adminFreedom Mutanda
Hunger stalks the land due to the El Nino phenomenon that attacks Southern Africa every 18 years. Unemployment has claimed the scalp of thousands of employees since July 2015 when the Supreme Court judgement opened a floodgate of dismissals without compensation. These thousands added on to the other huge number of unemployed people in the country.
As a result of the tough liquidity crunch, some companies and indeed state owned companies have failed to pay workers with some companies failing to pay employees for six months. Where would parents get the money to pay school fees?
Meanwhile, schools have to run and for them to do it efficiently, they need money.
A typical rural school has a herculean task to get school fees even though the fees are negligible as compared to urban or boarding schools. Infrastructure and textbooks ought to be bought. Now that the government is encouraging STEM education, it is imperative for schools to have Computer and Science laboratories.
That need money and it is important for fees to be paid.
In a normal world, education is a basic right for any child; parents-right thinking parents that is-would lose life and limb to ensure that their children access education. Alas, when everything else has failed, the parents have no option but to see their child dropping out of school as they struggle to get food which is a basic requirement for any human being.
Given a choice to send a child to school or to buy the staple diet, maize meal, a parent has to make a choice that would sustain the family. Can anyone crucify him/her for making that bold decision in the face of hunger?
There was a time in the not too distant past that earn and learn schools were popular in Manicaland in particular. Tanganda tea estates had schools that allowed children to pluck tea and get an education.
It is no longer the case. Human rights issues have taken centre stage while some deserving children will drop out of school and end up as street kids or they are engaged as child labour elsewhere.
Earn and learn was discontinued in 2012.
What is earn and learn?
A child goes to a school and works in the morning while in the afternoon, s/he learns.
‘’We woke up in the early hours at about 0500 hours and quickly wwent to the fields where we started plucking tea at exactly 0600 hours with the foreman and his fellow men barking orders to get cracking,’’ Michael Pindeni, who learned at Ratelshoek School in the early eighties, said.
‘’We worked until 12:00 pm and ran to the showers for a quick bath and after that we went to eat in the dining room before rushing to the classrooms for the lessons that began at two. We sweated as the teacher delivered his/her lesson and subsequently, some of us dozed off and listened in fits and starts,’’ he continued with a rueful sigh.
It is true that children must enjoy their childhood. It is the motto of the Non-Governmental-Organization, PLAN International: Let children be children. Therefore, when a child sponsors himself, it appears to be out of the ordinary and uncouth. Dozing while lessons go on seems to be an indicator of the brutality of the system.
In the USA there are summer jobs that attract hundreds if not thousands of students who throng there to have pocket money when they return to school. Certainly, these students are priming themselves for life outside the classroom when they become adults. Some of them are waiters or lifeguards and through these skills they learn to budget their money in later life.
Then, human rights took over and the- earn and learn system was seen as an archaic and stone age system which needed to be banished forever.
Basically, a student goes to work and some of his money is deducted for the purposes of tuition and boarding fees; s/he receives the balance as wages at the end of the month.
Violet Mashava {nee Sithole), now a qualified primary school teacher, is a product of the- earn-and learn system. She is grateful to the system although she vowed that her children would go to boarding school for them not ‘’to walk the path she walked.’’
‘’At the end of the month we received our wages and we sent some of the money to our needy parents. Again, we bought some foodstuffs for them. Clothes were a necessity those days and we bought various fashionable clothes,’’ said Violet Sithole.
She is not the only person who succeeded having started the programme when she was in Grade 6 at Jersey School up to form 4 at the secondary school on the same estate.
Colonel Karakadzai, the late NRZ General Manager, went to Jersey Secondary School before crossing to Mozambique to engage in the armed struggle. He went on to scale the corporate ladder after the war until his untimely death in an accident.
Cde Joseph Chinotimba went to work at Jersey Estate and learnt at the same place before crossing over to Mozambique to be part of the prosecuting team of the liberation war.
Without doubt, the-earn and learn system has been at the forefront of allowing the down-trodden to access education. One needed to be strong and intelligent to be part of the system.
One may argue that the banning of the- earnand learn system came against the backdrop of the human rights mantra that attacked Africa in the late 1990’s to the early 2000’s.
Yes, the 1989 Covention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) encapsulates the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it unequivocally states that the child must not be involved in child labour in any way. Because of that the-earn and learn system as we knew it ended with all Tanganda estates and the Eastern Highlands Estates bringing to an end a decades long way of acquiring an education.
A teacher at one of the secondary schools within the Tanganda Tea Company group who refused to be named for professional reasons lamented the end of the earn and learn system which she said brought respite to many OVC’s (Orphaned and Vulnerable Children) in as far as getting an education is concerned.
‘’Orphans were able to learn; child headed families were able to look after themselves owing to the presence of the system. Pupils could buy their own uniforms while the less privileged parents saw their children send themselves to school. Consequently, children from all over Zimbabwe came to these estate schools to get an education,’’ she said.
Teachers literally cried when some children could not afford the fees and had to return home but when policy has to be implemented, there is nothing anyone can do.
The question is whether it is possible to find an alternative funding model for those unable to go to school due to the prevailing harsh economic situation.
Way forward
Drop outs continue to be seen in the school system as the economic crunch continues; as drought looms in the horizon and famine hits the people, we are likely to see more drop outs.
When the estates reverted to being normal schools, the government had a safety net in the form of BEAM but now the government can no longer continue to fund the vulnerable children. What can be done to offset the seemingly insurmountable problem?Policy planners had done well to implement ideas that are in sync with global trends. They must be commented for that.However, an analyst may ask: Is it Ubuntu to take everything from the West hook, line and sinker without considering our own peculiar circumstances?
Poverty, in the African experience has never been a stumbling block to anyone succeeding in social issues. To illustrate, if one was poor and he wants to marry, he would do so but he had to stay at his in-law’s place for some time. While there, he would work hard and then he would smile after the final prize, a woman, is given to him.
Jacob loved Rachel very much but he was poor and that did not dampen his spirit as he worked for seven years for her, doing all sorts of household chores.
The above biblical analogy is important in so far as it buttresses the writer’s argument that poverty mustn’t make anyone fail to access education.
The estates only took children who could withstand the basket; if one was a feeble boy or girl, s/he would not be accepted at the school.
Most children who attended school at the estate school were older than the others attending conventional schools. The writer remembers that during his days at Emerald School, Zona and Jersey Schools dominated primary school sports by virtue of having older and more experienced players.
In that regard, if someone is old and strong enough to be a part of the-earn and learn system, allow them to learn there.
After all, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) a child is any person who is below the age of 18. Some of these children are above 18 and they need an education. Why not allow them to access it.
As I see it, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, has to draw up a framework where the disadvantaged people (No longer children now) have to get an education but at the same time they would be working.
No-one can accuse anyone of child abuse if the people concerned are above the age of 18.Enrolment has gone down in the schools that used to push the agenda of earn-and learn as most students returned to their homes. Research still has to be carried out to find out what happened to those people who found themselves in limbo following the banning of the -earn-and learn system. Perhaps, it was supposed to be phased out gradually and at the same time an alternative must have been in place before a total ban was enforced.A child in the African context is born for the whole village. As we see the children who face a bleak future, what does society intend to do to help the drop outs? Forewarned is forearmed.
Perhaps, there could be a win-win situation. We can’t continue to cry out for donors to chip in to help the forgotten generation.
A special purpose vehicle to cater for the truly less privileged can be established in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. Equally, companies must have a percentage of their profits to help deserving students within their area of operation.
Children are our future and they must be educated.
Online Reporter