Education: Shaking off colonial baggage
“EDUCATION must constitute the basis of man’s development of his vocational, cultural and political growth”, so avers Karl Marx.
An ideal education system, therefore, should strive to build a complete individual with the agency to probe the reasons for being as well as interrogate the world around him/her without having to kowtow to political whim through adherence to inflexible set curricula.
He/she should be able to contribute to his own vocational, cultural and political growth and that of the broader constituencies that make it possible to change outcomes for the common good.
Zimbabwe’s colonial education system, however, was a repressive non-thinking machine subtly designed to keep the African poor; physically, politically, socially, spiritually, mentally and psychologically.
It was a collective project that taught black people to be docile and obedient consumers of instructions dubiously called knowledge or education.
The teacher in such a system is erroneously depicted as someone with control and ownership of knowledge, which knowledge he/ she can either hold or give in relation to set rules of compliance, with his/her charges portrayed as automatons requiring guidance from the “master”, thus justifying colonialism as an enlightenment vehicle.
The deliberate colonial tilt was for whites, whose education was made compulsory and free up to university level.
The syllabuses were also mischievously distinct, so that the colour bar could be discernible with the master-servant relationship heightened.
There were schools meant for white children only, where a different culture aimed at uplifting the settler community was pursued at the expense of the African.
It is such a status quo that the Government of Zimbabwe disrupted at Independence in April 1980 through the Ministry of Education and Culture headed by Dzingai Mutumbuka.
Fay Chung would also make great strides in the late 1980s and early 1990s in ascertaining the complete decolonisation of the African through education in all its variables.
Such strides are cause for celebration as the nation State of Zimbabwe turns 40 on April 18, 2020.
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, as it is now known, is headed by Minister Cain Mathema and deputised by Edgar Moyo with Tumisang Thabela as the Permanent Secretary.
Mandate
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s mandate is premised on the vision to bring Zimbabweans together through education pivoted on Unhu/Ubuntu and patriotism where balance, competitiveness and self-reliance are key pillars.
The ministry is obligated to improve the quality of education for Zimbabweans by developing and providing syllabuses and teaching materials for all schools, reinforcing the learning and teaching of Education Information Communication Technology (EICT) in all schools, evaluating educational materials and programmes and improving the quality of human capital in all schools.
Functions
The functions of the ministry are to provide and promote quality, inclusive, holistic and relevant Infant (ECD A and B, Grade One and Two), Junior (Grade Three -Seven) and Secondary education; foster strategic planning and development, research, implementation, monitoring and review of polices for the growth of primary and secondary education; review the curriculum with a bias towards Mathematics, Science, Technology, Information Communication Technology (ICT), Entrepreneurship and orientation towards industry; promote the mainstreaming, access to and participation in school sport, arts and culture; administer all public examinations (Grade Seven, Ordinary and Advanced levels); and provide and facilitate the acquisition of essential equipment for education.
The colonial legacy
The “City of Salisbury Official Guide” informs of Allan Wilson, one of the schools meant for whites: “Named after Major Allan Wilson, leader of the Shangani Patrol, (the school) was founded in 1940 as a modern high school for boys . . . The present bias is towards mechanical engineering, though other branches of technical work such as building, construction, electrical engineering and automobile engineering are envisaged in the future.”
The school offered technical education exclusively to whites in tandem with settler racist laws. Knowledge and skills were clearly separated with emphasis on practical skills gained through exposure and premised on talent. The African was excluded from this system. The same Guide reveals that: “It has been mentioned that high schools provide for Europeans. There is as yet no proper secondary education for Coloureds and Asiatics, though a modest start in Bulawayo is planned for 1952”.
Sixty-two years after settler occupation, there was no secondary school for coloureds and Asiatics (Asians), and one high school (Goromonzi established in 1946) for Africans.
In 1968 there were only six secondary schools for Africans with only two of them offering Advanced-Level classes.
Only two percent of black children were allowed into Form One, and only one percent were allowed into O-Level. Only a handful of those allowed into O-Level could make it to A-Level.
Hungry for education in a quest to improve their lot, and conscious of the bottleneck system against them, the two percent of black children allowed into Form One would achieve at least a 70 percent pass rate through hard work and determination.
