adminRichard Muponde Sunday News Correspondent —
BULAWAYO has failed to translate its numerical advantage of being one of the provinces with the highest number of trained high school teachers into results and is instead, the worst performing province in Ordinary Level with only one school in the top 100 nationally. This is against a background that provinces like Mashonaland Central which have the least number of trained teachers with 10 schools on the list. According to statistics provided by Zimstat in the agency’s education report for 2014, Bulawayo is pitched at number two in the list of schools with the highest teacher to student ratio.
Bulawayo has 1 882 trained teachers for only 50 secondary schools and an enrolment of 51 467 pupils, trailing only Harare which has 3 690 teachers for 89 secondary schools and 90 626 pupils.
However, even with a high number of trained teachers, most schools in the province performed dismally, with only two schools having managed to make it into the top 100 in O and A-level, St Columbus and Mpopoma high schools respectively.
As examinations draw close, fears are that the province will again record poor results. Mpopoma High School had 130 A-level candidates who scored a 96,15 percent pass rate, settling for 63rd nationally, while St Columbus was 27th in the O-level top 100.
According to the Zimstat Education Report, Mashonaland Central has 1 774 trained teachers for 71 967 pupils in 202 schools, while Matabeleland North has the least number of trained teachers at 1 267 for 47 940 pupils in 152 schools. Matabeleland North had two schools in the top 100 at O-level — neighbours David Livingstone and John Tallach from Umguza District.
Bulawayo with its high number of trained teachers has seen some of them being transferred to rural areas because they were lying idle with little work to do.
The Civil Service Commission has reportedly transferred dozens of teachers from Bulawayo to rural areas after an audit revealed that most schools in the city were overstaffed as a number of teachers had few teaching periods.
The development has sent jitters among educators, among them heads and their deputies who had allocated themselves fewer periods and in some cases were not teaching at all.
Bulawayo and Harare also have teachers who were teaching classes of few pupils compared to other provinces as their teacher to pupil ratio is pegged at 1:21 while some provinces have an average of 1:25.
According to the Government’s Authorised Teacher Establishment, teacher to pupils’ ratio is supposed to be 1:33 for Forms One and Two, 1: 30 for Forms Three and Four and 1:20 for Lower and Upper Sixth forms.
Teachers are supposed to have 32 periods per week, senior teachers 24 and heads of departments 28. Headmasters are also expected to teach five periods per week while their deputies teach 12 periods.
During the audit carried out in August by Civil Service Commission which was seeking to unearth ghost workers in the public service, it was discovered that a number of schools in urban centres were “overstaffed” with a majority of teachers, especially seniors, not conducting the required minimum lessons. While some seniors had given themselves fewer periods, it has since come to the attention of authorities that there are teachers who are “overloaded” with some having as many as 36 periods per week.
According to Zimstat, the teacher distribution is as follows:
Province Teachers Sec Schools Pupils Enrolment
Manicaland 5 582 380 148 436
Mashonaland Central 1 774 202 71 967
Mashonaland East 3 211 312 115 562
Mashonaland West 2 799 330 108 416
Matabeland North 1 267 152 47 940
Matabeleland South 1 433 149 51 571
Masvingo 4 273 330 128 067
Midlands 3 776 318 122 682
Harare 3 690 89 90 626
Bulawayo 1 882 50 51 467
derick.khumalo
Online Reporter