Zimbabwe blog: end of term review
Updated on 17 December 2008
The academic year has just ended in Zimbabwe but for most families it has come as a non event, writes guest blogger Helen.
Parents whose children attend rural government schools have reached the point of utter despair after a year in which their children have had less than a month in the classroom.
Lilian is 15 and this year should have finished the first half of her O-level syllabus but at the end of 52 weeks her school writing books have only got two or three pages of writing in them.
All year it has been one thing after another that has kept the classrooms closed: teachers on strike; elections; schools being used as polling booths; post election violence; more elections and then more strikes.
In the last term of the year which began in September, Lilian's parents hoped that at last their daughter might be taught some lessons but by then, after four months of abductions, beatings and post election violence, all the teachers had fled.
The Headmaster said that he had been intimidated into enrolling eighty more students then they had facilities to cope with.
On the first week of term all the children arrived at the school but no teachers turned up. By the second week some children were still walking to school every day but the teachers strike had deepened.
At the beginning of the third week Lilian came back from the school after a couple of hours and said that the classrooms were still locked, the Headmaster hadn't turned up and a caretaker told the children to try again next week.
Six weeks into the semester and at the point when children should have been having a long weekend for half term, Lilian still hadn't seen her teacher, opened a single book or even set foot in her classroom.
In despair her parents began looking for a place for Lilian at other schools. All the other rural government schools were in the same position: closed, without teachers and not offering any chance for a teenage girl to write her O levels.
Mission schools were still operating but because of the collapse of the government schools, the church based institutions were all grossly over-subscribed.
At one Mission school that Lilian's father went to, the Headmaster said that he had been intimidated into enrolling eighty more students then they had facilities to cope with.
If she cannot get some O-levels, Lilian knows that she is destined for a teenage marriage and a life of toil.
These were the children of government cronies and army men and people with connections to the ruling party.
The Headmaster had no choice but to agree to take them in despite the fact that he had run out of desks, chairs and text books and the teacher to pupil ratio was three times more than it should be.
Urban schools were not much better: more students than places; collapsing infrastructure; decrepit equipment and a rapidly dwindling number of teachers.
Lilian and her parents will accept any place at any school for the 2009 academic year. Even with cholera stalking the towns, raw sewage flowing in the streets and alleys of high density areas and no food in the shops, anything is better for Lilian than not being able to finish her schooling.
If she cannot get some O-levels, Lilian knows that she is destined for a teenage marriage and a life of toil growing vegetables and trying to eke out a life engaged in subsistence agriculture in a dusty, primitive village.
