The Herald
29 January 2010

Harare — Government should computerise the database of its employees to weed out ghost workers that are fleecing the State of thousands of dollars; Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said yesterday.

Minister Coltart said his ministry was making efforts to keep a computer-based list of teachers in the service to make it easier for the Government to compile a record of teachers working in the country.

“Government has been duped of a lot of cash through ghost workers. But if we were computer networked, thousands of dollars would have been saved,” he said.

There was need, he said, to link Government head offices with provincial and district offices to allow a smooth flow of information.

Information is currently transmitted manually.

“A person in another province should be well informed of what is happening at their head office. “The manual system we have been using for the past years has resulted in Government losing a lot of money. We must have a situation whereby every school will be linked to the ministry,” he said.

The major challenge, Minister Coltart said, was mobilising the necessary resources and bringing in the technical expertise.

“The process is expensive, but I have spoken to officials from World Bank and some donor agencies that have agreed to chip in financially,” he said.

Zimbabwe BlackBook
26 January 2010

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s Public Service Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro is due to hold make-or-break talks with civil servants in a last-ditch bid to avert a general strike.
Workers have set a strike date of next Tuesday unless their demands for higher salaries are met.

Ministers are desperate to avert a general strike, which would take Zimbabwe back to the bad old days of the last decade.

Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, who is Minister of Public Service and a member of Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, is scheduled to meet union officials on Tuesday.

Many teachers are on a go-slow at the moment because their salaries are only around R1500. They want four times that amount.

The head of the Progressive Teachers Union, Raymond Majongwe, told Eyewitness News he had a meeting with Prime Minister Tsvangirai.

He said he is hopeful some sort of compromise can be reached.

However the cash-strapped government is in a difficult position.

Education Minister David Coltart’s suggestion was to ask state utilities to cut their fees so that teachers’ salaries are not gobbled up quite as quickly.

Sunday Mail
24 January 2010
From Bulawayo Bureau

At least 10 000 teachers are needed nationwide as it emerged that there is a critical shortage of the educators in schools amid revelations that the re-engagement system that the Government embarked on to bring back to the fold tutors who had left is tedious and frustrating.

It has also emerged that the country is in dire need of teachers who teach Science subjects, Mathematics and English, something that is threatening to cripple the pride of the country’s education sector.

In an interview on Friday, the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Senator David Coltart confirmed the shortage of teachers in most of the country’s schools.
He said the country needed an estimated 10 000 teachers adding, that it was disheartening to note that some rural schools were left with very few or no teachers at all.
“We have had an establishment of some140 000 teachers in the country, but currently we have an estimated 80 000, a number that is, of course, far too few if we are to have the required number of teachers for every class
.
“There are reports coming to the ministry from various provinces in the country that some rural schools hardly have any teachers to attend to the students and such a situation in our schools is not healthy .

“An estimated 10 000 teachers is therefore required to get the country’s education system working again, but we are not so much concerned about the quantity but the quality.

“As it stands right now, there is an acute shortage of teachers for Science subjects, Mathematics and English which are the most important subjects, something that has seen us shifting the temporal teaching policy to ensure that we maintain the quality of education with the available human resources,” said Sen Coltart.

He confirmed that there were problems dogging the re-engagement system and said his ministry was doing everything in its power to ensure that all the bottlenecks that the education sector had been experiencing were dealt with.

Re-engaged

Minister Coltart further highlighted that out of an estimated 20 000 teachers who left the profession in the last two years due to the pressing economic environment, about 2 400 teachers applied to come back into service and were re-engaged last year, but have not been receiving their salaries for the better part of last year, something the unions have been making noise about.

He however, reiterated that he had since met the union leaders and satisfactorily resolved all the anomalies that were deterring and frustrating those who wanted to be considered for reengagement.

Sen Coltart highlighted that while the issue of getting the education sector on its feet boarders on remuneration, there was a general consensus among the teachers that their demands were fueled by the rates that the parastatals were charging.

