Zimbabwe needs $1bln to ‘stabilise’ education: minister

New Zimbabwe.Com
26th August 2009

ZIMBABWE needs US$1 billion to “stabilise” the education sector, according to Education Minister David Coltart.

“By stabilising, what I mean by that is just establishing a basic education for our children,” Coltart said in an interview.

The minister, who assumed his post in February, has been praised for his efforts to get schools open and get teachers back to work.

He says Zimbabwe’s education sector “suffered several body blows in the last ten to 15 years” and it might be at least three years before it is returned to the way it was in 1999.

Coltart said: “We haven’t invested sufficient money into education for at least a decade, arguably two decades, and until we start as a government deciding what our budgetary priorities are, it’s going to take a long time to restore education.

“I’m not exaggerating when I say that just to stabilise the education sector will take over a billion US dollars … we need 90 million US dollars alone just to get our textbook ratios back to reasonable levels.”
The infrastructure in most schools is in a “pitiful state” and “will consume hundreds of millions of dollars” to refurbish.

He added: “Of course until we get that money in, we can’t even talk of improving education.”
Coltart said it may take “a generation to get the type of education system that I dream of, the education system that I have a vision for.”

“With money, with adequate flows, we can get our education system back to where it was say in 1999 within three to four years, I think we can get it back to that. But I want to go a lot further than that, I’m not satisfied where our education system was in 1999 and I think that that’s going to be a longer process.”

The Khumalo Senator said there was also everything wrong with Zimbabwe’s curriculum which was oriented almost completely towards academic education.

“There’s been very little vocational training and one of my frustrations as a parent has been that my children haven’t come out with practical skills at the end of their education. Yes they can speak English well and count well, but for example, they can’t speak an indigenous language fluently and that is a practical skill,” Coltart told SW Radio Africa’s Hot Seat programme.

He added: “For many children in rural areas, they don’t have the practical skill of being able to grow crops as a result of their education.

“Another practical skill is that our children don’t have a deep rooted knowledge of the constitution, love and respect for human rights and democratic practices in our country and these are things that our education system needs to develop and that is going to take a long time even after we have stabilised the physical … what I term the physical infrastructure and environment of our education system.”

Coltart became minister after President Robert Mugabe and opposition rivals Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara agreed to share power in the hope of stemming a decade-long political and economic crisis.