AFP
21 May 2009
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AFP) — Zimbabwe’s mid-year schools examination had been postponed for a month due to lack of funding by international donors, the education ministry announced Wednesday.
And the results from last year’s exams, which should have been issued in February, would finally be released this Friday, Education Minister David Coltart told reporters.
The exams provide the crucial qualifications for students who want to continue their education at university level.
But Coltart said the government was struggling to raise the 350,000 US dollars needed to finance the administration of the exams.
“I have put a variety of funding applications to donors, but we are still yet to get responses,” he said.
The government was so short of money it had yet to pay markers who handled the 2008 exams. The results from those exams, which should have been released in February, were now due out on Friday, he added.
“I am very sympathetic to the plight of teachers. It’s difficult to come to work on a 100 US dollar salary. We are trying to address that,” Coltart said.
School teachers themselves are paid a flat salary of 100 US dollars, just like any other civil servant.
“We are trying to stabilise the entire education system, we regret that students have been prejudiced by the various problems we are facing,” he said.
The new government formed in February and led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has struggled to find funding.
Major donors have been reluctant to give new aid until the government makes more tangible reforms to break from President Robert Mugabe’s past policies, which are blamed for wrecking the economy and trampling on human rights.
A statement issued by the United Nations Children’s Fund in February urged the new government to drag the education system out of crisis, noting that attendance had plummeted from 80 to 20 percent.
Teachers in urban schools only turned up for classes this year if parents could afford to subsidise their salaries in US dollars, it said.