Centralized Admission System for Advanced Level Private Schools: Case of Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania

Abstract

Globally, it is desirable to have fair and transparent student admissions into both public and private universities, colleges and schools. A case in point, in Tanzania 35% of students enrolled each year in higher level learning institutions and technical education are from Advanced Level (A-level) private schools. Of concern is that, this paper confirms and quantify that 93.5% of admissions into A-level schools were performed on paper based. Such admissions were characterized by multiple admissions, being costly, inconsistency, inaccuracy, and difficulties in following admission procedures. On the other hand, existing manual admission systems were considered unfair and not transparent. To mitigate these challenges a centralized web-based solution named Tanzania Central Processing Admission System (TCPAS) has been conceptualized to resolve the identified admission challenges. This paper presents on an ongoing research work aimed to address the challenges facing the current admission procedures of A-Level private schools in Tanzania. The proposed TCPAS is designed to be a web-mobile solution. The TCPAS tool is intended to reduce admission costs by reducing turnaround time for entire admission processes; encourage the use of paperless admission; control forgery over entry qualifications (certificates) during the admission process; has a centralized data handling capability; saves admission vacancies; and reach many geographically scattered applicants. Moreover, questionnaires were used to gather requirements from 150 respondents from the case study (Kilimanjaro region).