SW RadioAfrica
By Alex Bell
18 September 2009
Education Minister and MDC Senator David Coltart has said that the current ‘catastrophic’ teachers’ strike will mar education recovery efforts, following a multimillion-dollar investment in the country’s education sector.
The US$70 million cash injection announced by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) earlier this week is an attempt to reverse the rapid decline of Zimbabwe’s education sector, which once used to be the most revered in Africa. Years of mismanagement by the ZANU PF government, which has led to economic meltdown and a desperate humanitarian crisis in the country, has seen the education sector totally collapse. Grade seven pass rates have dropped to an estimated 30% in 2007, while more than half of primary schools pupils are not going to secondary schools.
This is according to UNICEF representatives in the country, who say one of the primary objectives is to start distributing textbooks to schools. UNICEF estimates that the ratio of textbooks to pupils is on average about one book to every ten children, while some teachers in Harare have said the ratio is much higher.
“The objective is to reach every child in Zimbabwe with a text book within 12 months. An assessment by the education advisory board has revealed that in about 20 percent of all primary schools there is not single text book for English, Mathematics or an African Language,†Peter Salama, the UNICEF representative in Zimbabwe said in a recent interview.
UNICEF, in partnership with the unity government, will be distributing funds from donor countries that include Australia, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the European Commission on behalf of the European Union. The attempt to resuscitate the education system will take a two-pronged approach: the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM), and the Educational Transition Fund (ETF), which will provide technical capacity to the ministry of education to distribute textbooks.
But while the cash boost has been widely welcomed, it comes in the midst of a widespread teachers’ strike over low wages, which Senator Coltart said is having a ‘catastrophic’ affect on education. The strike was launched earlier this month by the largest of the country’s teachers’ unions, the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA), and threatens the final term of the first school year under the unity government. Coltart has previously lashed out at the striking teachers for jeopardising the future of the country’s school pupils, accusing the union of deliberately disrupting a very important school term.
“It doesn’t matter how many textbooks we have in our classrooms, because without teachers we cannot move education forward,†Coltart said, explaining that addressing the teachers’ grievances is his ‘number one priority’. He added that while the US$70 million is welcome as the largest cash boost in the sector for at least a decade, it is a ‘drop in the ocean’ of what the education sector really needs to fully recover.