Zimbabwean
By Paul Ndlovu
11 July 2011
Education, Sports, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said his ministry had made strides towards reviving education standards and ethics among educators across the country.
“We want to restore total sanity and curb lawlessness that has been the order of the day in many schools,†he said.
“To that effect education inspectors have been immediately deployed following the commissioning of their (inspectors) vehicles capacitating them to do their duties.â€
Last week 59 Nissan hard bodies, valued at $1.3 million, were distributed to inspectors across the country.
Coltart said the vehicles would go along way in improving education standards because monitoring of schools had slowed with education officers unable to move around to schools.
“Education officers are just like police officers,†he said.
“They need to be on the ground all the time to monitor the conducts as well as problems affecting teachers and pupils. They also need to get first hand statistics on issues of attendance.â€
He emphasised that monitoring would defuse growing tension in some cases between parents and school authorities.
Coltart said his ministry was securing 8 million textbooks for secondary schools.
“The textbook programme for secondary schools with UNICEF is progressing well. We are aiming at producing textbooks for Mathematics, English, History, Science, Geography and indigenous languages,†he said.