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Plumtree Correspondent
THE District of Bulilima has appealed for assistance in improving the state of its schools following reports that the education office was continuously losing teachers to other districts.
Bulilima District Education Officer Danisa Nkomo said 60 teachers had applied to be transferred from the district so far this year.
“We are receiving a number of transfer requests from teachers in the district every term. Since the beginning of the year we have received 60 transfer letters, 40 from teachers in our primary schools and the remainder from secondary schools,” said Nkomo.
“Out of these, 11 teachers were recommended in term one to transfer out of the district of which nine of them wanted to transfer to Bulawayo Metropolitan province.
“We cannot afford to be losing teachers as we have a crisis of qualified teachers already.”
Nkomo said teachers cited the poor state of schools as the reason for seeking transfer.
“The state of our schools is not impressive at all especially when it comes to water.
“A number of schools are operating without water and in some cases teachers have to walk a distance of five kilometres to fetch water.
“Some of our schools are also inaccessible because of the poor road network. Substandard houses especially at primary schools is also turning teachers away.
“We have many teachers that are leaving our schools. Only a few boarding schools are able to retain teachers,” he said.
He added: “The staffing of school heads is also critical as we only have 33 school heads out of 58 primary schools and nine out of 15 at secondary schools.
“The percentage of vacant posts in primary schools is 43 percent while that in secondary schools is 47 percent.
“The district also needs 21 deputy heads at primary level and six at secondary.
“We only have nine out 195 required teachers at ECD level.”
Speaking on the state of schools in the district at a workshop in Plumtree last week, Nkomo said this had a severe impact on the pass rate which slightly dropped last year.
“This situation has resulted in unimpressive results at Grade Seven level and at O-Level with some schools recording a zero percent pass rate.
“The pass rate for the previous year dropped slightly at all levels.
“The Grade Seven pass rate dropped from 32,59 percent in 2012 to 30,4 last year while the O-Level pass rate dropped from 43,56 percent to 38,86 and at Advanced Level it dropped from 87,19 to 82,79,” said Nkomo.
Online Reporter