Speech by Senator David Coltart regarding Education: Problems, Progress, Setbacks and the Way Ahead
Harare
5 May 2010
I am grateful to the Konrad Adenhauer Foundation for organising this conference. I will be speaking this afternoon regarding the Education sector and will be analysing the problems I have faced, progress made, the setbacks, and then briefly conclude by looking at the way forward.
I think that we need to remind ourselves that the agreement leading to the Inclusive Government was seriously flawed right from the very beginning and it remains flawed. The Inclusive Government itself is comprised of protagonists; people who have fundamentally different views on how the Government should operate. And so I think that, in many ways, both Zimbabweans and the international community have had unrealistic expectations in this last year. We have thought that this Government would be able to achieve miracles, and of course it hasn’t. There are many problems that still confront our nation and there is much to complain about. But despite that, I don’t think that we as Zimbabweans appreciate just how much has in fact improved since February 2009 – and I think that we see that no more so than in the Education sector; even though, I stress, there are enormous and, in some respects, seemingly insurmountable problems.
I want to take you back to when the Inclusive Government started in February 2009 and paint the picture of the Education sector as I saw it when I took office on the 17th of February. On the day I took office, most of our 8000 schools were closed and we had over 90,000 teachers on strike. The teachers had very low morale and there were virtually non-existent communications between the teachers and their unions on the one hand and the government on the other hand. The unions estimate, and I’ve got no reason to dispute their figures, that some 20,000 teachers left the service during 2007 and 2008. Many teachers were under severe attack, especially in 2008 in rural schools. In all, or nearly all, government schools, and most schools country wide, the textbook-pupil ratios in 2009 were simply appalling. We don’t have accurate data on it, but generally we accept that the average was probably 15 children to one textbook. The National Education Advisory Board established that in some remote schools those ratios were even worse, and in fact many of the schools that I have been to the only textbook that you would find in the class room would be the one used by the teacher. When I took office the November 2008 exams hadn’t even been marked yet by mid-February. None of the papers – Grade 7, ‘O’ level, ‘A’ level – had even been marked yet. The physical infrastructure of most schools and educational institutions had almost totally collapsed. My introduction to the Head Office was quite remarkable; I found no water in that building and the toilets in a total mess. It smelled like a sewerage pond. You literally gagged walking up the stairs, and you had to walk up the stairs because only one of the three lifts was working, and even that wasn’t permanent. The state of the Head Office reflected the state of schools countrywide. Schools countrywide had then, and in many respects still have, completely unsanitary conditions; roofs off, hardly any desks and toilets in an appalling state.
The last comprehensive curriculum review was done in the mid-1980s. As you look across the education sector you will see it littered with collapsed educational institutions. For example, the Curriculum Development Unit which has a fine building in Mount Pleasant is a shell – a total shell. The radio broadcasting facility, which was used to such good effect right up until the early-2000s, is no longer functioning and the same applies to the TV broadcasting function.
So, in essence, when we took office in February last year we had the form of education, but hardly any substance whatsoever. Lots of physical buildings but very little taking place in those buildings. In that context, what progress have we made in the last year? I would like to leave you with eight areas of progress.
Firstly, regarding teachers: we have, in the last year, established a functional working relationship with the unions. One of the first things that we did was to build better levels of trust between Government and the unions. Those communications have steadily improved in the course of the last year. I’ve sought help from UNICEF for international funding to come in and help the administrative functions of unions. This was very much needed during the time when the hundred dollar allowances were being paid and teachers did not have any salary, meaning that dues could not be deducted from their salaries to pay the unions. During that period I, with UNICEF, mobilised resources to ensure that the unions survived. We’ve also brought the unions – all three of them – onto the National Education Advisory Board so that they can play an important role in the formation of policy advice for me. We have ensured that at every possible juncture they be included. I’ll speak just now about the World Bank workshops that we’ve organised for our staff in this regard. I’ve insisted that the unions be represented at those planning meetings as we develop a strategic plan.