He said it was encouraging that the educators understood that the country’s financial position was still low to meet their expectations and were querying the wisdom of parastatals demanding exorbitant amounts of money that were far above the regional standards from the consumers of their services while they were aware that the Government was not paying such kind of money.

The Minister would not, however, be drawn into revealing the finer details of the meeting he had with the Minister of Finance Mr Tendai Biti during the course of the week, preferring to say they have a constructive discussion on the issue of remuneration with the hope of getting back the education system of the country to its glorious past.

There are reports that teachers from rural areas are leaving their stations in droves to look for places in urban areas where they are paid better incentives while some are going to private schools.

The policy of incentives was introduced to try and cushion the teachers against the meagre earnings they were getting.

Sunday News
24th January 2010
By Mugove Mudhadha

THE recent pronouncement by the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart, that teachers should take their grievances regarding salaries to the Finance Minister Mr Tendai Biti made sad reading.

It is with a deep sense of betrayal of the teaching fraternity by the supposed “father”, Mr Coltart, that I have decided to outline what I feel are the complications and implications of this fire-fighting attempt at management.

That Minister Coltart disowned the teachers and unashamedly baton-passed them to the Finance Minister is deplorable, to say the least.

I am sure this will haunt the teaching personnel for as long as their lives will span.

Pronouncing that Mr Coltart is not the teachers’ employer only goes to expose unacceptable levels of haughtiness, insensitivity and recklessness.

We sincerely anticipated a dignified 2010, but here we are once again, in the vicious web of anxiety and uncertainty. Teacher issues remain unresolved and this talk about continued “teacher incentives” clearly shows that Mr Coltart cannot be taken as a serious father at all.

The crux of the matter is that the status of the Zimbabwean schools is heterogeneous.

There are autonomous trust schools, church-run schools, Government schools and council schools, which can be in urban, rural and peri-urban set-ups.

One observable fact is that the parents or guardians whose children learn in these different school categories are equally in varying income brackets.

This effectively means that their ability and preparedness to pay up whatever levies differ accordingly.

Those with the financial means can easily pay some of the apparently astronomical levies, but many would grieve, groan and grind to be able to pay what some schools propose as levies.

Now to the hilarious drama! There is a ministerial circular that blindly and naively advises that teachers be entitled to 10 percent of the levies.

Honestly, 10 percent of zero and 10 percent of 100 cannot be the same.

This means that teachers in schools asking for high levies are earning an average of US$300 per month, yet those in very remote areas, the rural tsetse- and mosquito-infested areas, are wallowing in poverty. Yet, these teachers were trained at the same institutions.

The traditional way of forcing parents to pay is to send their children back home, but with the plausible advent of children’s rights, this method has since been relegated into oblivion, leaving school administrators exasperated and scratching for practical ways to keep teachers motivated.

The administrators are in turn forced by situations to engage the school development associations to clandestinely come up with “internal arrangements”, thereby exposing unorthodox means in a desperate attempt to dodge the ministry’s policy.

Unfortunately, matters of principle can only be disregarded at one’s peril.

Towards the end of last year many school heads hit the headlines, albeit for the wrong reasons of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds.

As I write, some are on suspension simply because the employer decided to father the child but never to buy a napkin.

In some schools teachers are making pupils pay “agreed” amounts of money directly to the subject or class teachers, thereby irreversibly compromising the dignity and integrity of this once noble profession.

Today’s children are very quick to note any anomaly and the mischievous once are quick to whisper to each other, within the teacher’s earshot, how much money they have to the extent of being able to pay their “good-for-nothing teachers”.

Of great concern is how the supposed role model soon becomes a model of perpetual contempt.

Will the child ever listen to the teacher? Will the child then ever be a leader of tomorrow? And this is all because of an experimental remuneration system.

Experiments are best left in the science laboratories. All that is needed is a recognised means of remunerating the teachers.

