Tanzania PSLE

Overview

The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), known in Swahili as Mtihani wa Kumaliza Elimu ya Msingi, is Tanzania's national examination for pupils completing Standard 7, the final year of primary school. It is set and administered by the National Examinations Council of Tanzania (NECTA), on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the President's Office — Regional Administration and Local Government (TAMISEMI). The PSLE marks the end of primary education and is the gateway into Form One: pupils who pass are placed into government or private secondary schools, while NECTA also uses the results to route some pupils toward vocational and technical training routes instead. This page covers only the Standard 7 PSLE; NECTA's separate Form Four (CSEE) and Form Six (ACSEE) secondary-leaving examinations are outside its scope.

Who can apply

• Government and private primary school pupils: any pupil who has completed Standard 7 in a registered government or private primary school is registered for the PSLE as a batch by their own school (through the head teacher), who submits the list to NECTA.

• Private and English-medium candidates: pupils who did not complete Standard 7 through the regular government-school route, including those from English-medium primary schools, can be registered for the equivalent Certificate of Primary Examination route and pay the registration fee themselves rather than through a government school allocation.

Exam pattern

PSLE candidates sit written papers in six subjects, each examined through its own paper on the scheduled examination days:

For the 2026 sitting, the examination ran over two days in September, with just over 1.16 million candidates registered across more than 20,000 primary schools nationwide.

Marking and results

Each subject paper is marked and graded on a letter scale, with the current grading guide setting the bands as: A (81–100 marks, excellent), B (61–80, very good), C (41–60, good), D (21–40, satisfactory) and E (0–20, unsatisfactory). A pupil's result is reported as a grade in each of the six subjects rather than a single aggregate score. This differs from NECTA's Form Four (CSEE) and Form Six (ACSEE) examinations, where NECTA computes a formal Grade Point Average (GPA) across subjects; the PSLE result slip reports per-subject letter grades instead.

For the 2025 PSLE sitting, NECTA released results on 5 November 2025: of the 1,146,164 candidates who sat the examination, 937,581 (about 81.8%) passed.

Important dates

The PSLE is sat once a year, typically in September. For the 2026 sitting, the examination took place over two days, 9–10 September 2026, with results for the previous year's sitting (2025) having been released on 5 November 2025. Registration for a given year's sitting normally opens early in that year (around January–February) and closes well ahead of the September exam, with no late registration accepted; exact dates are set and announced by NECTA each year.

How to apply

Government and private primary school pupils are registered as a batch by their own school: the head teacher compiles the list of Standard 7 pupils and submits it to NECTA within the registration window NECTA announces for that year, and no individual fee applies to pupils registered this way. Pupils sitting through the private or English-medium Certificate of Primary Examination route register and pay the registration fee themselves, following the procedure and deadline NECTA publishes on its Registration Matters page.

After the exam

NECTA releases PSLE results nationwide, with each pupil's result showing a letter grade per subject. Pupils who pass are then placed into Form One through a separate selection exercise run by TAMISEMI in collaboration with NECTA: places are allocated to government secondary schools based on exam performance, available capacity at each school, and regional placement criteria. Selection lists are published region by region and district by district on the TAMISEMI and NECTA websites; pupils who are not placed in a mainstream secondary school through this process may instead be directed toward vocational or technical training options.

Preparation tips

• Practise past NECTA PSLE papers for all six subjects, including Social Studies and Vocational Skills and Civics and Moral Education — pupils often concentrate on Mathematics, Science and the two language papers and under-prepare for these.

• Treat Kiswahili and English Language as two separate papers with their own vocabulary and comprehension demands, rather than assuming strength in one covers the other.

• Confirm registration details (name, school, candidate details) with your head teacher well before the registration window closes, since PSLE registration does not allow late entries.

• After results are released, follow the Form One selection announcements for your own region and district on the TAMISEMI or NECTA website rather than relying on unofficial lists.

FAQs