Chronicle Editor
Michael Magoronga, Midlands Correspondent
A TOTAL of 1 182 learners who had dropped out of school for various reasons in Kwekwe District have been returned to class courtesy of the ‘Catch-Up Strategy’ spearheaded by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.
Of these, a majority of 633 are girls who had either fallen pregnant, married or failed to get tuition fees.
Speaking during a Family Aids Caring Trust (Fact) Zimbabwe stakeholders meeting held in the mining town recently, Kwekwe District Remedial Tutor in the ministry, Mr Addmore Shava, said the strategy had started yielding expected results.
“Government through our ministry introduced the catch-up strategy in a bid to ensure that no learner should be left behind in terms of education,” he said.
“This was after the impact of Covid-19 induced lockdowns where some learners could not afford to attend lessons whilst some did so online.
“The strategy also meant that we also make follow ups on those who would have dropped out of school for various reasons.”
Mr Shava said the district, with the assistance of other development partners, made follow ups and managed to return over a thousand students back into class.
According to Mr Shava, teen pregnancies, marriages and boys quitting school for mining activities, are the major drivers of dropouts in the district.
“Kwekwe is a mining town and most boys drop out of school to venture into mining activities so that they look for money.
“As for girls, most of them are lured into early sexual debuts by the gold miners and they end up falling pregnant and, in some instances, getting married,” said Mr Shava.
At the height of the effects of climate change where most of the country’s crop did not do well, girls are driven into marriages or sexual activities due to hunger.
Mr Shava also said drugs had become a menace amongst learners and some of the learners were also dropping out of school due to drug and substance abuse.
He said awareness campaigns coupled with serious counselling won the battle for the district.
“As a mining district, we had to up our game and we had to conduct a number of awareness campaigns especially in the hot spots like Zhombe and Silobela, the rural parts of the district,” said Mr Shava.
“In some instances, we had to embark on serious counselling so that they are able to go back to school.
Remember some of the girls will be playing mother’s roles and to be able to convince them back would be a huge task.
“Gone are the days when the ministry used to count the number of dropouts and do nothing about it.
We are grateful to the strategy by the Government as it has enabled many teenagers who might have lost hope to get back to school.
The doors are still open for more to come back to school.”
The development comes as a positive development given the fight against child marriages, teen pregnancies and drug abuse in the country.
The Government has since declared to take child marriages by the horns as the practice is threatening to wipe off the current generation.
Fact, one of the organisations playing a leading role in the fighting child marriages, is implementing a project, which seeks to empower adolescent girls so that they help to bring out solutions to the barriers they encounter in accessing care and treatment services.
The programme is being implemented in Kwekwe, Umguza, Umzingwane and Chimanimani.
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