No Teachers

Teacher exodus reached new heights this month and there are genuine fears that when the new term starts on January 8, 2008, lessons might fail to take off. What is certain is that there will be massive disruptions of lessons across the country, both in primary and secondary schools.
In the past week alone, five high schools in the Matabeleland region – St James Mission, Mtshabezi, Manama, Embakwe and Minda High Schools – came out into the open about the impending catastrophe, when they advertised in the public media for a total of more than 50 teaching posts.
The situation is equally grave in other schools across the country. They have a reputation to maintain and are keen to safeguard standards but admit they are fighting a losing academic battle.
St James Mission High has suddenly found itself with vacancies for seven A-Level teaching posts, four O-Level and an unspecified number for computer lessons.
A teacher at the all-girls school, which over the years has proved to be one of the best nationally, painted a bleak picture of the situation.
“The teachers are leaving in large numbers. The economic situation here is forcing teachers to quit the profession altogether or leave for other countries. It’s really tough as you are aware,” said the female teacher, who requested anonymity.
She said the school had a student enrolment of about 600 and was not sure what the staff complement was now, but she was quick to point out that one thing was certain – the student-teacher ratio is getting worse everyday.
“It doesn’t mean that some of us who are still here are happy. We are not. We are just waiting for our time to get out of this country,” she said.
Last year the school recorded a 66 percent pass rate at O-Level and an impressive 94 percent at A-Level.
Traditionally, civil servants, including teachers, get salary reviews in January. However, in recent years this has proved an ineffective way of addressing the workers’ grievances as one month down the line, the hyper-inflationary environment would have seriously eroded that increase, leading to disgruntlement.
In a bid to attract the few teachers still willing to serve in Zimbabwe and survive on the paltry salary of about Z$17 million a per month (about R56), in a country where a mobile phone SIM card can cost up to Z$120 million (about R400) on the black market, the only place where they are readily available, St James High is offering incentives such as a one-off 50 percent of one’s monthly salary, breakfast, lunch and transport to and from town over the weekends.
This school and others are also offering various incentives such as free accommodation, water and electricity, periodical review of retention allowances and use of computers and access to free Internet.
But this does not seem to entice the teachers at all as the flight to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Britain, New Zealand and Australia continues unabated.
According to figures released by the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, about 15 000 competent and highly qualified teachers have left the profession so far this year – an average of 1 300 teachers leaving every month.
Gateway School Trust, which runs a junior and high school in Emerald Hill, Harare, admitted recently that it would lose up to 20 teachers and the headmaster, mostly to South Africa.
The recent pronouncement by the government of its intention to bond newly-qualified teachers seems to have really upset the student teachers, with most of them praying for the delay in the implementation.
There are genuine fears that this development, if implemented, could lead to a total collapse of the teaching profession in the country.
“I’m finishing my studies next year and it would be a disaster if I were to be bonded by this government which seems to derive satisfaction from our suffering,” said Themba Dube, a student at Hillside Teacher Training College in Bulawayo.
He feels that bonding is not the answer but looking after the welfare of the teachers, and other professionals, is what is needed to stem brain drain.
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe has already expressed opposition to bonding, saying this would not bring an improvement in wages and working conditions.
Minister of Education, Sport and Culture, Aeneas Chigwedere, recently told Parliament that more incentives to improve teachers’ conditions of service would be unveiled to curb the exodus.
Chigwedere said it was difficult to swiftly replace teachers who left, as they would not have resigned, but absconded.
“There is no long-term strategy to fill in the gaps because this is a sudden development which we cannot take as permanent. The teachers who are leaving are absconding, they are not retiring, they are not resigning,” he said.
But as the unprecedented teacher exodus continues, it is the pupils who will feel the pinch mostly, as they may discover at the start of the new term that they have to make do with a serious teaching staff shortage, which might require that they hop from one school to the other in search of better equipped institutions.
The standards of education in Zimbabwe, for a long time the envy of Africa and beyond, are fast deteriorating and the solution does not appear unattainable any time soon. – CAJ News