COVID-19 fuelled school dropouts: Minister

SEVERAL COVID-19 lockdowns affected schools across Zimbabwe leading to an increased number of school dropouts with the Unicef recently indicating that at least 500 000 children are out of class.

In an interview last week, Primary and Secondary Education minister Torerai Moyo agreed with the UN report that thousands of learners had dropped out of school over the years.

“I want to agree with the UN report that thousands of students, especially in Mashonaland Central dropped out. About 5 000 of them dropped out because of the prolonged lockdowns which were happening because of the epidemic, they dropped out and some of them got married,” Moyo said.

He was speaking during a tour of St Columba’s High School in Bulawayo.

Moyo said the government had since embarked on a number of programmes to motivate learners.

“As a ministry, we are not happy with what is happening. We have embarked on a number of programmes to motivate learners of school-going age to go back to school so that they can improve on their desires to pursue their careers after completing their studies,” he said.

According to UN research, about half-a-million children of school-going age in Zimbabwean are staying at home, amid calls for the government to address challenges that are keeping them out of class.

The research experts further revealed that the harsh economic environment makes education a luxury despite efforts to make education compulsory.

Meanwhile, Moyo said the stalling of Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) funds payments was affecting operations of schools, which has resulted in the less privileged children dropping out of school.

“We have experienced some delays in the payment of Beam, and that has affected operations of schools, but we are going to address that challenge through a subcommittee that we have established chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance.

“In that committee, there are the deputy ministers of Primary and Secondary Education and also Social Welfare. They are going to come up with modalities to ensure that payments are expeditiously done on time so that we don’t disadvantage our schools,” he said.

Late last year, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare minister July Moyo said the government had ZWL$200 billion outstanding for the Beam programme.

Beam, a social welfare programme whereby the government pays tuition fees for the disadvantaged and orphaned children, has over the years been seriously affected by under-funding.