He said that donor support for the country’s education sector hinged on the outcome of the next elections. In May, the European Union delegation to Zimbabwe contributed $17 million to the second phase of the Education Transition Fund which has seen Zimbabwe reaching a 1:1 pupil/textbook ratio.
This month, EU head of delegation, Aldo Dell Ariccia, told The Zimbabwean that the continental block was ready to increase funding to developmental projects in Zimbabwe working with a government that comes out of free, fair, transparent and credible polls. “The elections must be credible and after the elections, it's important to ensure that policies that had been put in place continue to be implemented.
Already, we have money that is waiting to be spent on a variety of projects and without donor support, it’s hard to think where the money to fund the education sector would come from,” said Coltart.
Coltart warned that sham polls would reverse progress made in restoring sanity to the education sector. “In the last four years, we have stabilised the education sector and now we are supposed to implement a variety of programmes to improve the efficiency and quality of the education sector. “My worry is that if the policies we have implemented over the past four years are going to be reversed after the election, that will have a very negative effect on efforts to restore sanity to the education sector,” said Coltart.
Coltart expressed concern that some political activists were failing to heed calls not to use learning institutions for political activities. “I am still concerned about schools being used for political rallies but I haven’t yet received reports of teachers being kidnapped,” said Coltart.
Last month, the Secretary General of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, Raymond Majongwe, said the victimisation of teachers in some rural areas had escalated ahead of elections. He said teachers were being victimised for their allegiance to the MDC-T.
Post published in: News