Teacher incentive is a sure cocktail for teacher demoralisation and this is a one-way ticket to the reversal of the hard fought-for gains of independence.

l The writer of this article is a teacher writing under a pseudo name for professional reasons.

Chronicle
Editorial
23 January 2010

The country’s education system has produced some of the best minds that are leaders in their own right in various capacities around the globe. Many countries, especially those in southern Africa and the Anglo-Saxon world, poached a good number of skilled Zimbabweans as workers left the country in droves as a result of economic challenges that were worsened by sanctions imposed on the country by Western countries. This even affected our education system since the best brains in the sector left for greener pastures abroad while some simply left the profession and settled for the informal trade.

The inclusive government is faced with the challenge of restoring our education system to its post-independence levels, albeit with limited funding.

Elsewhere in this addition we carry a story in which a US dollars 50 million education transition fund has been launched by the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture in conjunction with the United Nations Children’s Fund to improve the pupil to textbook ratio in our schools and restore basic education for all Zimbabweans.

We applaud the move by the Government that should be supported by all patriots and stakeholders that are concerned about the welfare of our children. We believe education lays the ground to the future of our children and that with the right schooling, children are better able to withstand the challenges later in life.
The situation obtaining in many rural schools especially, and most schools generally, is pathetic since many children share a single textbook with some schools having just a few copies for the teachers. Actually, there are schools where pupils have never seen what their school textbooks look like since the schools have never had any.
It is in this light that we would like to applaud the government and its partners on the target of 9 million textbooks for the 5000 primary schools that would improve the pupil to textbook ratio to between 1:1 and 3:1.

According to the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart, the fund, which is managed by UNICEF, has raised US $ 30 million since its launch last year. “We have a target of US $ 50 million that we are trying to raise. UNICEF, acting on instructions from the fund, is inviting tenders for the printing of 9 million primary school textbooks. It is hoped that the awarding of tenders for the printing of the textbooks will be concluded any time next month and companies will then start producing the books,” said Minister Coltart.

The programme would seek to cover the core subjects while there were also plans to print Braille books for the visually impaired.

We particularly wish to commend the vision of the project since it seeks to start at the foundation primary school level so that we get it right from the start in our socialisation.

While the number of books that would be required for secondary schools is yet to be established, plans are afoot to extend the programme to secondary schools once more funds are raised. The focused approach of the programme is quite commendable and worth replicating in other sectors that have been faced with brain drain over the years. The different sectors need to set goals and rope in partners that can assist them towards the fulfilment of those goals like in the case of education that has shown a commitment to producing the best products by laying a proper foundation stone.

The Zimbabwe Telegraph
By Getrude Gumede
January 22, 2010

GWERU – The Ministry of Education and Culture working in conjunction with UNICEF and UNESCO which last year launched an Education Transition Fund is working on plans to improve the pupil text book ratio and help restore basic education for all to Zimbabweans, Education and Culture Minister, David Coltart has said.

Coltart, who chairs the fund, said the fund has raised $30 million so far.

The Minister said the Fund has also received a lot of financial support from Scandinavian states who have been very generous towards them.

He said the fund has agreed that the first tranche of the money would be used to purchase 9 million primary school text books for the country’s 5 000 primary schools while secondary text books would be done later, after the completion of the primary schools programme.

“The Fund is managed by UNICEF. Since we established it last year, we have raised $30 million. We have a target of $50 million that we are trying to raise. UNICEF acting on instructions from the fund has issued by tender the printing of 9 million primary school text books. I anticipate that the contracts for the publication of the text books will be issued during February when we will see companies printing the text books,” he said.

Coltart said the Ministry of Education and Culture will start distributing the text books to the 5 000 primary schools in the country during the course of the next six months.

“It’s a mammoth task distributing 9 million text books to 5 000 schools. It is a huge exercise which is unprecedented in the history of the education system of this country. It is an exercise whose objective is meant to restore basic education for all Zimbabweans.