We also declared an amnesty for teachers that had left. I have differing figures to those of the Parliamentary Committee for Education, who have a figure of over 3000; I had a figure of 2431 teachers, but that I can see is an older figure from late November, so your figure is perhaps more up to date. But they have been brought back into the system. There is still a point of contention with the unions who believe that there are up to 16,000 teachers who have applied to come back but have not been re-accepted into the service, but at the very least we’ve had 2431 come back into the service. Now, you have to see that in the context of 20,000 teachers leaving during 2007 and 2008. What we’ve done is we’ve stopped the haemorrhaging – we’ve reversed it. We haven’t addressed the problem totally, but we’ve at least seen in the last year a positive inflow of teachers. We’ve also seen marginally improved salaries with the advent of hard currency. Thus, whilst there are still major problems concerning our most important asset in the education sector, namely our teaching profession, there have been qualitative improvements in the last year.
Secondly, the situation regarding school materials – learning materials – is in the process of being improved dramatically. As you know, we set up the Education Transition Fund in September 2009. The way this Fund operates is as follows: I chair the Fund, its membership is restricted to donor countries and organisations, and it is managed by UNICEF. Since September we’ve mobilised US$ 52 million for the Fund, and let me stress that that is money that is already in the kitty. Certain teaching materials have already been procured, and we have several container-loads of rulers and mathematics sets and the like already delivered in the country and in the process of being delivered to schools countrywide. You will have read in the papers recently that UNICEF has just concluded a contract for the supply of 13 million primary school textbooks. Those textbooks are being printed as I speak. Now 13 million may just sound like an arbitrary figure to you, but let me stress that this is arguably the biggest single delivery of textbooks that this country has ever seen. We have focused on four key areas in the primary school sector, namely Maths, English, Environmental Science and Indigenous Languages. These textbooks will be delivered with effect from the end of July through to September, and when the 13 million textbooks are delivered to primary schools we are going to improve the ratios in those subjects from 15:1 to 1:1. Literally every single child at primary school will have their own textbook in those particular subjects.
Because of the savings achieved in the first stage of the textbook procurement plan, we have now calculated that we have sufficient money to do exactly the same in the secondary school sector. Within the Ministry we are now in the process of finalising the list of secondary school textbooks and tenders will be advertised shortly by UNICEF, the intention being to commence the printing of secondary school textbooks in September. Our hope is that in seven key subject areas we will be delivering secondary school textbooks to all high schools by the first term of 2011. We believe that we may well be able to achieve 1:1 ratios in those selected areas as well. Let me stress once again that this is a massive exercise and one of the main reasons why our education sector has declined so markedly in the last few years is because children have not had access this fundamental resource of textbooks. I believe that that the textbook situation is going to dramatically improve, and indeed is already improving.
Thirdly, regarding school infrastructure and Head Office infrastructure: let me deal with the Head Office – if you come to the Head Office you will find that we have water, that we have functional toilets in all the fourteen floors and the lifts are now working – all three of them. Now, I’m not saying that that is replicated in our schools – the situation in our schools is still profoundly shocking – but we are now working with the World Bank and I’m trying to expand the Education Transition Fund to work on the proposal of per capita grants. The idea is that we want to ensure that money doesn’t get blocked at Head Office or in Harare but that we devise a programme to ensure that we get money down to individual schools, and that we work with local communities – with local plumbers, builders and painters – to rehabilitate these schools whose infrastructure is in such a shocking state.
Fourthly, regarding Academies and Centres of Excellence:  one of my deep concerns since coming to office has been that even if we restore a basic education to our children – by getting teachers back to school, by getting these core textbooks delivered, by getting toilets repaired and classrooms painted – we are not going to address the needs of supremely talented but disadvantaged children who are not going to have those talents nurtured, who are not going to have those talents identified for their own good and for the Nation’s good. For that reason, we are promoting the notion of Academies. Initially we’ll be looking at 20 Academies – two per province countrywide. At the same time we intend setting up a scholarship fund – 40% of the schools’ intake will be reserved for talented disadvantaged children who will be fed into these Centres of Excellence so that our supremely talented but disadvantaged children will not be left behind, will not drown in the mediocrity of a basic education, but will be nurtured – in their own interests and the interests of the country.
