Govt to develop education infrastructure in resettlement areas
AT eleven, Tinashe Masuka should have been in Grade Five but he is doing Grade Three.
His being two grades lower than he should be is not because he repeated like what happens in most cases. He missed school when his parents relocated from Manicaland Province to one of the farms along Mutare road in Masvingo Province just after Mtirikwi River where they resettled.
Tinashe is quite intelligent but now looks older among his classmates. Had he been short, one would not notice the age difference with his peers but his height does nothing to help his situation either, he is tall and wore a pimpled and kinky face that betrays his age.
His oversize jersey which he inherited from his brother constantly nags him as it needs a lot of folding at the sleeves while his dusty shoes that are tied with different strings for laces are bulging from inside pressure with big toes pressing as if they wanted some fresh air as he runs to a dilapidated farm house that they now call Zvido Primary School just after Mazare River.
The national flag is hoisted on a gum pole that is not even straight but indicates to any visitor that it is a national institution.
“There were no schools in the farms, for the large tracts of land that stretched for several kilometres that the farms were used to be owned by a few white individuals who could afford to take their children to top boarding schools in town while others had their children learning across regional and international boundaries.
And when we came here our children had to drop out of school only to join later after this school — Zvido — was opened as a satellite school,” said Tinashe’s mother.
She added that nothing was for the community as even dip tanks, dams and roads were personal. It was solely each man for himself and God for us all kind of life. In other words the farms were not developed in a community like structure.
Houses were tucked in thickets and on mountain sides while others were perched on small hill tops surrounded by well pruned vegetation. Workers lived in semi-detached houses in a compound close to the fields or cattle pens far from the white farmer’s spacious house where little or no attention at all was invested on the site let alone the beauty of the structure.
Tinashe’s parents together with hundreds of other villagers from all over the country who have been living crammed in villages where they barely have enough land to set up gardens moved into the farm where they were resettled but the problem remained, that of the schools to send their children to.
The schools that were in communities closer to them were ten or more kilometres away from the farms.
Asked on what they were doing to ensure that they have better structures, she said they were looking for donor commitment on provision of other material so that they start making bricks. She added that although the distances were just too painful especially for those that were in primary school it took them time to come up with a school because some parents were not sure of staying permanently hence they built make-shift houses and would not send children to those far away schools in communal areas.
They therefore resorted to using the dilapidated farm compound as classrooms. It is however, the learning and teaching environment that leaves a lot of questions than answers to passersby.
The children’s sitting arrangement and the buildings although far away from any ordinary visitor in the country would live questions on how Zimbabwe is topping the list in Africa in terms of literacy. And one hopes that the school is not the only one like that in remote rural resettlements in the country.
And it still remains a mystery how education officers navigate their way to assess the school in the rugged terrains of the farms. The teachers are obviously living pitifully there too. They have partitioned among themselves one of the better farm houses close to the school.
“There was nothing that we could have done to service the community of resettled families. This was the best arrangement.
“There are five teachers at this satellite school. We share part of what was the farm compound and children are using what I think was the storeroom. But the biggest problem is that there are no defined walls to demarcate the building and make each class stand out.
“As such children learn in a hall-like classroom sitting back to back while teachers will be facing each other. The condition is not even conducive for proper learning. And you really wonder at the end of the day whether the children would have absorbed anything from such a pitiful set-up,” said one of the teachers.
He said the only other school close by is Guni Primary and Secondary in Gutu district while some go to Zishumbe along the Mutare-Masvingo road which are examination centres.
He added that they teach Grade One up to Four at Zvido Primary School in the farming area. That is however, not as far as the problem goes. The teacher said now that the rainy season was upon them they are forced to suspend class because much of the building has no roof. The part that had rusted corrugated iron sheets was caving in and was balanced by poles.
Primary and Secondary Education deputy minister Prof Paul Mavhima however, said they were aware of the problems of proper education infrastructure in resettlement areas.
He said the country currently has 1 400 satellite schools and efforts were underway to turn most of them into proper schools. He said development of educational infrastructure was in line with Zim Asset.
“The ministry has been seized with this issue since 2013. We have used a number of approaches to deliver on schools infrastructure. Our Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) has been building schools in all provinces of the country. However, this has been slow due to the limited fiscal space.
“Annually Government has been spending upwards of $5million on the construction of new schools and expansion of existing ones as multipleyear projects. In some cases, PSIP has concentrated on delivering science laboratories. Government also has the School Improvement Grant (SIG) which goes mainly to primary schools and satellite secondary schools.
“Most of the satellite secondary schools use the SIG to further develop their infrastructure, while the more established schools use it to renew their infrastructure through repairs of buildings and enhancement of equipment,” said Deputy Minister Mavhima.
He added that the ministry appreciated that it was not enough to meet the demand for infrastructure in schools and was appealing to communities to do everything within their power to contribute to the development of school infrastructure.
Through levies and through their direct contribution of labour and other kind forms, he says, communities make tremendous contributions to infrastructure development, especially in rural schools, most of which are council schools.
Prof Mavhima said Government signed a loan agreement for $20 million which would be used for the construction of 17 new schools, 12 primary schools and 5 secondary schools. This, he said, was a loan from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID).
“The ministry has done a mapping of the school needs of the nation. We are now clear of the fact that we need a total of 2 056 primary and secondary schools to meet the current demand.
“These will certify demand in areas that have been settled following the Land Reform Programme, new urban settlements and increased demand in existing rural communities,” he added.
He said communities should bear with the Government especially in the rainy season as there was a constrained fiscal space but said if the communities were willing to work with Government the targets can be achieved.