31 March 2009
Sunday News
AFTER making sure that the schools stay open and last year’s public examinations results are released, the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture will turn to the restocking of schools with textbooks, the minister, Senator David Coltart, has said.
Speaking at a function to award prizes to pupils who had excelled in an international entrepreneurship programme at Eveline High School in Bulawayo last Friday, the minister said his ministry needed US$90 million to reach the one child to a textbook ratio.
He said that would only be possible with donors and the private sector partnering with government in reviving the education sector.
“There is a need for a partnership between the government and the private sector. The first concern is how we can get business to assist in the provision of necessities in the education sector,†he said.
Sen Coltart said this tied well with the objectives of the ministry.
“The first objective has been to keep schools open and the second objective to release results. I am now moving to the third goal, which is the provision of textbooks,†he said.
The minister said at some schools, textbook shortages had reached appalling levels with over 20 students sharing one textbook.
While in schools in high-density suburbs 20 students represent a third of the class, in low-density suburbs that could be the whole class.
Schools opened in February this year after closing in September last year with teachers boycotting classrooms due to poor remuneration.
A proposed boycott that threatened to derail the start of the second term did not take off as unions agreed to work with government in trying to find a solution to the challenges facing the sector.
“We will rely on the donor community. In my discussion with donors, I emphasised that once we secure that money, I want to make sure that the last cent is spent within Zimbabwe. There is a temptation to take camera ready copies of books for printing elsewhere outside the country,†he said.
He said his ministry also advised schoolchildren and parents to buy their school requirements in the country.
“What I want to achieve is to develop a partnership between locals companies, the donor community and the ministry of higher education,†he said.
He said the second aspect of his third objective was the restoration of some of education’s magnificent facilities.
“One of the tragedies though is that as I travelled around the country I found out that there are few government schools that are well maintained,†he said.
The senator said a strategy was needed to rebuild the educational structures.
“With the decline in education in a few years there is a danger that we will lose an entire generation,†he said.
Sen Coltart said Zimbabwe had a generation of young people who were talented academically, in sports, in arts and in other areas and those talents could not be let to go to waste.
“We should start off by looking at say 20 schools and through a partnership between government and the private sector rehabilitate them. About 40 percent of places in these schools will be reserved for the underprivileged from rural areas and high-density suburbs with companies providing them with scholarships. These centres of excellence will be for children talented academically, in sports and in arts,†he said.
Sen Coltart said the aim of these centres of excellence would not be to create elitist institutions, but institutions that will afford the underprivileged good education.
He said Zimbabwe should take a leaf from India that in the 1950s created centres of excellence that achieved a lot.
“Elsewhere in the world there has been productive collaboration between government and the private sector. We have to start somewhere, let’s all start dreaming and planning,†he said.