We are targeting co-subjects which are Maths, English, Shona and Ndebele as well as Environmental Science. We have retained a portion of the money so that we purchase braille text books for the visual impaired students,” he said.

On secondary schools text books, Minister Coltart said the Fund was still to come up with the exact number of books to be printed as they were still focused on primary schools.

“It is subject to raising sufficient funds. We need to raise an additional $20 million for the book programme and meet our target of $50 million for the programme to succeed. We will also be focusing on co-subjects text books for secondary schools just like in the primary school programme,” he said.

The Minister said the exercise was aimed at reducing the pupil text book ratio to reasonable levels that made learning easier.

He said at some schools 20 pupils were sharing a single text book while in others as many as 36 or 40 were making do with one text book.

“At the moment we have schools, both primary and secondary, that only have one text book for the teacher only while there are some without even a single text book. It is such schools that we will target first which are in dire need of books. We will address the situation in the worst affected schools and these happen to be mostly rural schools.

Our aim is to have a ratio of 1:1. That is the ideal set up. If we fail to achieve that, we will then settle for three pupils per text book,” said Coltart.

The Minister expressed gratitude to the Scandinavian States, US and the UK for supporting the Education Transition Fund.

“A variety of countries have been very supportive of the Education Transition Fund. Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland have been very generous towards the fund. Netherlands, Australia, Germany, the US and UK have also helped in the raising of the funds and we hope they maintain that spirit,” he said.

School infrastructure was falling apart while text books and furniture were becoming difficult to replace as economic hardships hit chilling levels in the period between 2000 and 2008.

The Zimbabwean
By Themba Sibanda
Friday, 22 January 2010

BULAWAYO – Hundreds of teachers re-employed by the government last year have not been paid since March, it has emerged. In an interview, Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) president, Takavafira Zhou said that the government, through the Public Service Commission (PSC), had not effected salary deposits for the returning teachers as some of them had pending cases with the parent ministry. The pending cases include voluntary absenteeism from work, “illegal strikes” and many other issues. “Some of the teachers who rejoined the profession in March last year are still to be paid,” said Zhou. “The PSC said there were still outstanding issues that needed to be dealt. The commission said it would effect their salaries once the cases had been concluded.”

It was revealed some of the teachers had sought a pardon for their cases but the pardon was still to come. “We are still awaiting the final hand down of the pardon in writing. This, we understand, will then enable the PSC to facilitate the release of the teachers’ salaries,” said Zhou. Education, Art, Sports, and Culture Minister, David Coltart, earlier this week revealed he would take the teachers’ grievances to the three principals of the inclusive government.

The Herald
By Petros Kausiyo
22 January 2010

LEGENDARY former Zimbabwe captain Peter Ndlovu is set to revive his romance with youth football when he plays a key part in the launch of the inaugural Volks-wagen Junior Masters tournament in Harare today.

Ndlovu — the most decorated Warriors captain with 100 caps for the senior national team and two African Cup Nations Cup appearances — flew into the capital yesterday ahead of the unveiling of Zimbabwe’s VW tournament for Under-13 boys.

The former Coventry City, Sheffield United and Mamelodi Sundowns striker has been nominated by German motor company, Volkswagen, as one of their football brand ambassadors in Zimbabwe together with his former Warriors teammate Edzai Kasinauyo.

Kasinauyo has also been appointed the project manager for the event.

Interestingly, both Kasinauyo and Ndlovu have previously sponsored junior tournaments in their individual capacities in Mufakose and Bulawayo.

Ndlovu had seemingly disappeared from the domestic football radar since retiring from the international game, but today he will help kick-start an ambitious programme that aims at unearth the next generation of Warriors stars.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart is expected to lead a cast of high-profile dignitaries who include VW representatives, members of the German embassy, the Sport and Recreation Commission and the soccer mother body, Zifa.

