Speech: Launch of Education Transition Fund
By Senator David Coltart
Harare: 14 September 2009
The Hon Minister of Labour and Social Welfare Paurina Gwanyanya, Your Excellencies, Dr Peter Salama, Permanent Secretary Dr Mahere, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls;
It is my honour to formally launch the Education Transition Fund. The Fund is an initiative of the Education Coordination Group which is chaired by me and which comprises donors and the senior leadership in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture. The education coordination group was established by me after I felt the need to formalise the ministry’s relationship with donors.
I am grateful for the support that donors and in particular and UNICEF and UNESCO have given the ministry since I took office in February 2009. We have established a very cordial working relationship during this period. In particular I would also like to pay tribute to Dr Peter Salama, the country representative of UNICEF, and to his predecessor Mr Roeland Monasch, who have given me and the ministry every possible support.
When I took office in February 2009 I found the education sector in a calamitous state. That has been well documented and is known to you all. Given that there is a dearth of resources I have set myself three broad policy objectives in the short term, namely:
1. to restore a basic level of education urgently for as many Zimbabweans schoolchildren as possible;
2. to devise and implement a scheme to ensure that disadvantaged talented children are identified and nurtured so that their accounts and the loss to the nation during this transitional period as we rehabilitate the education sector;
3. to allow non-government schools, as defined by the education act, to operate without any hindrances subject of course to them complying with the laws of Zimbabwe and the minimum standards set by the Ministry.
The education transition fund is primarily focused on assisting the ministry to achieve the first broad policy objective, namely that of restoring a basic level of education. In general it will provide resources to buy teaching materials which will be channelled into the most needy schools. A portion of the funds raised will be used to provide technical assistance to enhance the managerial and professional capacity of the ministry.
I need to stress in this regard that my most important task in restoring a basic education is to ensure that the ministry has a body of motivated, committed and professional teachers to teach our children. Without such a body of teachers it does not matter how many educational materials we purchase because children will continue to stagnate. During the last seven months I have done all in my power to seek funding to assist teachers who remain inadequately paid. Regrettably due to factors beyond my control I have been unable to secure such assistance. Government for its part, especially through the good offices of the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti, has done all it can to address the legitimate concerns of teachers. I deeply regret the ongoing teachers strike and hope that an acceptable arrangement can be arrived at shortly to ensure that we get teachers back into classrooms countrywide.
Having said that my second priority was to address the shockingly poor ratios of textbooks to pupils. In many schools the only textbook is the one held by the teacher. In most government schools the ratio is no better than 1 to 15. Accordingly the first task of the education transition fund will be to arrange for the printing of literally millions of textbooks with the objective of delivering the same to our poorest and most needy schools during the first term of 2010. Notwithstanding the generous donations announced today whilst this exercise will go a long way to restoring acceptable ratios are a lot more will need to be done before we get to our objective of establishing a one-to-one ratio.
During the last few months we have been working closely with publishing houses and printing houses to reach an understanding of how this project will be implemented. At the same time senior Ministry officials and my advisors on the national education advisory board have been working on a list of core textbooks which will be produced in the coming months.
We have made it clear that this is a short-term policy objective to restore better ratios. In this regard I have urged publishers and printers and all concerned to view this as a national emergency effort. In this regard I have asked in particular for publishers and printers to play their role in ensuring that they cut their profits to a bare minimum. This project should not be seen as an opportunity for companies to make windfall profits. Government for its part has already agreed that all materials to be used in this project will be duty-free and we are also examining the question of excluding the entire exercise from VAT.
It is my hope that this program will have the double benefit of placing millions of textbooks into the hands of schoolchildren and also of assisting our publishing and printing houses which have been through such a lean times in the last decade. I am pleased that nearly all the donor countries, UNICEF and UNESCO have supported me in my goal of trying to ensure that as many of the textbooks are printed with in Zimbabwe. However I need to stress that this goal can only be realised if all the Zimbabwean companies and organisations involved in the project do everything to ensure that we can produce textbooks locally at internationally competitive prices. In this regard we have to balance the need on the one hand to support local industry against the need to spend the money so generously donated as efficiently as possible so as to print the maximum number of textbooks possible.
