Zim education system in state of decay

All there is to see today is a rundown education system on the brink of collapse.
Nearly all the rural schools are derelict and several of these institutions, which are virtually inaccessible by road, no longer have any infrastructure to talk about.
A study by the National Education Advisory Board on the overall condition of the country’s primary and secondary schools revealed as much.
Titled Rapid Assessment of Primary and Secondary Schools (RAPSS), the study was conducted in July this year.
The study raised the red flag over the increasing number of school dropouts in the education sector, once the pride of the African continent and envy of the developed world but now ticking like a time bomb ready to detonate.
Since 2000, when the country’s economy lapsed into a recession spawned by the chaotic land reform and the populist government policies that followed, the number school dropouts has averaged 200 000 annually.
“This large number of dropouts from each cohort poses serious social and political dangers to the country as these youths do not find employment,” reads part of the report, funded by the European Union.
And since the country started sliding into the economic meltdown a decade ago, unemployment rate has risen to around 94 percent, according to the United Nations.
But because most remote areas have been completely neglected, teachers now prefer urban areas where infrastructure is still intact and parents can afford to subsidise their paltry earnings.
Consequently, the level of dropouts in remote areas has been high because these disadvantaged schools have little or no money to help the situation.
Where the teachers were available in primary schools, most of them are still very young and inexperienced.
The situation has been worse in secondary schools were teachers are barely adequate, and many of them unqualified.
Enrolments at secondary school level were very low, for various reasons, including absenteeism and lack of teachers. Few substantive heads were in place, with most of the schools being run by acting heads.
The RAPSS report indicates that teacher morale was very low in all the schools visited.
“…Teachers were de-motivated by low salaries, lack of security in rural areas where teachers became victims of political violence in 2008, lack of accommodation and shortages of teaching and learning resources such as textbooks and stationery.
“The image of the teacher was at its lowest since Independence,” reads the report.
The loss of status and the “pauperisation of teachers,” was further worsened by the resentment felt by parents against teachers demanding salary supplements as a result of government’s failure to pay them competitively.
Most parents in rural areas cannot afford to pay US$4 in school levies leaving the schools with no source of income to improve the dilapidated infrastructure that has left large numbers of pupils with no where to sit or write.
The acute shortage of textbooks and learning materials has been described as “disastrous” with some schools having not purchased a single textbook since 1999.
In Mashonaland East, for example, it is reported that there was one textbook for 15 pupils while in Matabele-land North, as many as 90 pupils were sharing one or two books.
The RAPSS, report officially launched by the Minister of Edu-cation Sports and Culture David Col-tart in Harare last week, noted that the Rural District Councils, which are the responsible authorities for these schools, seemed to have lost interest and had long stopped giving support to them.
It cited several schools with classrooms that have no doors and roofs.
The situation was particularly worrying at Bubi Primary School in Masvingo, which has classroom blocks made out of pole and dagga.
As the rainy season approaches, learning for the children in the rural areas exposed to these harsh conditions will be a tough call. Most of the children are likely to be sent back home when weather conditions turn nasty.
Despite the difficult learning and teaching conditions, the report noted that teachers were still reporting for duty.
Data collected from the 120 schools from all the country’s 10 provinces that were sampled during the study also indicated that the majority of trained teachers who were feared to have crossed into neighbouring countries in search of greener pastures are actually still in the country but engaged in other activities to sustain their families.
In a survey of 90 primary schools there were 1 771 teachers reporting for duty this year compared to 1 751 in 2006 and 1 638 in 2003.
In 30 sampled secondary schools 763 teachers were reporting for duty compared to 821 and 705 in 2006 and 2003 respectively.