Today, some of my classmates are doctors, a few are professors at good universities, others have done well in business and the professions. They are all real achievers and recognised as such. But that has nothing to do with where they came from – we were a rough bunch and came from a generally poor community.
It was the school that gave us our foundation for life and I think this lesson has to be learned and appreciated by all in our society if we are to give education its rightful place and spend what is needed to empower the next generation.
Education costs money. In the new budget for 2013, the MDC has committed over 27 per cent of the national budget to education– much more than is called for under AU guidelines. For the first time our national state expenditure on education will exceed $1 billion. But the reality is that spread across 3,2 million children of school going age and perhaps 150,000 students in tertiary institutions, it’s a pretty thin budget. It also has to provide salaries for about 120,000 professional teachers and administrators.
That’s $225 per child per year, $1,600 per student per year in tertiary education. My own grandchildren all go to private schools at a cost of about $3,600 a year each. When they go to university, if they go outside the country, it will cost their parents $6,000 a year or more.
It is critical that the state continue to commit a bigger share of national tax revenues to education. Included in the Millennium Goals for 2015 are universal education rights, but they are not doing a great deal to ensure that poor countries can actually provide a decent system of basic education. Here in Zimbabwe the international community spends about $900 million a year, of which only about $50 million finds its way to education.
We have to set up a benchmark against which we set our goals for funding. In a country like ours I suggest the benchmark is a five-year-old girl child, from a peasant family in the rural areas, who has to walk six km to school.
When she walks through that gate, she should be safe, able to have a food supplement if food is in short supply at home, meet her teachers in a clean, well-built classroom that has electricity and be taught by a well-trained and motivated teacher. She should also have access to the international world of the internet and IT services.
Is that too high a benchmark; too far ahead of our ability to fund the system? I do not think so if we get our priorities right and put our collective shoulders to the wheel. What is needed is to first empower the child – give her the basic resources to pay for her own education by adopting a basic school grant system. Instead of funding the teachers and the school directly, give each child a grant per month that can accrue to the school they chose to go to. Put the power into the hands of the child and her parents. Make the schools compete for students, punish schools that do not perform or give service.
Secondly, involve the parents in every aspect of the education system; put school boards in charge – elected by parents. Give them responsibility for selecting and paying teachers. Give the teaching profession the right to negotiate terms of employment with their employers. Provide enough money to pay teachers as professionals who are highly regarded and respected in their communities. Give teachers the opportunity to buy their own homes and vehicles through special credit schemes. Provide the profession with decent retirement rights. Pay special attention to Heads of Schools.
Thirdly, provide for a rigorous system of education with a curriculum that will prepare every child for life in the career of their choice. National examinations that will give the schools and their parents and future employers real standards against which they can assess the abilities of every child.
Fourthly, provide financial support systems that will ensure that every child can complete at least 12 years of formal education before they have to start making a living.
If we put such systems into place, parents would make sacrificial efforts to make sure that it happened. Foreign donors could be sure that the money they put into the system at any level (school nutritional support, school grant aid support or individually targeted financial support for children from poor families or orphans) was well spent and productive.
No other programme of government would yield bigger or better results. No other programme could empower and enable the least advantaged in our societies. Nothing could compare to this as an investment in our common future.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis