Students feel the heat of crumbling system

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Tendai Sithole (not his real name), a bright and promising student, has always wanted to become a chartered accountant. Instead of being at school working towards his aspirations, he is sitting at home, bored and dejected.
“I hate it all,” said Tendai, who has been at home for well over a month now, showing great pain discussing the issue.
Like the majority of “O” Level students around the country, Tendai was allowed to enrol for “A” Level using mid-year school examination results. Schools settled on this policy after realising the Zimbabwe Schools Ex-aminations Council (ZIMSEC) test results would be significantly delayed.
The results, which usually come out during the first few weeks of the first term, only came out in May — six to seven weeks into the second term.
Soon after the results were ann-ounced, Education Sports and Culture Minister David Coltart issued a directive instructing schools to withdraw all “A” Level students who had failed their “O” Level exams.
Tendai was caught up in the ensuing storm. Tendai’s case represents that of hundreds of students across the country who became victims of a crumbling education system sma-rting from a host of problems.
The disaster has not only affected students wishing to proceed to “A” Level; even those planning on a university education, have been affected.
Augustine Kutama, a student at a Catholic-run school in Manic-aland had 7 As and two Bs for the nine subjects he wrote for “O” Levels in 2006.
As an accomplished and hard working student, he was determined to go to university and applied for a scholarship with a United States university.
The interviews for this scholarship were held in March.
He failed to secure the scholarship bec-ause he did not have “A” Level results. When his results finally came out in June, he had 2 As and a B or 14 points from three subjects, enough to have easily secured him the scholarship.
His father said if Augustine was not a religious person, he would have committed suicide.
Such blunders are blamed on a crumbling education system, whi-ch analysts said had recently become too familiar for high failure rates.
And this year, it resulted in thousands of students being turned away from school after initially being enrolled for “A” Level using mid-year school examination results.
A government boys’ high school in Harare decided to keep all their students who had failed.
They admit they are defying the ministerial directive, “but we realised our teachers would be left without classes because almost 70 percent of the students we have enrolled failed their ‘O’ Levels,” said a senior school administrator who cannot be named because of government policy.
But the high failure rate meant that teachers have the invidious task of teaching “A” Level students who were not properly qualified to do “A” Level, something that could further affect teacher morale in an environment of low incomes.
At the same time school authorities ack-nowledge that parents have invested heavily in their children by buying uniforms for summer and winter and had paid school fees for two terms.
“We’ve asked the students to rewrite the exams they failed in June. Remember, the students and parents had invested substantially towards this and it seemed unfair for us to just send them off,” explained the senior school administrator.
Teachers told of unprecedented failure rates in last year’s examinations, blaming government for turning a blind eye to teachers’ welfare and ignoring deteriorating standards in the education delivery system.
Teachers fled Zimb-abwe due to an economic crisis, going to countries like South Africa.
While others, mainly science teachers, were recruited into South African schools, the majority are said to be involved in manual work primarily in the construction industry and the hotel and leisure sector.
Now, schools are short of qualified teachers, and those currently serving in the system are frustrated by poor remuneration and working conditions.
Even as the inclusive government invol-ving the two Move-ment Democratic Cha-nge formations and ZANU-PF battles to right years of economic decline and resuscitate the ailing education system, sta-keholders said the situation remains dire.
Even if students are given the opportunity to re-write during the June sitting of the “O” Level exams they have not had much time to study because there was very little time between the annou-ncement of results and sitting of exams.
The high failure rates will continue to increase if the remedies are not sought for the challenges faced by the education sector.
Students studying for their “O” Levels explained that teachers give them the impression that the syllabi cannot be covered adequately during normal school hours and so they persuade parents that it is in the best interests of the students to participate in “extra lessons”.
During these extra lessons the teachers ensure that they cover a particular subject thoroughly and comprehensively in contrast to the rushed manner that characterises normal time class sessions.
The extra lessons cost US$2 per subject — a figure that is beyond the reach of the majority of Zimb-abweans.
Enoch Paradzai, the national coordinator of the Progressive Teac-hers Union of Zimb-abwe (PTUZ), said government had to take responsibility for the high failure rates, which he said was a result of ineptitude in government institutions as well as a failure to recognise the importance of teachers in the country.
The education sector last year was characterised by a number of disruptions for which, students, parents, teachers and schools have suffered immeasurably.
Most of the term teaching periods were disrupted by mass exodus of teachers of critical subjects, political violence that impacted heavily on teachers, teacher strikes, ZIMSEC staff strikes and national elections.
The impact of such disruptions has been felt by students, particularly those in exam writing classes.
Schools are still depleted of teachers, despite a government plea to lure them to help rebuild the grounded education system.
According to a Zimbabwe Teachers Association, at least 20 000 teachers have left the country for South Africa to look for greener pastures.
South Africa poa-ched qualified teachers from Zimbabwe last year because they had a shortage of teachers in their country.
A Harare-based sc-hool teacher, who declined to give his name for professional reasons, said the situation was worsening, despite public pledges to turn the education system around.
Schools still did not have text books, laboratories were unequip-ped, and those schools that closed due to political violence are struggling to win back the confidence of qualified teachers, who fled marauding gangs of political muggers terrorising mainly rural schools.
But more depressing, those teachers that returned after the government’s call say they have not received their US$100 per month allowances since being engaged and are on “go slow”.
“Most of us are hanging around hoping this will eventually impro-ve,” one female teacher at a high school in Kambuzuma said, indicating that staff morale remained low, and that teachers were only doing “as much as our pay is worth”.
Teachers from PTUZ have already embarked on a weekly boycott every — Friday — in an attempt to force government to review their working conditions and salaries.
This will inevitably add to a plethora of woes already besetting the education system.
Infrastructure is dilapidated, and most schools do not have reading material for students. One school teacher said students in her class were sharing one text book at a ratio of 10:1, making it available to any one of the students once in a fortnight.
The casualties will remain the students and inevitably, Zimbabwe’s future.