By Fidelis Mhashu

I have read the Presidential speech several times and I would like to give a few comments on what that I have observed. I want to agree with my colleagues, those who spoke before me to the paper over the whole address that the President gave but I would like to dwell on a special area that I have greatest passion and that area is education.

The President addressed education on page 11 of his Presidential speech Mr. Speaker Sir, I have a very important message to convey to my colleagues and I would beg to be allowed to refer to my notes extensively because the notes are very important to the nation. On page 11, “Where as a country we have made tremendous strides in the education sector.” That I appreciate
very much but there is still need to ensure that our education remains competitive. I take exception to that as well as to national needs.

Then the next page of the Presidential Speech stipulates that in this august House he is going to let the Bill be introduced and the Bill reads “The Zimbabwe Qualifications Authority Bill”.

When that has been discussed, we are also going to look at the Education Act, in the sense that we are going to look at an amendment. The amendment would like to provide a more sustainable basis for spending school fees. I want to remind the House that the Education Act came into being in 1987 and was revised and came up with the new edition in 1996 and was amended in 2006. It is going to be amended again this year in this august House.

Mr. Speaker Sir, the 2006 amendment was that payment of all fees and levies must be regulated. Maximum qualifications for teachers, school parents’ assemblies and school committees to be constituted only by parents who have children at the school. The wearing of school uniforms is part of the
amendment in 2006 and also the recognition of association of teachers.

That was the gist of the 2006 amendment and as hon. members can see, the essence of that amendment that the Minister then was concerned mostly with administrative issues; school uniform, fees, PTA and SDC. There was nothing
included which improved the quality of education.

This year the Education Act is going to bring yet another amendment and this amendment is going to dwell on sustainable basis for pegging school fees as if we are bankrupt of ideas.

This amendment is another repeat of administrative issues and nothing about content and the curricular of the education sector.

Surely we are missing a golden opportunity to have this country resuscitated on education but only to concentrate on minor issues. I am not pre-empting the amendment before it comes but just reminding you that we are going to discuss the amendment that concerns only the pegging of school fees.

Mr Speaker Sir, the state of the education system in this country has collapsed and the word collapsed means actually having nothing to talk about in education. I am going to give you sectors that have experienced collapse and I want to start with human resources collapse. We no longer have any pupil to talk about in education.

The pupils who are another human resource in this country, there are no children to speak of to say he or she is going to school to get education. We have at least 1,5 million school children out of school. I am saying at least
because the number is more; of children who are out of school because schools have closed. There are no teachers at schools, so there is no teacher human resources collapse. The children are at home and sometimes visiting shops and supermarkets that are empty.

According to our Education Act, Section 4, it says “Children have the right to education.” Section 5 says “Compulsory education.” If we have 1,5 children not going to school, then there is no compulsion, as they are not going to
school. Those who manage to go to schools, teachers are just there to entertain them or to make sure that their names are cloaked in register. What do they do? They are just playing on the grounds, kicking one another. Education now as we are talking has become a preserve for the rich. Only those who are going to private schools are experiencing some kind of learning.

Those who are not going to private schools are not learning. We are having a total human resources collapse as far as pupils are concerned. Let me go to another human resource that has failed.

Those who attend secondary schools, they do so because they want to learn. The majority of the teachers that fill the posts are not trained, and you find that if we do not review the conditions of service for our teachers, we are going to have our students not willing to go to school. If there are some or the majority of
teachers that go to school are mostly vendors, they go there to sell commodities such as nuts, maputi, freezits to make ends meet. Children do not go to school, they are indisposed.

Those who have been able to go to school up to secondary school, OLevel,
we have had our research and we have discovered that there are some who have gone through their O-Levels who cannot read or write, let alone write their names correctly but they have gone through secondary school. Why is it so and what is going on? Teachers are demotivated. There are no teaching materials in schools. Therefore, because there is not much going on, there is a very much high rate of drop-outs. If I may give you the drop-out rate for primary schools for the whole country, from grade 1 to grade 7, on average, we have 2.5 million children in any normal year who go to primary school.

At the end of primary school, we end up having only 800 000 children going to secondary school. It means therefore that we are loosing 1.7 million children every year, who do not go to secondary school, and this amounts to 68% of drop-outs. In one sector, secondary, A-Level and tertiary, we are looking at a quarter of the population which is not going through secondary education.

We have a lot of children also, who have dropped school because of internal migration of their parents, teachers by resettlements going to farms and by Operation Murambatsvina.

It is in this country only in the world where poverty is punishable. I remind you that in 2004, at Murehwa, there was a secondary school pupil who could not pay his fees and was arrested for failing to pay fees. The parents volunteered to go to jail on his behalf. This point was raised here in this House to the minister concerned. If poverty is punishable, pupils might not go to school. That is what we have in this country, the collapse of children as resources.

Students in tertiary institutions are denied the academic freedom. I do not know why we as a nation are afraid of students so that we fail to give them freedom to talk academic or economic issues. When that happens, we unleash the police to
beat them up. A good example is what happened yesterday when students wanted to present their petition to the Speaker, what happened? They were dispersed. When I came to the House, a policeman received me and said, “vaMhashu, fambai makadai.” I thought he was respecting me, but he was trying to protect me from the violence that was perpetrated by some of his colleagues in the corner there. As a result there were injuries that were sustained by the students. The president of the students union, Clever Bere, was arrested and right now is in custody with others. Is that the kind of freedom that we want in
this country? We are failing to attain a degree of academic freedom.

These students are our future, they are future people who will run this country and are denied the chance to talk about what is prevailing in this country. We have experienced the detention, arrests, suspension and expulsion of students just because they demonstrated.

