Public-private partnerships to address schools deficit

Source: The Chronicle – Breaking news

 

Construction of a classroom block at Secondary School in Tsholotsho

Nqobile Tshili, nqobile.tshili@chronicle.co.zw

THE Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Mr Moses Mhike has said the Government will leverage on public-private partnerships to address schools deficit.

There has been an increase in the number of citizens who are building schools to address schools shortage as the country has a deficit of 2 800 schools.

The shortage of schools has seen some schools with an enrolment of as many as 3 000 pupils which ordinarily should translate to three schools.

Speaking on the sidelines of a strategic meeting in Bulawayo last week, Mr Mhike said one of the biggest challenges is the provision of schools across the country. 

“We still have under-serviced areas such as resettled areas where we still don’t have schools in those areas. You go to our high-density areas, we have what we call mega schools where we have an enrolment of up to 3 000 pupils which means three schools in one,” he said.

Mr Mhike said Government was engaging funding partners to assist in addressing the shortage of schools. 

He said what was encouraging was that there is an increasing number of schools being built by private players.

Mr Mhike said the ministry is also going to engage mining companies to construct schools as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. 

He said the ministry using Treasury funding will concentrate on upgrading existing satellite schools so that they become fully fledged schools.

Mr Mhike also noted that the shortage of human resources was affecting the delivery of quality education.

“If you look internally as a ministry in terms of our administrative vacancies, we have quite a lot of vacancies, one of the worrying vacancy levels is that of school inspectors. These are the people who are supposed to be going to our schools and inspect our teaching and learning,” he said. 

Mr Mhike said school inspectors have an important role of ensuring schools are properly administered. Presently there are two school inspectors per district instead of nine.

Mr Mhike said the ministry has started to engage the Public Service Commission to allow it to recruit more school inspectors. 

“Let me share with you the envelope that we have been given for 2024. It is about $6,7 trillion and out of that $5,8 trillion is going towards wages and salaries. It then leaves us with something close to above a trillion, which is not enough to construct schools, fund the sanitary  wear programme and buy textbooks,” he said.

Mr Mhike said ideally the ministry should have been allocated $10 trillion which was going to enable it to cover issues such as staff vehicles, buy computers and digitalise their operations. 

“This process is just a review of our strategy running from 2021 to 2025. Each and every year we sit as top management of the ministry so that we can look and reflect on our achievements and failures,” he said.

Speaking during the same event, Primary and Secondary Education Deputy Minister Angeline Gata said the ministry is aiming to improve the delivery of quality education in the coming year.

“As a ministry, we seek to provide efficiency and inclusivity and we should leave no one and no place behind. We have put instruments in place to look at the most disadvantaged pupils and areas,” she said.

“We are going to start with them to revitalise them, we are going to reach out to them. Even people with disabilities, we are going to reach out to them, they have been left behind before and we are taking them on board and considering their needs.”

Deputy Minister Gata said the strategic meeting is critical in crafting the strategy to guide the ministry in the coming year.

“This is a review of strategies that are already in place to see how they are working, where we have a gap, what needs to be addressed and what needs to be strengthened so that we come up with the way forward in the year 2024,” she said.

Deputy Minister Gata said her ministry will continue to lobby Treasury for more resources. 

“With the help of our partners, we have managed to build new classroom blocks using devolution funds and constituency development funds. We are also doing our curriculum review inline with National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1),” she said.

“We have achieved the schools feeding programme which is also in line with NDS1.”