A PARLIAMENTARY debate on the state of the country’s education last week exposed Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora as not well-versed with what is happening in his ministry.
NewsDay Editorial
This came about after Senators had demanded to know from Dokora why schoolchildren were continuously chased away for non-payment of fees when government issued a circular to say no child should be excluded for that reason.
But Dokora told the Senate in situations where parents were genuinely incapable of paying fees, their children should be covered by the government’s Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) scheme. This was despite the fact that the scheme has virtually collapsed due to poor government funding.
It appears the minister does not know that headmasters and School Development Committee members are chasing away children under Beam because government has not been paying the schools.
In January this year, principal director of Social Welfare Sydney Mhishi told Parliament that 900 000 children under Beam might find themselves out of school due to lack of funding.
The gaffe was not surprising at all because the minister appears determined to take Zimbabwe’s education back to the dark years rather than improve the sector through his experiments which obviously are not workable.
It appears Dokora does not take advice or resents it when it comes from technocrats in his ministry. What a sad development! It is regrettable for the country’s education to go back to the lost decade when trained teachers left the country in hordes because of lack of recognition by the government.
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Sadly, it is the poor majority whose children will not access education, while fatcats’ children and relatives enjoy at private schools at the expense of Zimbabweans.
The education sector had significantly recovered during the tenure of the inclusive government from 2009 until July last year.
The country had hoped that whoever succeeded then Education minister David Coltart, would carry the torch forward, but dumb as some politicians are, they decided to dump the policies of the inclusive government especially as it related to education.
Since assuming office, Dokora banned extra lessons, incentives for teachers and vacation school without consulting the teachers, parents and unions who are major players in the sector.
It is clear that Dokora has run out of ideas because how else would one explain his recent pronouncement that traditional chiefs can help schools recover money from parents failing to pay school fees in rural areas?
Allowing traditional leaders to recover school fees would create anarchy and confusion in schools as School Development Associations and school authorities would be rendered powerless.
Dokora needs to discard his I-know-it-all mentality and arrogance and start consulting stakeholders to ensure normalcy in the all-important education sector.
He must not take the sector back to the pre-2008 era where children were not learning, teachers not paid, resulting in strikes or go-slows.
His partiality over the handling of teachers, headmasters and schoolchildren’s issues is sickening. Recently, he only allowed vacation school for selected schools because his children or relatives attended the schools.