Let me go down now to teachers and lecturers as another human resource collapse. I am using the word collapse very carefully because there is nothing to talk about in both the primary and secondary schools. Teaching is no longer a
profession because half of the staff is manned by untrained teachers, trained teachers have crossed the boarders looking for greener pastures. More so, during the elections of 2000, 2002, 2007 and 2008, teachers were forced to help in the election process and those who remained at school suffered. They were harassed, butchered and some were raped in front of their class.

As one of the conditions of service of our teachers, they are the least paid, not only in Zimbabwe, region or continent but also in the world and we want them to remain teaching. No wonder there is a disturbing brain drain. They live and go because they are not well remunerated. They were promised sixty five thousand dollars and what was in their bank account? They got fifteen thousand dollars. What is the cost of a loaf of bread? It costs fifteen thousand dollars and the loaf is very porous you can put your finger and it runs through.

Mr. Speaker, these teachers are dedicated, they want to work but sometimes the working conditions are appalling. As I said earlier on, our teachers have been reduced to vendors. Some of us know that because we have gone to schools and have seen this happening. I am saying to hon. members, please go out and find out what is happening. Therefore, what happens if they cannot make ends meet? They abscond. During our times when all of us were at school, high qualifications were a status symbol. When you went to school and obtained a course, whatever the course, in society you were revered. But these days it is no longer the case. These days a teacher is a tenant behind a house belonging to a child that he teaches. A teacher cannot make ends meet but someone who pushes a scotch cart earns more money than a practicing teacher, so going to school to obtain a qualification is no longer of value, I am talking about the collapse of education.

Mr. Speaker Sir, let me look again at the pupil – teacher ratio, it is one teacher to sixty pupils. One long desk is used by seven pupils, they are crowded. One text book is used by eight pupils.

Mr. Speaker Sir, you can imagine the type of learning going on in the classroom when eight pupils are fighting for one text book, it is thirty minutes for the lesson – one pupil is still holding the book and is running away before the book is grabbed by the other student.

On ball point pens, it is one ball point pen to three pupils. So, what happens when the teacher asks them to write – one begins to write and before the sentence is finished, someone grabs the pen and before he or she finishes writing the third one grabs the pen.

Mr. Speaker Sir, in tertiary education one computer is being shared by twenty five students. Surely, we are talking of a complete collapse of education and the Presidential Speech is just addressing the Bill and addressing the Education
Amendment to come and that is all. All these are not mentioned anywhere. The pass rates for grade seven are barely 50%, Z.J.C and O’ level is 19%. What it means is that out of every hundred students who write examinations at O’ level, 81 fail and 19 are successful. There is low progression rates from grade seven to Form I, and from Form I up to Form VI. Now there is curriculum collapse, it is irrelevant and does not even fit to be talked about. There is need to revamp and resuscitate the economy but our curriculum is mostly academic yet we end up
with about 25%. In schools there are no teaching materials, no chalks, no text books and no furniture.

Let me now move on to equipment. In laboratories, there are no chemicals for those who write A’ levels. They re-tested. In science they carry out experiments. At ‘O’ and ‘A’ level they do geography and we expect that at every school they have a weather station – a weather station is a place where instruments that measure weather are found. They only see these instruments in text books.
Moving on to ZIMSEC, we are very proud as a nation that ZIMSEC localized examinations but we condemn also that ZIMSEC is a closed system. As a country, we must have an open system we must have other examination boards running side by side for competition and no wonder we have lost
credibility. ZIMSEC has a lot of problems, leakages and miss posting of results. Mr. Speaker, Sir, someone who has paid for seven subjects at ‘O’ level, sat her examination and she receives ‘A’ level results. A person gets three As after sitting for O’ level examinations. Students are supposed to be writing their
examinations right now, nothing is happening, how are they going to do it?

I am just going to give highlights. I have the problems and solutions here. The first one is furniture and buildings. For example, at the University of Zimbabwe, there has been no accommodation.

According to records, on 19 July 2008, 4000 students were evicted. The accommodation has been unfit for human habitation. There are what we call moving classes. The students look for the teacher whilst the teacher looks for the students. When the two meet they look for a classroom which might again be occupied. We are expecting schools to be built to decongest the situation
Mr Speaker Sir, we have transport problems in urban and rural areas. Students walk long distances, they cross forests and closed valleys. They suffer from what we call claustrophobia.

There are some who fear open places and they suffer from agoraphobia because of walking long distances. Right now in the education sector, there are no vehicles for supervising teachers. By last year seventy-eight vehicles were
required but only twenty vehicles were purchased leaving a balance fifty-eight. Mr Speaker, I have the solutions drafted here. I am going to look at them promptly. In the near future, we are going to have what we call a depression in the education graph brought about by 2000, 2005 and 2008 when there were
elections and learning was not going on.

We are expecting a vacuum of intellectuals to happen. We must resuscitate our
economy which impacts our education. We also require new models of adequate funding for our education. We also must take care of how we are going to contain an influx of retainees in the education sector. We should also look at the furniture, equipment and learning materials provided by the state. We
must have the relevant curriculum and pedagogy.

We must have an education system that matches standards that are recognised internationally. The conditions of service for teachers should be improved so that there is a cordial rapport between teachers, lecturers and students so that we complement one another. We also have what we call uranium gold number two which must be achieved by 2015.

I conclude by saying we must learn from history and not history to learn from us.

Editor ’s note: Fidelis Mhashu a teacher by profession is a senior Member of Parliament for Chitungwiza & former Chairman of the Education, Sport and Culture Commitee. He is the MDC’s Secretary for Education and also a member of the MDC National Executive Committee. This address was delivered to Parliament on 15 October 2008.

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