The Volkswagen Junior Masters is an international youth tournament supported by Volkswagen AG, for boys under the age of 13. The first Volkswagen Junior Masters took place in Germany in 1999 and has since grown from strength to strength with 333 teams supported by 245 Dealers competing for the German title in 2008.

The European Volkswagen Junior Masters is now the largest youth football competition in the world with 730 teams and more than 9 500 players participating in the 2008 competition.

Zimbabwe’s edition of the tournament will involve eight teams from Harare with the winning team qualifying for the Volkswagen Junior World Masters 2010 in Madrid, Spain.

According to the tournament organisers, all participating teams are to receive Volkswagen branded kits and clothing to celebrate their qualification for the tournament.

The Zimbabwean Volkswagen Junior Masters tournament is held in conjunction with charity organisation “terre des hommes” which is supported by the worldwide Volkswagen Workers Council.

Terrre des hommes country co-ordinator, Fungai Dewere, has this week been working with Kasinauyo and Zifa chief executive Henrietta Rushwaya in preparing for the tournament.

Soon after his arrival, Ndlovu, joined the trio and VW’s Ryan Paterson and Claudia Berker of terre des hommes Germany in holding a series of meetings with the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture officials, German embassy officials as well as a tour of the venue of the competition — Rufaro Stadium yesterday.

Terre des hommes Germany was founded in 1967 and currently funds about 450 projects for disadvantaged children in 29 project countries.

The focal themes of its work are protecting children from violence and exploitation, awareness programmes on HIV and Aids, creating opportunities for education and training and preserving cultural and biological diversity.

For more than 25 years terre des hommes, through its local partner organisations, has been supporting projects for disadvantaged children in different regions of Zimbabwe.

The selection and preparatory process of the Under 13 boys’ team from Harare who will attend the Volkswagen World Junior Masters in Madrid, Spain, is to be co-ordinated by local community development organisation “Community Arts Project (CAP)” in co-operation with terre des hommes’ country office for Zimbabwe.

Kasinauyo has also been working hard to manage and market talented local players through his South African-based company Tamba Sport International.

The former Ajax Cape Town and Moroka Swallows midfielder revealed his excitement at the prospects of the staging of the tournament in Zimbabwe.

“This is a fantastic tournament that gives our children an opportunity to play the sport they love at the highest level against teams from all over the world.

“Without Volkswagen AG this dream wouldn’t have become a reality, and we would like to thank them for giving our Zimbabwe children an opportunity that was not available when we were growing up.

“Both Peter and I are honoured to be involved in this exciting project and we look forward to working with the young boys and give our Zimbabwean team the best possible chance for the World Finals in Madrid,” Kasinauyo said.

Rushwaya also revealed Zifa’s excitement at having a tournament that seeks to identify and capture talent at the tender age of 13.

The Zifa chief executive noted that much of the attention has in the past been focused on the national Under-17, Under-20, Under-23 and senior national teams.

Rushwaya also lauded Volkswagen’s decision to choose Ndlovu and Kasinauyo as brand ambassadors and said they were exemplary players before their retirement and both came from junior development systems at CAPS United and Highlanders respectively.

“It is actually a milestone in football development in this country to have a company of international repute like Volkswagen to come on board and cater for this particular age group.

“Football development has been one of our major concerns in the country and it has been rare to see Under-13 boys being catered for.

“It (the Junior Masters Tournament) has come at a right time when we are trying to secure sponsorship for development. The coming in of Peter and Edzai as brand ambassadors will also serve as an inspiration to the young children.

“Peter was the longest-serving African player in England having spent 13 years there . . . he actually went there when he was very young. He has gone through the mill having come through the junior development ranks unlike some players we see who just emerge at clubs without having come through proper development.

“This tournament will also help us curb age-cheating in junior football and the fact that the winners will get a life-time opportunity to play in Madrid and get a chance to watch Real Madrid live in action should excite the boys and inspire them to do their best,’’ Rushwaya said.