Contextualizing the quality of primary education in urban and rural settings: The case of Iringa Region,Tanzania

The purpose of the article is to discuss the term ‘quality’ in relation to primary education in Tanzania, and to contextualize quality and identify the premises for obtaining quality in primary school education in rural and urban settings. To understand opinions about the quality of education and the current situation in primary schools, the author conducted interviews with teachers and focus group discussions with parents and caregivers in Iringa town and three villages in Iringa Region. The findings indicate a general consensus, regardless of geographical setting, that quality in primary education is primarily measurable through national exams. However, surrounding circumstances such as infrastructure and poverty have a great impact on the quality of education in rural primary schools. Lack of water and electricity, and poor transport networks have consequences for schooling by limiting children’s, parents’, and teachers’ access to school supplies and limiting the ability of officials to carry out monitoring activities. The author concludes that the premises for providing and receiving education vary to a great extent, depending on geographical setting, and favour urban youths with respect to their further education.     

Scientific detector workshop 2022 on-sky performance verification of near-infrared e−APD technology for wavefront sensing and demonstration of e−APD pixel performance to improve the sensitivity of large science focal planes

Near-infrared adaptive optics as well as fringe tracking for coherent beam combination in optical interferometry require the development of high-speed sensors. Because of the high speed, a large analog bandwidth is required. The short exposure times result in small signal levels which require noiseless detection. Both requirements cannot be met by state-of-the-art conventional CMOS technology of near-infrared arrays as has been attempted previously. A total of five near-infrared SAPHIRA 320 × 256 pixel HgCdTe e⁻APD arrays have been deployed in the wavefront sensors and in the fringe tracker of the VLTI instrument GRAVITY. The current limiting magnitude for coherent exposures with GRAVITY is m_k = 19, which is made possible with ADP technology. New avalanche photo-diode array (APD) developments since GRAVITY include the extension of the spectral sensitivity to the wavelength range from 0.8 to 2.5 μm. After GRAVITY a larger format array with 512 × 512 pixels has been developed for both AO applications at the ELT and for long integration times. Since dark currents of <10⁻³ e⁻/s have been demonstrated with 1Kx1K e⁻APD arrays and 2Kx2K e⁻APD arrays have already been developed, the possibilities and adaptations of e⁻APD technology to provide noiseless large-format science-grade arrays for long integration times are also discussed.