We’ve made some progress with the Academies. We’ve had the concept of Academies approved by the Government. A new trust has been set up called Teach Zimbabwe, and I’m working closely with the World Bank and other institutions to secure the necessary funding for the rehabilitation, initially of these 20 schools, and then of course in time the number of the schools will be expanded.
The fifth area of progress relates to curriculum review. As I stressed, one of the problem areas we face is that there hasn’t been comprehensive curriculum review for over two decades. I have recently secured agreement in principle for funding of this exercise through the Education Transition Fund and our curriculum development unit is working with a Zimbabwean expert in curriculum reform to devise a plan of action for a programme of comprehensive curriculum review and reform in the coming years. The Finish Government has also recently provided us with funding for technical assistance in this programme with a specific area of concern in mind. As you are aware our education system in the last 30 years has been almost exclusively academically orientated, and my belief, and it’s a belief shared by many in the Education sector, is that we need to get more of a balance between an academically orientated and a vocationally orientated education system. One of my deep concerns is that so many children come out with academic but relatively useless qualifications at the end of their secondary education. We have to focus more in our process of curriculum review on ensuring that we have a better balance and more focus on vocational education. As I say, the Fins, who are the leaders worldwide in vocational education, have provided us with funding for this.
Tied into curriculum review there are a few specific areas that we are focusing on and have already started work on. One is Civic Education; to develop a curriculum on human rights, on constitutionalism, on the concepts of tolerance, respect for human rights and the use of peaceful means to resolve conflict. We’ve already started working with certain civic organisations to devise an appropriate curriculum for Zimbabwe. In like manner, we are developing a new curriculum on conservation farming and we are working with institutions in Zimbabwe that promote those concepts. In addition we will be looking at new curricula regarding the environment, sport, HIV/Aids and ICT. This all comes under the broad heading of curriculum review. Our intention is to have an initial plan of action developed within the next coming months, and our hope is that by mid-2011 we will have come up with concrete proposals for curriculum reform.
The sixth area of progress relates to a review of legislation. One of my concerns is that many of the Acts which fall under my jurisdiction are in need of review and reform. If you take the Education Statutory Instruments you will see that they span three decades and that they’re very difficult to read because they are all over the place. We need to consolidate these and review them. I just recently secured funding through the ETF for a technical expert to come on board, and that process will be starting shortly – not just in the Education sector, but in the other sectors of society that I’m responsible for, namely Sports, Arts and Culture.
The seventh area of progress relates to ZIMSEC. You will recall that I said that when I took office we hadn’t even finished marking the November 2008 examinations. We have now achieved a lot of progress in that regard – we got the Grade 7 results out by January this year and ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level results were published before the end of February. This is still unsatisfactory, still too late, but a substantial improvement on the year before.  I will shortly be announcing a new Zimsec Board which I am confident is going to restore Zimsec as an institution of the highest repute.
The eighth area of progress relates to review within the Ministry of our own practices. As you know, I set up the National Education Advisory Board under the chairmanship of Dr Isaiah Sibanda. Dr Fay Chung who is here today has been a member of that Board for its first year. The Board conducted an interim assessment in the first few months of us taking office, and that report, authored by Dr Chung and two colleagues, was published in July by the National Education Advisory Board and has been widely circulated. In the last few months the Advisory Board has also conducted further and much more comprehensive research in ten key areas of the Education sector. Those reports are very close to completion and will be made available to the public when the Advisory Board present them to me.
