Epworth parents condemn cut in schools grant

The Rhodesia Herald,
23 April 1970
THE Government’s proposed five percent reduction in its annual grant to African primary schools for salaries has been condemned by African parents at Epworth Mission near Salisbury.

About 500 heads of families at the mission, representing a population of about 3 000, met at three different meetings in the past fortnight to discuss the future of their children’s education which they said was being endangered by the Government’s proposal to reduce by five percent the grant for primary school teachers’ salaries.
The mission has two schools with a total of about 800 pupils.

At the last meeting held last Sunday, parents came to a decision when they rejected the five percent cut for primary school teachers next year and called upon the Government to reconsider its position.

On Tuesday evening, representatives from a number of committees and from the parents’ meeting, informed the school’s manager, the Reverend W. R. Peaden of their decision.

“Epworth parents unreservedly reject the five percent reduction in primary school teachers’ grant.
“We equally reject the idea of closing the schools in our mission and we therefore request the Government to reconsider its position,” they told him.

The parents said they could not raise the five percent reduction in the teachers’ grant because they had no means of getting money locally.

“We had been hit hard by bad seasons for the past two years and already we are heavily burdened,” they said.
The Methodist Church in Rhodesia (UK), which runs Epworth Mission, has already given notice to its 1 443 African primary school teachers throughout the country.

LESSONS FOR TODAY
Teachers’ salaries are supposed to be catered for by the Government, and not to be a burden for parents.
Mission schools were complementing Government by building schools, of which Government was supposed to reciprocate by fully funding the teachers’ salaries.
Today has seen parents indirectly paying teachers through a number of ways introduced by the School Development Authorities.

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