Another key element of this exercise will be the need to ensure that the process of selecting textbooks and contracting publishing and printing houses to do the same is done in a transparent and equitable manner. UNICEF has kindly agreed to manage the education transition fund and in the coming weeks we will be devising mechanisms to ensure that this particular policy goal is achieved.
As I stated earlier our objective is to produce several million textbooks which will be delivered to schools throughout Zimbabwe during the first term of 2010. All the textbooks produced during this exercise will be marked “not for resale” and will acknowledge the donors who have contributed to this exercise and UNICEF’s involvement. To deter people from trying to profit from the exercise I will consider legislation to make it a criminal offence to sell any of the textbooks produced during this program.
I need to stress that this is a short-term programme and that as soon as possible we will revert to the existing policy of allowing school heads to select their own textbooks and generally to allow free market principles to prevail. I am deeply cognisant of the fact that booksellers are not going to participate in this program and that they will be adversely affected in the short term. I am also aware that publishing houses need a consistent flow of medium to long-term orders for them to remain viable. It is also important that we do not flood our schools with existing textbooks whilst we are in the process of a review of our entire curriculum. Our curriculum has not been reviewed for some two decades and that needs to take place as a matter of urgency; it is inevitable that a reviewed curriculum will require new and different textbooks.
Although the education transition fund will not directly alleviate the plight of teachers I hope that indirectly it may achieve that object. As you are aware a sizeable proportion of levies paid by parents at present is spent on securing education and learning materials. On top of this appearance in the last few years have had the additional burden of paying incentives to teachers to enable them to survive and remain in the classroom. The payment of these incentives by parents is causing tremendous hardship to parents and in addition has created tension between parents and teachers. My hope is that if parents are relieved of the obligation to pay for textbooks that in turn may allow for a reduction in levies and the lesser burden placed on parents as they seek to assist teachers during these hard times. I should stress however that my intention is to end the payment of incentives by parents to teachers as soon as possible. It is critically important that the government is soon as possible assumes full responsibility for payment of teachers’ salaries. As soon as government is able to pay teachers a viable salary it will be my intention to outlaw the payment of incentives by parents to teachers in government schools. However as things stand it is difficult for me to implement a policy now as it will only further aggravate the plight of teachers in the short term.
We have all much work to do. Our once superb education system is in tatters. The launch of the education transition fund marks a positive first step towards restoring our once fine education system. I look forward to working closely with our donor partners, UNICEF and UNESCO in this regard. However in closing let me highlight the point that unless the government of Zimbabwe makes education an absolute priority it will be difficult to restore our education system to its glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hard decisions are going to have to be taken by government in this regard. The national financial cake has shrunk in the last decade which makes it all the more difficult to allocate sufficient resources to education. However if we do not allocate meaningful resources in real terms to the education sector it will remain in a calamitous state. Most of our school buildings are seriously dilapidated and they alone will require hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate. The only way that we can do this is if we demonstrate strong political will to cut back on the overall size of government, to cut back on the luxuries that leaders in government have enjoyed during the last three decades, and to transfer resources away from certain sectors to education. In short we will have to end paying mere lip service to the goal of reintroducing a quality education system.
There is no doubt in my mind that the number one priority of an overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans is the quality education of their children. And so it should be. For if we do not restore our education sector we cannot ever hope that Zimbabwe will develop a strong and growing economy. It is time the government reflects this priority in its own budget. Whilst we are very grateful for the exceptional generosity demonstrated here today by our friends in the international community it is now up to us as Zimbabweans to prove that we are genuinely committed to the restoration of our education system.
It is now my honour to officially launch the Education Transition Fund.