Education intervention

The Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, said this during his presentation of the 2011 National Budget to Parliament on Thursday last week. The Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture received a vote of US$469 367 000 up from last years US$316 947 375. The challenge facing the country is that of establishing the conditions of learning and of course respecting and restoring the status of the teacher, said Biti.

He admitted that the countrys once enviable education standards had plummeted to the lowest levels and had seen a national pass rate of only 19.7 per cent at O-level and 39.7 per cent for Grade 7 in 2009. He said the government remained committed to building on the initiatives of the 2009-10 budget which targeted infrastructural rehabilitation. The initiatives will also target water provision, sanitation and computerization.

The 2011 Budget will therefore focus on supporting the on-going rehabilitation works and expansion of existing facilities, upgrading of water and sanitation infrastructure as well as procuring of teaching and learning materials, said Biti. A total of 6 566 school have been targeted for rehabilitation at a cost of US$23 million. Of these, 480 are government schools and 6 076 are local authority schools. Biti said the current state of infrastructure had forced most schools to resort to hot-sitting; a strategy that he said was compromising the quality of education.

At the moment, 26 per cent of primary schools in the country are in need of repair. In addition to this, 555 secondary schools and 399 primary schools do not have a single desk.

Biti also increased pupil grants from US$13.8 million in 2010 to US$15.5. The move is meant to augment school development in line with the governments decentralized system. The increased grants will also lessen the burden on parents who have been suffering under the burden of exorbitant levies.

He also said the government would continue to engage partners like Unicef in addressing the shortage of learning materials. Currently, the pupil-textbook ratio is 1:15. Biti also announced that the government had set aside US$1.4m for the procurement of vehicles to be used in the supervision of schools. In a veiled promise to address teacher salaries, Biti said the government remained committed to improving the conditions of service for its workforce. It is the governments vision, he said, to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio, currently pegged at 1:40.