adminHARARE’S Girls High School used to be known for maintaining top academic standards and excellence.
It has produced some of the country’s influential women, who are shining in various fields such as sport, education, medicine, arts, finance and science, among others.
These milestones were as a result of sound management, which used to prevail at the school.
However, standards seem to be rapidly heading south at the moment, and this can only be due to poor administration.
Yesterday we carried a story about the farce which unfolded from Sunday as the ‘back-to-school’ fever took grip.
Whatever the standards at one of the country’s former top schools, the “uniforms farce” was an all-time low for the school.
The school decided to contract one boutique to sew uniforms for students and forced parents to buy uniforms from the school.
But come Sunday, the school could not provide uniforms for some Form Ones despite forcing their parents to pay for them.
It was a circus seeing some Form Ones wearing their primary school uniforms and their own clothes to Girls High when schools opened on Monday simply because of incompetence on the part of the school.
The school and its partners had ample time to sew enough uniforms for Form Ones, as they know the numbers they enrol every year.
If the school authorities lack the vision to award such a big contract to an incompetent boutique, then the innocent girls are in trouble.
The provision of uniforms is probably a once-off occurrence a year, but teaching is throughout.
If the school stumbled due to a once-a-year event, how can it be trusted with providing sound education to the students.
Why did Girls High settle for an obscure incapacitated firm when there are reputable companies that have specialised in school uniforms for decades.
As a result of the school’s lack of vision, some innocent Form Ones were unnecessarily humiliated, and Girls High must provide answers to aggrieved students and parents.
Just resort to professional school uniforms suppliers to avoid such embarrassment.
Parents place a lot of trust and faith in schools they send their children to, and if a school displays such clumsiness on the first day of school, that quickly breaks the trust.
And once the parents’ trust is broken the administration will find it difficult to run the school.
It’s sad that the Girls High administration decided to give some Form One students a terrible experience on their first day at the school.
As a learning institution, Girls High knows perfectly well that first impressions matter, and unfortunately, the first impressions the school gave to some is that they probably made a mistake enrolling there.
A lot will need to be done to restore both the students and parents’ faith in the school.
The ball is now in the Girls High’s leadership to cleanse the image of their school.
Online Reporter