Zim faces a million school dropouts

Factmore Dzobo
SINCE Independence, Zimbabwe has achieved considerable success in education, resulting in the country attaining Africa’s highest literacy rate. The literacy rate currently stands at 90,7 percent, though down from 91,2 percent, and is the only country on the continent with a literacy rate of over 90 percent.

In light of this endeavour, the government has recognised the critical importance of education in improving people’s livelihoods, hence complemented the achievements by introducing a unique safety net, the Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) in 2001, with the assistance of donors targeting vulnerable children of school-going age to access education. At its peak in 2006, the programme helped send more than 900,000 children to school.

In response to the rising challenges associated with the economic meltdown which undermined social services provision for more than a decade, most parents and guardians have lauded the government for alleviating their burden of raising school fees through the introduction of the programme.

However, despite all these achievements, recent reports that  donors have cut the funding of Beam from $73 million to $15 million, have been described by different stakeholders as retrogressive and a reversal of the country’s educational achievements.

Nearly a million pupils risk dropping out of school this year after the government’s funding agreements with Unicef and Department for International Development (DfID) for the benevolent programme expired in 2012 and last year respectively.

Chronicle interviewed a number of stakeholders among them parents and guardians to find out how the reduction of the Beam funding facility would impact on them. Most of them expressed disgruntlement over the development and they urged the government to find alternative ways of assisting children who cannot raise fees.

Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Information Science at the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) Dr Lawton Hikwa acknowledged that the country is reeling under budgetary constraints but  said the government should find an alternative funding mechanism to assist under-privileged children to access education  as a basic human right. “I believe the government is operating under a serious budget constraint, which might force them to look for alternative sources of funds for the programme.

The government should come up with another funding mechanism to help the vulnerable and orphans to access basic education. The less privileged should not be excluded from realising their dreams, government should take this as one of its top priority areas,” said Dr Hikwa.
The withdrawal of donors for Beam is expected to increase the number of school dropouts from many households that were already struggling to make ends meet, due to recurrence of drought and economic challenges.

“Government should find alternative ways of funding Beam, as this will bring us back to poverty, we don’t have any other means to raise fees for our children, the programme had been bringing a lot of relief to many overburdened parents,” said Agnes Dlamini, a parent in New Lobengula with one of her child under the Beam programme.

Many stakeholders called for the government to come up with an alternative funding mechanism to consolidate such successes and ensure that the country continues to maintain its literacy rate.

Chief Shana of Hwange in Matabeleland North province bemoaned the reduction of the Beam allocation saying it was likely to worsen the plight of the already overburdened communities and increase the number of school dropouts in the drought prone rural areas.

“This is going to worsen the plight of the already overburdened communities. A lot of elderly people were left in the custody of orphans with no other source of income to raise school fees.

“The government should quickly find some alternative assistance for these vulnerable communities,” said Chief Shana.
A member of the Beam committee in Lobengula ward 14, Edward Gwazaza, deplored the withdrawal of donors from the Beam programme. He said this would increase the number of school drop outs who will be forced to engage in anti-social activities especially in urban areas.

“If a number of children drop out of school, most of them are likely to engage in prostitution, thieving and some become notorious street gangsters thereby increasing the high level of criminal activities and social misfits. Government should take this issue seriously for it will have some long term disastrous repercussions in the society,” said Gwazaza.

Beam programme helped the nation to reduce the number of children dropping out of school and reach out to those who have never been enrolled due to economic challenges by providing financial grants directly to community schools to cover levies and examination fees.

Lack of funding for Beam would mean government’s vision and commitment to protect the rights of children to education and efforts to attain Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) goal number two, which seeks for unimpeded universal primary education by 2015, might become impossible to attain, if the government fails to source some other funds for the programme.

According to the 2012 Unicef’s Beam Evaluation and Assessment Report,  Zimbabwe has more than 1,3 million  orphans and about 10,000 of these are from child headed families. These are some of the poorest and most vulnerable children who need support under schemes such as Beam.

The Education Act, as amended, and the UN Convention on Children’s Rights classify education as a human right.
It is in that spirit that access to education by all becomes a critical national concern, hence the importance of Beam.

The funding of Beam has until now been inadequate and resources to the education sector are severely limited.  Last year, the programme was funded to the tune of $73 million through government, Unicef and DfID.

Sydney Mhishi, the Director of Social Services in the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Services, said the government up to last year tried to make arrangements to engage other funders for Beam to no avail.

The government intended to fund 750,000 primary and 250,000 secondary school pupils this year. But with just $15 million allocated to Beam, it can only support the education of 83,000 secondary school pupils at a cost of $180 per child ($60 per term at government institutions). This means 167,000 targeted secondary school pupils and all 750,000 targeted primary school pupils will miss out unless funding is secured.

The current situation is that there will be no free primary education.  Beam has also been identified as one of the four major priorities of the government’s agenda of accelerating its commitment to meet MDG number two.

The country is in a very serious situation in which the only way it can be adequately addressed is if massive additional funding can be obtained both from government and the international community.

Although the Education Act stipulates that no child shall be sent home over non-payment of levies and tuition fees, school authorities still disregard the law by sending their children home for the same reason.