Education in Zimbabwe: Places of hope at a cost

Zimbabwe’s political and socio-economic instability has damaged an education system that once was the pride of Africa, as CLAIRE MATHIESON reports.

Father Joe Arimoso SJ believes Catholic schools still represent a place of hope in troubled Zimbabwe, where the state of education has been profoundly affected by political, economic and social factors—even as these schools have not been unaffected.

“Many parents still believe in the way we educate, so if we respond to that expectation, we can become a place of hope,” said the priest, who works with Jesuit schools.

Most of these parents went to Catholic schools themselves so they still have confidence that Catholic schools still offer that same quality education they had 20 or 30 years ago, he said.

“Unfortunately this belief is true for only, perhaps, 5% of the total 193 schools in Zimbabwe,” Fr Arimoso said.

He said the Jesuit schools represented only one side of the country’s education situation. “As Catholics, good education is not just achieving good academic results. It’s bigger than that.”

But even the top Catholic schools have fallen victim to the socio-economic problems that hit Zimbabwe.

Once the future of Zimbabwe looked bright. Post-independence extremely positive moves were made in education. A strategy for Education Expansion in the 1980s was adopted, resulting in significant achievements in the country’s Human Factor Development.

The nation’s Education for All (EFA) goal resulted in many schools built by government, local authorities and faith-based organisations.

EFA addressed historical issues that had denied access to basic education to the majority of children of primary school going age (6-13).

In addition to the building of new schools (both primary and secondary), EFA made deep-seated reforms, such as the free primary education policy for all children of primary school going age.

Fr Arimoso said that by 1995, some 2,4 million children were enrolled in primary schools—double the number in 1980. Enrolments at the University of Zimbabwe rose to 8 000 in 1995, from a figure of 1481 in 1980—a direct result of the beneficiaries of the EFA strategy.

“There was extensive investment in teacher training, as well as in curriculum development. Zimbabwe appreciably met the original EFA target by 1990, and was able to report among the highest literacy rates in Africa well into this decade,” the Jesuit said.

Fr Arimoso said the first ten years of the country’s independence saw a drastic improvement in both education and health. However, income per capita stagnated.

“Large government spending on the public sector overshadowed private investment, shrinking economic investment and growth and fuelling inflation. It was at this point that socio-economic and political reforms became necessary as an attempt to control runaway inflation, avert the shortage of basic commodities and facilitate for investment and economic growth.”

Many reasons, including the sporadic rainfall and the unstable macro-economic environment and general lack of political good will characterised by a dwindling currency, high inflation, high interest rates and a dismal performance in all sectors of the industry, (mainly the agriculture industry), resulted in the depressive global performance of the Zimbabwean Dollar and the economy generally.

By 2000 economic challenges facing Zimbabwe were visibly affecting the ordinary Zimbabwean household.

“This meant an end to free education and a tiered cost-recovery and cost-sharing education provision system in Zimbabwe’s public schools, and led to a parent-decided fee structure for the private sector. These fee structures were mostly decided by populous votes at parents meetings, often oblivious of the economic demands of the institution for effective education delivery,” said Fr Arimoso.

The government continued to control school fees and levies so they could remain low despite the rising inflation.

Inevitably this resulted in the sustained decline in the provision of basic education, from the previously internationally acclaimed and acceptable standards to an education system that was severely underfunded, underresourced, and functioning way under its capacity.

While there was an almost 100% enrolment for children of school going age (6–18) in 2005, out-of-school children began to surface by mid 2007. These included internally displaced persons, Aids orphans, and drop-outs due to unavailability and unaffordability of school fees.

2008 saw the total collapse of the economy with inflation hitting a world record of over 100000% on the Zimbabwe Dollar. Teachers were lost, mainly to South Africa, after their salaries were reduced to an amount below the poverty line—“an equivalent of less than US$5 a month,” Fr Arimoso said.

Fr Arimoso said infrastructure also deteriorated from both age and lack of maintenance while educational essentials—such as the Curriculum Development Unit, Educational Research and Educational Policy Research and Development—ceased to function due to lack of funding and staffing.

Today, Catholic schools educate nearly 100 000 learners.

Fr Arimoso said there are some Jesuit schools in Zimbabwe that have not been prone to the issues affecting most other schools in the country.

“These schools have sufficient income and style of governance to provide a satisfactory quality of education,” the priest said. However, he added, “one might like to see a deepening of consciousness in some areas and to provide contexts in which these schools share expertise and insight with the less privileged schools”.

But the rest of the Jesuit schools across the country cater for pupils or students who are in danger of being marginalised in society by reason of their socio-economic background, and many of whom are in various states of vulnerability.

“These schools can command only a low income to devote to the necessary infrastructure and consumables that would support reasonable quality education. The net result is that the pupils of these schools are in the greatest need of quality education and least likely to have this need met,” Fr Arimoso said.

Of the 10 000 pupils accommodated in Jesuit educational institutions, roughly 86% are in schools where there is cause for concern about the socio-economic status of the students and the ability of the schools to meet the pupils’ needs.

Fr Arimoso said one of the problems facing the Catholic education system in Zimbabwe is that quality education comes at a cost.

“Catholic schools need to find a way of offering good education for reasonable fees. At the moment it is getting too expensive for many poor parents to educate their children. This year an average Catholic school is charging between R3500 and R4000 per year. It’s a small group in society which will have access to that kind of education.” The top Jesuit schools in the country charge up to R41 000 per annum.

Fr Arimoso said a third of school fees go towards subsidising teachers’ salaries as the government wage is so poor.

The Jesuits in Zimbabwe run a range of schools, from some of the most prominent and richest schools in the country to very poor schools in rural areas.

“The biggest challenge, I suppose, for all Catholic schools is to give quality education to poor communities who are not able to pay high fees,” Fr Arimoso said.