The colonial agenda was to see to it that blacks would not outnumber whites at university. In the 1960s only a third of the 300 students at the University of Zimbabwe (University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland) which opened its doors in 1952, were blacks and less than a dozen of them were Asians and coloureds.
Shaking off the colonial baggage The immediate task was to repeal the discriminatory Education Act of 1979. Since Independence in 1980, the Government of Zimbabwe committed a significant share of the National Budget towards education.
Education was made compulsory and free for primary school up to 1991. Fees were reintroduced in 1992, but they were kept as low as possible, with schools in high density suburbs required to pay $20 per term and those in low density suburbs paying $70.
The ministry used the bulk of the fees to develop rural schools. In 1992, $98 million of the fees was earmarked for that cause.
In 1992 the Ministry of Education and Culture (now Primary and Secondary Education) was allocated $1 806 million, which was 32 percent of the National Budget. This was so because the Government considered education as a basic human right necessary for social, political, cultural and economic development.
The number of schools increased exponentially since Independence in 1980 due to the expansionary education policy embarked on. The post-2000 Land Reform Programme saw more satellite schools being constructed.
Because figures do not lie, numbers would suffice here.
There were 177 secondary schools in 1979. The number rose to 1 512 in 1992, 2 424 in 2014 and to 2 871 by 2018.
In 1980, 74 320 pupils were enrolled in secondary school, and the number increased to 661 369 in 1990 (378 115 males and 283 254 females) and 979 644 in 2014. The figures subsequently surged to 1 093 550 (Form OneForm Six) in 2018 with almost equal numbers for males and females.
In 1979 there were 2 401 primary schools with an enrolment of 819 586 (437 685 males and 381 901 females). Through the ministry’s expansionary policies, the figures rose to 4 549 primary schools in 1990 with 2 083 506 enrolled (1 072 846 males and 1 010 660 females). In 1992 enrolment increased to three million. By 2014 there were 5 863 primary schools in Zimbabwe.
At least 203 418 girls were enrolled in primary school in 1982, although 28 percent of them dropped out by the time they got to Grade Seven. In
1981, 231 711 girls enrolled and 59,3 percent dropped out before Form One in 1988).
Enrolment in primary school gained on the 1990 figures (2 083 506) to 2 725 970 pupils (1 356 828 females and 1 369 142 males) in 2018 with females constituting 49,77 percent. Of this number three quarters (70 percent) were in rural areas. About 70 percent of pupils in secondary school were enrolled in rural areas in 2018.
The slant towards the provision of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) centres or pre-schools paid off. In 2018, there were 6 242 schools with Education and Childhood Development (ECD) and a total of 6 288 primary schools.
In 1980 12 000 candidates sat O-Level examinations and 7 800 of them passed at least five subjects, translating to a 65 percent pass rate, and in 1990, 200 000 wrote the examinations with 33 percent of them passing, up from the 1989 figure of 30,8 percent.
Though the pass rate was down in 1990 as compared to 1989, more candidates passed (66 000) with 30 000 of them qualifying for A-Level. But there were only 8 000 places for A-Level countrywide.
Today 30 000 candidates proceed to A-level and another 20 000 enrol at tertiary institutions — for vocational, polytechnic and university education.
In 2018, 239 441 wrote ZIMSEC O-Level examinations. In 2019, 296 464 sat the examinations with 31,6 percent of them attaining at least five subjects, down from the 32,83 percent recorded in 2018. Basing on numbers 93 682 candidates passed at least five O-Level subject in 2019, thus marginally gaining on the 1980 (7 800) and 1990 (66 000) figures. In 2019, 50 774 candidates wrote two or more subjects, at A-Level and 42 169 obtained Grade E or better in two or more subjects, translating to 83,1 percent pass rate, an increase of 1,2 percentage points from 81,9 percent recorded in 2018. The number of female candidates that sat the 2019 ‘A’-Level examinations was 19 877. Out of this number, 19 689 wrote two or more subjects and 17 525 passed two or more subjects, yielding an 89 percent pass rate.
To correct colonial imbalances that created gaps between knowledge and practical skills, in 1980 the ministry established the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMPEF) (with Fay Chung as chairperson) which emphasised the provision of education with specific vocational training programmes, thus bridging the breach.
The idea was to link pupils with farms using labour-intensive technology for them to gain practical skills and grow their own food.
A good example of the initiative is Rusununguko Secondary School in Bromley.
