Zimonline
By Sebastian Nyamhangambiri
9 September 2010
HARARE – A donor-sponsored programme to provide books and stationery to Zimbabwe’s schools will see the number of children sharing a textbook dropping from 10 to one, officials said on Wednesday.
The programme that saw 13 million textbooks and other learning materials worth US$52 million bought for distribution to Zimbabwean schools is backed by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the European Commission and other international donors.
Speaking at a ceremony yesterday to handover 13 million books bought under the education support programme, UNICEF head in Zimbabwe Peter Salama said the country’s education sector  — once the envy of many in Africa – remained in dire straights and in need of further help.
Salama said:  “We will be able to exceed the original target of bringing the textbook to pupil ratio down from one-to-10 to 1-to-2. Within a few weeks, every child in primary school will have a set of core textbooks. This may make Zimbabwe one of the only countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a 1-to-1 ratio of textbook to pupil.
“There are of course still major outstanding issues for which solutions must be found including the motivation and conditions of teachers as well as the need for the physical rehabilitation of schools.â€
Speaking at the same occasion Education Minister David Coltart said Zimbabwe’s public school system continues to face problems including collapsed infrastructure, teacher shortages and children dropping out of school because of hunger and poverty.
Zimbabwe’s education sector that was once revered as one of the best in Africa is a shadow of its former self because of a severe economic crisis over the past decade that has seen government fail to pay market level salaries to teachers, maintain schools or provide learning materials such as chalks and books.
Teachers in Zimbabwe’s public schools earn an average US$236 monthly wage as the power-sharing government struggles to revive an economy battered by years of hyperinflation, lure back investors and pay its workers.
Many of Zimbabwe’s best trained teachers left the country a long time ago for foreign lands where salaries and living conditions are better.
The power-sharing government of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe has promised to restore basic services such as education and health.
But the administration is hamstrung by a shortage of funds because rich Western nations able to provide required grants and soft loans will not do so insisting Harare must first step up the pace of democratic reforms, do more to uphold human rights and the rule of law before they give support.