Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
GRADUATING teachers should look to exploit Government’s policy to fund start-ups by innovative educationists who wish to establish their own schools, as the Second Republic ramps up efforts to industrialise the education sector and create employers instead of more employees, a Cabinet Minister has said.
Speaking during a graduation ceremony at the United College of Education (UCE) where 707 graduands received diplomas, Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira said with the country short of between 3 000 and 4 000 schools, it did not make sense that there were some unemployed teachers in the country.
“Zimbabwe is short of between 3 000 and 4 000 schools. Let’s say each school has 100 teachers, it means we are short of 400 000 places for teachers, which means we have less than we need. We have 15 000 teachers, by now they might be 10 000, who are not in the primary and secondary educations system. The President asked, ‘does this make sense?’ Because every January and December parents are stuck, looking for places for their children. They’re almost humiliated by the schools that are there. They sleep in queues looking for places for school. So, does it make sense that there are no jobs? We were stuck somewhere and the purpose of the Second Republic is to remove that obstacle,” he said.
Prof Murwira said while there were private schools sprouting around the country, few had been started by qualified educationists.
“What we lacked was the framework under which our graduates can start schools and be facilitated to do so. It’s normally a matter of policy direction and resources being poured towards that policy direction. That’s where the discussion is, not whether we have enough jobs or not. We don’t have enough schools; we don’t have enough teachers and we don’t have enough people with the expertise that you have.
“I told you about the deficit of schools? So why are we stuck? Why are we not building schools? Who said we cannot build schools? Who said we should work for the Public Service Commission? Section 75, Sub-section 2 of the constitution says you can be the founder of your own schools. Anybody can start their own school but when you look at most of the private schools, except for the Mother Touch group of schools which was started by a student from Seke Teachers’ College, they belong to people that are not even trained in teaching,”he said.
Prof Murwira said in addition to the change of laws, the Government would also start funding teachers who expressed a desire to start their own schools.
“We have to start forming groups of our students to start their own schools and we fund them so they start those institutions. Why was it not possible? It was not possible because we did not have Education 5.0. Now we have changed the law so that it is now possible to do so. We changed the National Planning and Development Act so that it can fund school start-ups. We are starting to operationalise that we have said to every college that at the end, they must spend some time with a graduating class forming these consortiums so we can have for example, the UCE group of schools or whatever other name you might want to call them. Let’s start with one or two examples next year,” he said.
Prof Murwira encouraged the graduands to look at the education sector as one lengthy value chain that was filled with opportunities for those that were not content with merely being employees.
“We are ready to support you on this journey of industrialising the education sector. Education is a whole factory that goes from teaching to the making of the things that are used in class. As the Second Republic, we have decided to provide the capital funding for start-ups. We were making the laws for the past four years and the law that enables you to formulate your own start-ups was signed into law on 21 May last year. It is now legal and no longer just speculation,” he said.
Of the 707 students that graduated at UCE, 618 were female while 89 were male.
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