Chronicle
14 December 2010
By Sukulwenkosi Dube
EVERY day thousands of children leave their homes for school to acquire education. Parents hope that their children are getting high quality education like they did during their time, or even higher. However, if one walks into any public school today he or she will realise that this in not happening in most schools.
Teachers are half-heartedly or completely unwilling to respond to their call of duty, which is to empower children through education. It has become common to see pupils loitering around schools during lesson hours. One pauses to wonder where their school guardians, who are teachers, would have gone.
Sibongumusa Moyo, who is going for her Upper Sixth studies next year, said teachers generally are no longer as vibrant and hard working as they used to be. “Our teachers are no longer vibrant. It seems like they do not have the spirit of delivering to students, which they once had. We have learnt to become independent because at times teachers do not attend lessons, they would be just sitting in the staff room, chatting.
“We can manage to read on our own but what about our younger sisters and brothers at primary school level,” said Sibongumusa. She said most teachers seemed to be more concerned about their personal problems than the desire to teach. “It seems personal problems cloud the minds of our teachers. As students we are caught in between and we have to suffer for the dissatisfaction of our teachers. The way some teachers talk and discipline us pupils has changed.
“One of my (former) teachers disciplined us with bitterness. She is always telling us that we do not show appreciation towards the effort she puts in teaching us. She says she has to fork out her money to commute from her house everyday to teach us and at the end of the month she receives a poor salary.
“We are tired of hearing about teachers’ salaries everyday. We want to learn not be held accountable for what we cannot control,” she said.
Education is important in the lives of children. Teachers are there to provide children with that education. Gone are the days when people could rule out the necessity of education and opt to use their entrepreneurial skills. Even these skills also require one to be educated.
The Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture, David Coltart recently decried the prevalence of indiscipline among teachers. He said starting next year the Government would supervise teachers more closely in a bid to restore discipline and high standards in schools. He said laxity and lawlessness had crept into schools compromising the standard in the education sector. “There is a crisis of governance in our schools and a lot of lawlessness has crept in,” he said.
“Many teachers are not doing their work as expected, school development committees no longer comply with the law and incentives are being abused while pupils are sent away from schools in bold defiance of the law. All this is happening because of lack of monitoring and policing of our schools. There is too much laxity and a lot is not going well.”
He said there were 73 education administrative districts in the country and half of them had no education officers. The vacancies must be filled, he said, while a fleet of 60 vehicles had to be bought to enable inspectors to travel around districts, supervising teachers.
Mrs Caroline Ndlovu, a parent, said education determined how children live when they grow older.
“Our children have to get education so that they can be able to fend for themselves in future. This world is ever-changing due to the advent of technology and computerisation and children have to adjust to those changes to fit into society,” she said.
She said evidence that parents wanted to ensure that children were learning effectively was homework, which children bring from school. In most cases now, she said this was hardly happening.
“I have a child in primary school. I expect to see homework that he brings home but that seldom happens. Children learn at schools and when they come home they have no homework because teachers have no time to mark because they are probably occupied by other things,” she said.
She said laxity seemed to have crept into schools and the Government had to work on this problem because the future of children was at stake. In recent years teachers’ attention appears to have been diverted to non-core activities. Some of them carry out their personal businesses during working times in order to fend for themselves and their families, as they say the salaries they are earning are inadequate.
Teachers, like all civil servants, earn monthly salaries of about US$160. Over the past two years, they have been battling to have their salaries increased to about US$500 to no avail. The Government says it has no money to sustain the salary increment that teachers want and has given its employees modest increases after every six months.
In January next year, their salaries are likely to be increased up to US$300 per month.
Mrs Thelma Nhare, a teacher at a local primary school said teachers were being forced to find other means of making a livelihood because they were receiving poor salaries.
“As teachers, we do have side businesses though at the expense of lesson hours but what are we expected to do? In my case the peanuts I get as a salary only allow me to pay school fees for only one child out of three other children. Where do I get money to pay for my other children’s fees?” said Mrs Nhare. She said incentives were another means for teachers to get money but not all parents could afford them. This is why some teachers resort to selling this and that to make a living.
Bulawayo provincial education director, Mr Dan Moyo, said pass rates were dropping, a situation, which called for more measures to retain the standards.
“In the past few years, the country has recorded a drop in the pass rate due to various reasons such as the exodus of highly qualified teachers and demotivation of teachers but we are hoping that this will change in this coming year,” said Mr Moyo. He said plans of deploying more education officers in schools were under way. “More supervisors will move around schools this coming year to ensure effective teaching in schools. Supervisors will monitor that teachers follow the correct education norms in their conduct.
“These include ensuring that teachers follow the syllabus, they attend lessons and they give pupils homework, which they will move on to mark,” he said. Mr Moyo said the condition of the education sector was also expected to improve as the ministry was working to improve the student-textbook ratio to one is to one.
In next year’s national budget presented last month, Finance Minister Tendai Biti allocated US$469 million, of the US$2,7 billion budget, to the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture. Â Analysts say the budget allocation for civil servants’ salaries was unlikely to improve their well-being.
Industrialist and economic commentator, Dr Eric Bloch recently said the tax threshold of US$225 which has been set was insignificant as it would leave many workers earning salaries way below the poverty datum line estimated at US$502 monthly for a standard family.
He said a minimum tax band of US$300 would have been reasonable. He said the suggested threshold was not even what was expected because US$225 would not sustain many workers, especially civil servants when the cost of living was close to US$500 for a family of six.