Insiderzim.com
28 May 2009
Education Minister David Coltart has called on the private sector to partner
the government in rebuilding confidence in the country’s education system.
Zimbabwe had one of the best education systems on the continent but
standards have plummeted following the exodus of teachers and lecturers for
greener pastures.
Coltart said 20 000 teachers had left the country during the past two years.
Students who wrote national examinations last year are still waiting for the
results. The first batch, A-Level results, was released on Friday.
Coltart was speaking at a function in Bulawayo to launch the Lobels Bread:
“Buy, collect and win” scholastic competition.
The competition, which has R3 million worth of prizes offers fees to
children and cash to schools to enable them to complete infrastructural
projects.
It began on May 1 and ends on July 31 but is now going to be an annual
event.
One of the company’s director Herbert Nkala said apart from the competition
Lobels Bread was sponsoring a girls soccer team, children and old people’s
homes in Bulawayo as well as Khami Prison where it was sending 50 dozen
loaves of bread for the prisoners.
Coltart said he felt like “stealing” the company’s theme for the
competition: “Rebuilding Confidence in our education” because that was his
aim as the minister.
He said the government was doing everything to revive the education system
because education was a necessary precondition for the development of the
nation. But the government could not do this alone.
The minister appealed to the private sector to form partnerships with the
government and encouraged those interested to liaise with Deputy Prime
Minister Arthur Mutambara who was spearheading the public-private
partnership programme.
Mutambara was in Bulawayo for two days last week touring industry and
meeting business leaders.
Apart from trying to get back teachers who had left the country, Coltart
said he was also trying to make sure children had textbooks because the
textbook-to-pupil ratio was appalling. In some schools, only the teacher had
the textbooks while the national average was one book to 15 children.
He said his ministry was working on a five-year strategic plan which would
also see the improvement of sports and sports facilities in the country.