education delivery restraints are dealt with is imperative to contribute to existing Tanzanian literature. In trying to close this gap, the paper analyzed inclusive secondary education delivery in selected schools in order to unveil the techniques SLBs create to unearth restraints and unveil whether such techniques comply with public policy implementation or not regarding the delivery of inclusive secondary education. To get relevant insights, this paper used an interpretative case study methodology covering in-depth interviews, documentary reviews and observation and analyzed data using content analysis. The fi ndings revealed that, SLBs face limitations in service delivery due to various reasons including a lack of cooperation between policy makers and implementers, SLBs use pre-teaching, creaming, additional hours, simplifi cations, routinizing and referral as coping strategies, SLBs have little discretion and authority over inclusive educational service delivery. Therefore, policy makers and SLBs need to work jointly for a successful delivery of inclusive secondary education services in Tanzania.