We’ve also worked very closely in this context of internal review with the World Bank. We’ve had two meetings; one in January for our internal top level management and then another with many in the wider education  sector in early March. Those two meetings in turn have agreed upon a programme to develop a strategic plan, and we are now moving into a further phase with the World Bank. We are about to embark on a process of consultation countrywide to develop a strategic plan for the Ministry – a short term strategic plan and that will then lead into a five year strategic plan. And then you’ll be pleased to know that both NEABs’ work and this World Bank assisted work is looking at the  Nziramasanga report (published in August 1999) very closely to see what elements of that report need to be implemented which have not been implemented in the last decade.
So I would say that those are eight areas of real progress. Let me talk briefly about the setbacks. I would list four areas of setbacks. The first, of course, relates to insufficient funding for the Education sector. Government has only allocated 14% of the national budget in 2010 for Education, not 22% as we had hoped. Whilst we have managed to mobilise good funding through the Education Transition Fund, I have not been able to fund certain key sectors, for example the teachers. Although I have made numerous attempts to get funding from the international community for teachers, the international community will not fund recurrent expenditures of that nature.
Secondly, and this is tied to the first setback, we have had ongoing labour action for reasons I fully understand. I’m fully sympathetic towards teachers and the unions, but of course this has dramatically affected service delivery in the Education sector. Related to this we still have the major problem of incentives. I don’t have time to discuss this with you now, but it’s not a resolved problem by any means.
Thirdly, we’ve had internal difficulties. We’ve had massive human resource constraints within Head Office. Take the planning department, for example. It is meant to have a complement of 25 people, but in fact has a director and four secretaries. This has also been a new order – the interaction between myself as an MDC Minister and civil servants who have worked under a tradition of ZANU-PF has often been difficult. We’ve had to learn to work with each other, and that has not always been easy, either way.
A fourth area of setbacks is the realisation that the Education sector in truth is still in free-fall. It is still plummeting. We see that in the recently published ZIMSEC results. Although there was a marginal improvement in the ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level results, one has to see that in the context of the dramatic reduction in the number of students who wrote the exams. I believe that it follows logically that if all the students who would have liked to have written the exams had done so, we might not necessarily have got that improvement. But the most worrying statistic is given in the Grade 7 results, the pass rate of which has plunged. Another very worrying emerging statistic from these results is the huge divide between results achieved in the two urban provinces of Harare and Bulawayo and those achieved in the other rural provinces. In Harare and Bulawayo the pass rate was 72%; the average in the rural provinces was in the 30s. So there’s a massive rural-urban divide now in terms of education delivery.
Chairman, in conclusion: the way forward. I leave three areas for you. Firstly, Government funding: Â this is primarily our own national responsibility. Clearly we have to, as a Government, as a Nation, grow our economy. But then we have to cut the cake differently. We have to increase the budget that we allocate to Education from 14% to the UNESCO recommended 22% if we are ever going to start to address the problems I have identified. The fact of the matter is that the education sector has been grossly neglected by successive governments for two decades. It was last adequately funded in the late-1980s. In real terms the amount of money allocated to Education has plummeted and we are now reaping the whirlwind. We are seeing the consequences of that failure to make education an actual priority.
Secondly, we desperately need international support. We cannot do it ourselves. The Education Transition Fund is an interesting model. I believe that it ensures that our own Zimbabwean educational objectives are fulfilled, but it also ensures that donor money is being spent properly. The international community needs to understand the danger of a lost generation. We need only look south to South Africa to see what happens to a nation when a whole generation doesn’t have an education. But we will need massive international support to rehabilitate the sector if we are to stem this crisis and prevent a lost generation emerging in Zimbabwe.
I end with five key priority areas: Firstly, we have to restore basic education, for all our children. Secondly, we need to ensure that our talented disadvantaged children are not left behind; not allowed to drown in the mediocrity of a basic education. Thirdly, we have to extend parental involvement in education. Fourthly, we must complete curriculum review to bring our curriculum up to the best practices worldwide, and finally, we need comprehensive legislative review to ensure that the Education sector functions efficiently and fairly.