Education Ministry in a quandary Paltry $20 000 allocated for two months

Sunday News

By Vusumuzi Dube 

23 June 2013

THE Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture is in a quandary after the Government recently allocated it a paltry $20 000 meant to cover administration   costs for the months of May and June, a situation that has been described as traumatic for the education sector. Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Senator David Coltart revealed that his

ministry was facing crisis because the $20 000 was far from being enough for them to operate for the two months.

He revealed that in such a scenario their provincial offices risked being evicted because of failure to pay rentals.

“While the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti has so far assured us that he will give us a further $300 000 that is after I put some pressure on him, I must say that we had been allocated a paltry $20 000 and all things being equal this falls far short of what we need to cover all our costs even just for a month.

“To be frank, our provincial offices will risk closure as we won’t be able to pay our rentals with such an amount and that in itself will spell great danger to the education sector as a whole because without our provincial offices, our operations will be crippled,” said Minister Coltart.

The minister noted that they especially required money to purchase fuel as this was a key resource for their teacher-monitoring activities.

“As you might know, we really need money for us to effectively monitor the performance of our teachers, therefore, with such an amount we can’t buy fuel for our provincial and district officers and overally this is very traumatic to the education sector because basically we need as much financial resources as possible if we are really going to invest in the education sector,” he said.

Senator Coltart said all in all the ministry needed just over $300 000 for them to operate in a month.

Minister Coltart has in the past expressed concern with regards to the Government’s budget allocation to the education sector saying this was not adequate for the full revival of the sector.

According to the 2013 National Budget, the Ministry of Finance allocated $754 million to the Education Ministry.

Results from this year’s O-level examinations exposed the need for the Government to channel most of its financial resources to the sector as out of the 172 689 candidates whor egistered for public examinations last year, only 31 767 managed passes in at least five subjects or more.

The O-level pass rate stood at 18,4 percent, a 1,1 percent drop from the 2011 statistics.

Previously, the pass rate had been as follows: 2003 (13 percent); 2004 (10,2 percent); 2005 (12 percent); 2006 (14,2 percent); 2007 (9,85 percent); 2008 (14,44 percent); 2009 (19,33 percent) and 2010 (16,5 percent).

The A-level pass rate for 2012 also marginally dropped to 82,09 percent from 85,2 percent the previous year.