Second Republic: Ensuring universal access to education
Whereas the old normal focused our attention solely on school/classroom infrastructure, on teaching aids and on the learner’s distance to and from the nearest school, the new normal refocuses us towards availability of electricity and connectivity in learners’ homes. Above all, it raises a key question of the learner’s access to electronic gadgets. Learning has now migrated to a new level where it is mediated by technology.
CONCEIVED and developed more than five decades ago in circumstances of struggle, our philosophy on education needed a major rethink. This was attempted through the Nziramasanga Commission.
Barely two decades after that commission tabled its findings, we face yet another rapidly changing situation which our education system must now measure up to if we are to stay abreast.
Technology
The past two decades have seen the world transitioning to a digital era.
As a result, today’s world is driven by technologies.
We have tried to keep up with this digital age by making our education speak to various technologies that shape our globalised world.
Hence the new thrust we have dubbed 5.0 whose centrepiece is science, technology and innovation.
Since 2019, the global Covid-19 pandemic reshaped and recast the world.
This pandemic hit our shores in early 2020. Since then, its attack on our society has been unremitting.
Although we have done well to control it, no one knows when this pandemic will be defeated.
Among sectors hit hardest by this global pandemic is that of education.
This is hardly surprising: learning is a high-contact, face-to-face classroom affair.
For that reason, it gets a direct hit from a highly contagious virus that Covid-19 is.
Worldwide and especially in 2020 and 2021, face-to-face teaching programmes were wholly suspended indefinitely as a coping mechanism.
Today we have a new situation, a new normal in the education sector which has totally altered the delivery of knowledge to the learner.
For more than two decades, Zimbabwe has been under illegal sanctions imposed on us by countries of the West.
We have had to learn to strike it out on our own, with ever diminishing support from our traditional partners defined by our peculiar colonial history.
We have had to look inward and elsewhere for solutions, principally by leveraging our own resources, developing and upgrading our own skills and technologies that we need to make development possible.
There are many other factors I could summon to show how changed the world now is, directly impinging education.
Let me focus and concentrate on just these three: technology, Covid-19 and illegal sanctions.
Starting from a very basic premise that our education must mould a citizen who is useful and productive to, and able to cope with, the society they live in, it goes without saying that the three aforementioned strong factors have a direct bearing on the education we dispense to our children.
An education system based on analogue technologies cannot create a citizen who survives, let alone copes and succeeds in a digital world.
He/she is sure to drown.
It is that plain.
Covid-19 has created a new normal for our whole planet.
Those seeking to survive under an old normal, face the fate of the dinosaur.
They literally perish for want of adaptation skills they need to survive in, and outlive this viral global pandemic.
Again, it is that stark and grim.
Sanctions
Sanctions are real. They are meant to isolate us by excluding us from the global mainstream
all-round.
But we cannot wring our hands in despair, hoping for a change of heart on the part of those who have decided to attack our sovereignty, our economy and our heritage, merely because we reclaimed what belongs to us, namely our Land.
While they can impose punitive sanctions on us, they cannot impose sanctions on our God, our God-given natural resources, the rains that nourish our bounteous earth, or simply our capacity to think innovatively.
With God, our natural and human resources, abundant rains and collective willpower, nothing can stop us.
That is our defence against those who harbour ill-will against us.
Reviewing our present situation — both national and global — and consistent with our overriding belief that NYIKA INOVAKWA NEVENE VAYO, key facts present themselves starkly to those of us in leadership.
First, the knowledge-driven world and era we now inhabit makes access to suitable education both a right and an overriding necessity.
The notion of basic education today means a lot more than the traditional three Rs, and the mere ability to read and write.
Basic education
Basic education now means the ability to do technology: to read and tackle reality through computers.
The computer has become a basic requirement and platform for searching for, delivering and dispensing, knowledge.
The blackboard has now been replaced by a computer screen.
This just has to be availed to today’s learner, whether in class or in his or her home environment.
Covid-19
Second, in the Covid-19-induced new normal, teaching has become impersonal and technology-driven.
Again, this takes us away from blackboards to computers screens, while replacing the traditional classroom with the learner’s re-configured home.
Exigencies of public health and need to defeat Covid-19 pandemic simply have redrawn the geographies and settings for learning, well away from what we have been accustomed to.
It is a seismic shift where learners are no longer a physical community imbibing knowledge under the direct physical watch of a teacher in the same physical space of a classroom.
Investing in infrastructure for education and learning today thus means transforming homes and standard of living for learners in their home situation.
Learning is now more than mere pedagogy in the traditional sense we have been accustomed to; more than ever before, it is a social question that impinges on the level of technological development of our people, their homes and our society as a whole.
Whereas the old normal focused our attention solely on school/classroom infrastructure, on teaching aids and on the learner’s distance to and from the nearest school, the new normal refocuses us towards availability of electricity and connectivity in learners’ homes.
Above all, it raises a key question of the learner’s access to electronic gadgets.
Learning has now migrated to a new level where it is mediated by technology.
It is now online, to use language of the new normal.
Third and last, the disruptions which sanctions have wreaked on our economy and our livelihoods, especially at household level, mean that many families are unable to cope, let alone finance the whole shift to a technology-intensive education which is the order of the day.
The gadgets, which have become key platforms for the learner, are hard to come by; data is expensive; electricity is either unavailable or unaffordable.
Not many families afford solar panels. Yet learners have to enrol daily into virtual classes which require a totally new living and learning milieu.
It is thus not surprising that we are experiencing many dropouts from our educational system.
Government is very concerned about this negative development, which require urgent solutions.
Free education
Against the foregoing and starting next year, Government will push for a phased access to universal free education wholly funded by the State. We must make primary education free and universal next year, in 2023.
This entails more than Government just taking over payment of school fees for all pupils in primary school.
It means meeting the full costs of transiting to a new dispensation where technology mediates learning.
Each primary school-going child has to have access to a tablet at Government expense.
Equally, primary schools will have to have access to electricity and electronic signals for online teaching. This is a huge public intervention we no longer can postpone anymore.
While learning materials will continue to be availed in hard copy, a transition to electronic textbooks must be accelerated.
This new direction and responsibility to Government means all ministries, facilitated by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, must weigh in with supportive infrastructure to realise this educational goal which is in line with our Vision 2030.
I will develop a particular interest in checking the pace at which rural schools in historically depressed areas are assisted to make this vital transition.
This will be a key marker for the success of our programme.
Our private sector should, as much as it can, complement Government in its quest to deliver on this programme.
I specifically call upon our ICT Ministry to rework and adjust their ICT Policy so data for essential services, principally education, is availed at affordable tariffs.
The same holds for our Energy Policy which must ensure electricity services and manageable tariffs for all our schools, starting with primary schools where education will be free, starting next year. Both conventional and green power should be harnessed towards this goal.
Our rural electrification programme must be intensified to bring power to the classroom where learning takes place.
ICT services
Hard behind this must be ICT services so our thrust is seamless. In the coming weeks and months, Government will weigh different funding models and options in support of this decision. We have several options.
We could fund this programme directly through budget allocations to concerned Ministries. We could also approach funding through resources devolved to our provinces.
Equally, we could target communities and learners through Constituency Development Funds.
Lastly, we could develop a hybrid model from all three avenues. Whichever route we take, it must be efficient and deliver on results we want to see in the shortest possible time.
Of course the working conditions for our teaching staff must continue to be reviewed to make them attractive and motivating.
We must invest in our children, who are the future leaders of our nation.
Above all, Zimbabwe should continue to lead the continent on total, functional literacy.