Sunday News
by Sunday News Reporter
15 August 2010
The Government has sourced 13 million textbooks for primary and secondary school pupils countrywide as part of its continued effort to counter the shortage of resources in the education sector.
In an interview, Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) focal person, Mr Godfrey Mudzengerere, said the Ministry of Education had entered into partnerships with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and other donors under the Education Transition Fund (ETF) that made it possible to secure the text books.
“We are very happy that we have all the books that we need and the disbursement of the books begin sometime in September,†said Mr Mudzengerere.
He said there was high optimism in the ministry that the disbursement of the textbooks would be a success.
“Some of the books were printed locally while others were supplied by international printers,†he said.
He said the main objective was to reduce the textbook ratio for primary schools from one textbook to 15 pupils to one book per pupil.
“At the moment we are in the counting process to find out how many children need books per subject per class, grade and school.
“This process is aimed at making the disbursing of books easier and to avoid any omissions in the process,†said Mr Mudzengerere.
He said they would be providing textbooks on four core subjects such as Maths, Science, Ndebele and Shona, including minority languages such as Kalanga, Venda, Nambya and others.
He also said the disabled have special textbooks such as braille for the blind.
“We expect to start disbursing books for secondary schools next year. For now the focus is on primary schools, as soon as we are done we are going to the secondary schools,†said Mr Mudzengerere.
On the disbursement of stationery to schools, he said the exercise was nearing completion.
“We have distributed stationery to about 70 percent of the primary schools in the country and we are about to finish this exercise.
“We expect to be through before the start of September because we anticipate to be starting to disburse the books then,†said Mr Mudzengerere.
The stationery includes exercise books, pens, pencils and steel cabinets.
He said in Bulawayo they had covered most of the districts except schools in Khami District.
The move to provide schools with textbooks comes in line with ETF, which was launched by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture in January.
The Ministry of Education in conjunction with Unesco launched the fund in a bid to improve the pupil-textbook ratio and help restore basic education for all in Zimbabwe.
Education Minister David Coltart said the fund was aimed at reducing the pupil-textbook ratio to reasonable levels that made learning easier.