The school was originally built for ex-combatants and their children after the liberation war.
The well-equipped school was constructed on a 1 200-hectare farm bought for $120 000 from the Murphy family by the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMPEF) in 1980.
The institution had an enrolment of 800 boarding pupils and 100 day scholars in 1991, with 250 of them being girls. Rusununguko shared the land with a commercial farm owned by ZIMPEF which provided pupils with practical skills in addition to what they got at the school.
All the classrooms and facilities were built by the ex-combatants and other pupils with their teachers supervising them, thus cutting costs to a third of the usual cost.
Now that’s education with production! The quest for social justice through righting past wrongs created gaps in human capital as more teachers were required. To mitigate this challenge, the Government came up with training initiatives in the form of the Zimbabwe Integrated National Teacher Education Course (ZINTEC)—aimed at providing adequate teachers to cope with expansion in enrolment, and the Associate Teacher Programme—an intermediate state towards the Certificate in Education for those with O-Levels and teaching as untrained teachers.
The target was to train over 21 000 teachers under a crash training programme (Associate Teacher Programme) for teachers between 1991 and 1993. The course was aimed at drilling untrained primary school teachers through a grant from the Kellog Foundation of the United States of America starting from April 1990.
Teachers were also upgraded to meet the changing trends in education through the introduction of courses such as the Bachelor of Education (B.ED) and Master of Education (M.ED) at the University of Zimbabwe.
About 14 000 teachers graduated from teacher training institutions between 1990 and 1992.
To date there are 15 086 ECD teachers, 58,45 percent of whom are trained. Trained teachers for Grades One to Seven constitute 97,14 percent of the total number of 72 512 with females comprising about 48 percent.
The number of secondary school teachers was 43 361 in 2014, and increased to 46 160 in 2018 of which 85,47 percent are trained (Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Statistics Report 2019).
According to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Statistics Report 2019, the total number of teachers in Zimbabwe as of 2018 (from ECD to secondary school) was 133 758, up from 84 000 in 1992.
In 1985, Government launched the Audit Literacy Campaign aimed at wiping out illiteracy among the estimated 2,5 million illiterate people in the country.
Adult Literacy Organisation of Zimbabwe (ALOZ), a non-profit organisation dating back to 1970 aimed at achieving 100 percent literacy by the year 2000.
By 1990 there were 1 036 trained adult literacy teachers with 89 training centres established in Harare alone.
In 1985 literacy rate among those aged 15 and above was at 74 percent as compared to 68,8 percent in 1980.
Today Zimbabwe’s literacy rate is at 94 percent, which means 94 percent of Zimbabweans can read and write.
By 1991 the curricula at all levels underwent transformation throughout the education system with new syllabuses introduced in all subjects.
O-Level examinations were localised to make the content relevant to the country’s needs. Ndebele and Shona languages were made compulsory at primary and secondary levels.
Cognitive of the colonial burden that projected the teacher as a know-it-all individual with monopoly on knowledge, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education revamped the education curriculum in 2016.
The obtaining rationale is that for learning to be effective as a vehicle for ferrying the concerns espoused by the curriculum as informed by societal considerations, and mirrored in individual subject structures, it should follow a learning process, which incorporates both the needs of the learner and those of the teacher, who functions in loco parentis, so that society becomes the ultimate winner.
Audio Visual Services began in 1948 through the Southern Rhodesia Department of Education to provide a schools broadcasting service, were also overhauled to give impetus to the aspirations of the new nation-Zimbabwe.
Radio 4—an educational radio channel opened on October 4, 1982 for schools education purposes on behalf of the ministry.
To show its commitment to keeping up with technological trends the ministry sourced three computers from Apple Computer on behalf of Bare, Howard and Nzvimbo secondary schools in Nzvimbo Chiweshe worth $85 000 in 1992 to link them with 190 other schools globally.
Teachers have been trained, and continue to be trained in Information Communication Technology (ICT), thus benefiting thousands of pupils in primary and secondary schools across the country who are now computer literate. Efforts have also been made to provide schools, especially those in rural schools, with computers.
Today Zimbabwe boasts of 13 polytechnics, 13 teachers’ colleges, 43 vocational training centres and up to 16 quasi-Government and independent research institutions.
It also has 13 State universities and seven private ones.