Shot in the arm for Zim education

May 23, 2013

News Day

By News Day Reporter

23 May 2013

THE European Union (EU) has provided a $17 million grant for the second phase of the Education Transition Fund and an additional $640 000 from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department for the improvement of activities that improve nutrition in the country.

EU’s head of delegation to Zimbabwe Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia said in a statement yesterday that the contribution was an acknowledgement of the strong partnership that exists between Zimbabwe and development partners to improve the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans, especially children.

“This contribution reaffirms our support for the government’s priority to revitalise the education sector and ensure that every Zimbabwean child has access to quality education,” Dell’Ariccia said.

“It is also in line with Millennium Development Goal number two to ensure that, by 2015, all Zimbabwean boys and girls will be able to complete a full programme of primary education.”

Other development partners in the Education Transition Fund also pledged $123 million towards improvement of the education sector over the next four years.

EU said the fund would go towards improving sector planning, providing grants to financially constrained schools to meet their non-salary resource needs, strengthening school monitoring and supervision, improving the quality of teaching and learning and reviewing the curriculum.

Additional interventions will include providing teaching and learning materials, assessing student learning outcomes and providing second chance learning opportunities to out-of-school children.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture minister Senator David Coltart commended the EU for the contribution.

“Since the establishment of the ETF in 2009, the education sector has been stabilised and is now poised to start improving steadily. Without the generous assistance of the EU to the ETF since 2009 we would not have been able to achieve what we have done,” Coltart said.

“As I have said often before, the stabilisation of the education sector goes way beyond simply improving education; happy children in school lead to happy parents and guardians which in turn promotes peace throughout an entire nation.”