Online Reporter
ALL Zimbabwean children have had the right for a full primary education plus a minimum of four years of secondary education since shortly after independence, when the new policy and rights were promulgated.
This put all Zimbabweans into the same position that only settler children had enjoyed in colonial times, with the vast majority at independence still denied secondary education despite the outstanding work done by missions and others to get round the colonial policy that only a quarter of black children would progress beyond Grade 7.
A lot of highly innovative programmes were put in place to ensure that the expansion was real, not just political rhetoric, and tens of thousands of new teachers were training and others upgraded. Fairly basic new schools were built across the country and we looked fairly solid in fulfilling the minimum standards.
Unfortunately, we seem to have then relaxed a bit after this magnificent effort. The land reform programme created new demands as population densities changed and many of those 1980s emergency new schools and the bulk of the older schools needed upgrading. We did not stop building, but the pressure decreased.
Upgrades and expansion were also needed to make new syllabuses possible and to allow the teaching of a wide range of practical subjects, that the more far-sighted educationalists saw as desirable and inevitable. At the same time it became obvious that to attract and retain better teachers, especially in rural areas, far more decent staff housing was needed at many rural schools.
So when the Second Republic came into office determined to clean up past omissions and push Zimbabwe as fast as possible to the status of an upper middle income economy and society, a lot of reform and upgrading was needed in the education sector, both in the social physical infrastructure as well as how we approached education.
While population growth rates had fallen since independence, partly driven by ensuring that all girls went to school preferably for at least 11 years, a United Nations finding, the population was still growing and there were more children. Continuing urbanisation and the land reform meant that gaps were appearing in some areas, forcing children to walk long distances to the nearest school.
Building of new schools was moved to the front burner, often and very wisely through devolution, which saw a lot of Government capital spending moved to local authorities who presumably would know where the most important gaps were, and where additional support could be found.
This tended to ensure that the new schools and classroom blocks were built where they were wanted with local communities and parents having a serious say. It is all very well for an administrator to talk about a 5km walk to school, the maximum in global standards, but a parent sees the footsore child every day.
That is why parents and communities have become involved in the upgrades and new schools, providing the local materials and quite a bit of labour so that the devolution funds stretch further.
Most district rural councils have been backing their most enthusiastic communities quite logically and when there is a list of schools that need to be built in a district, this is not a bad way of working out which ones get built first. At the same time there were some obvious gaps in secondary education. While boarding schools were considered by some as the unnecessary centre of English snobbier education imported into the old society, there were practical considerations why a lot more boarding facilities were needed as secondary schools were upgraded to offer a full option of modern education.
Some rural areas had population densities that simply made it impossible for a fully-fledged secondary school with all facilities to be within 5km of every pupil. We had families working around the problem by lodging children during the week with family and friends nearer the school, but this was not always possible and often resulted in second best.
The correct policy was to keep the nearby children as day-scholars, but provide boarding hostels for those living further away, and for those children where it was fairly obvious that a boarding place was a necessary option. This has already seen several schools having hostels added with a lot more on the list.
There has been some innovation at the bottom end of the primary schools, with the introduction of two years of early curriculum development before Grade 1. This means ever young children are going to school and in some areas parents have found that having several ECD and infant units feeding one primary school is a solution. We hope this will be followed up.
While a maximum walk of 5km is now set as the globally accepted standard, we must also recognise that this takes a fit teenager around an hour to walk, and longer for a small child. The school-building programme needs to continue so that this maximum distance can be reduced where possible.
At the same time, the Government has made revolutionary changes in how education is perceived. It is no longer a perfectly pure academic test, with a minority passing into ever higher academic education and the rest left with little or nothing.
Practical skills are being taught and Education 5.0 does demand that education is accompanied by applications to ordinary practical life.
This is a good start and must be pressed forward, along with the vocational training system and well as the higher education systems so that every child enters the adult world able to earn a living in a upper middle income society. We have been doing it right under the Second Republic and now need to press forward and build up the pace.
