Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

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Moving forward in Zimbabwe Reducing poverty and promoting growth The area of pre-primary education showed significant achievement, as 64 per cent of first graders in Zimbabwe had preschool background in 2006. There were rural-urban differentials, with 67 per cent of all urban Grade 1 pupils having attended pre-school, compared with 63 per cent for rural areas. This is a relatively favourable figure that ranks Zimbabwe as sixth in the provision of pre-primary education within the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This is somewhat surprising, given that all other figures showed a decline. The main explanation for this is that although the state provides the curriculum, this level of education is highly dependent on parental initiative and control, with a very small subsidy from the state. Although the rate of transition to secondary education was 69.7 per cent in 2003-2004, there is a greater erosion of enrolments at secondary level, with 827,820 enrolled in Forms 1-4 in 2001 and only 774,921 in 2006, a drop of some 9.4 per cent, at a time when the population was still increasing. The number of students sitting for the ‘O’ level examinations also fluctuated, with the highest number of candidates reaching 159,700 in 2000, compared to 149,263 in 2005, a drop of 6.8 per cent (Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture, 2007a: 136). Lack of school fees and examination fees, combined with the large number of orphans, mainly due to HIV/ AIDS deaths, has led to high dropouts. However enrolment in the sixth form continued to increase, from 31,505 in 2001 to 56,566 in 2006, an 80 per cent increase. A similar trend is found at the tertiary level, with a doubling of the number of universities and with enrolments increasing to 56,637 in 2006 (Tichagwa, 2007: 2) as compared to 48,781 in 1999 (CSO, 2001a: 76), an increase of 16 per cent. As noted in the section on ‘Investment in education’ below, investment in higher education increased after 2000, whilst investment in primary education shrank considerably. Although beginning to falter, quantitatively it is clear that the country made great strides. It is imperative, however, to look at the quality of human capital formation emerging from this system. This can be looked at in a number of ways: through specific monitoring and evaluation studies; examination results; the quality of the curriculum and textbooks; the availability of textbooks; the availability and quality of teachers; the quality of planning, supervision and Ministry support; and external indicators, such as the employment potential of school graduates. In this report, quality will include the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) monitoring and evaluation study of 1999; examinations results; some evaluation of the curriculum and textbooks; the availability of textbooks; the availability and quality of teachers; and some observations regarding Ministry support. There have been no studies regarding external indicators in terms of the employment potential of school, college and university graduates. However, the exodus of more than two million Zimbabweans, mostly young people, indicates that there is a serious disjuncture between the needs of the Zimbabwean economy and the graduates of the education system. On the other hand, since these same graduates appear to do relatively well in the diaspora, it may be surmised that the education system prepared them for work outside of the country. However, the dysfunctional nature of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade makes it all the more difficult to evaluate the relevance of the education system to the economic situation. The quality of primary education, with specific emphasis on Grade 6 achievement, has been studied in 1991 and 1995, by SACMEQ (Machingaidze et al, 1998). There is no similar study for the quality of secondary and tertiary education. For primary schools the SACMEQ study covers the socio-economic characteristics of Grade 6 pupils and teachers; educational financing; the teaching conditions in primary schools; the conditions of school buildings and furniture; the availability of teaching and learning materials; the academic and professional qualifications of teachers and school heads; the English language test results; and practical suggestions for policies and actions. Table 6.2 reproduces the list of teaching materials and classroom furniture in Grade 6 classrooms found in the study. Table 6.2: Percentage of Grade 6 pupils in classrooms with selected teaching materials and classroom furniture, 1995. Teaching materials Item Percentage with item Chalk 92.8 A wall chart of any kind 89.0 A map of Zimbabwe 76.6 A map of Africa 62.7 A map of the world 49.9 A classroom library or book corner 46.6 An atlas 83.6 An English dictionary 73.1 Classroom furniture A useable chalk board 92.3 A cupboard 48.6 One or more bookshelves 39.3 A teacher table 79.5 A teacher chair 79.2 Source: Machingaidze et al, 1998: 34. This study showed impressive provisioning in terms of education infrastructure, although there was need for more classrooms and other facilities, such as a school library (58.2 per cent of schools had one); staff room (30.3 per cent of schools had one); piped water (37.9 per cent of schools had this); well or borehole (71.1 per cent of schools had one); electricity (provided to 23.6 per cent of schools); telephone (33.6 per cent of schools had a telephone). The percentage of teachers with at least 11 years of academic education was 95.9 per cent, whilst 77.4 per cent had at least three years of teacher training. An impressive 90 per cent of school heads had suitable professional and academic qualifications. If we take a look at the Grade 7 public examinations as a proxy for the quality of value addition in education, the decline in achievement is evident. Table 6.3 indicates that the percentage of passes was shrinking over the period 1997-2000. Except for African languages, pass rates have declined compared with the peak year for results. This is somewhat surprising, given the fact that even up to 2006 only 3.4 per cent of primary school teachers were unqualified, comprising 2,184 out of a total of 65,098 (Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture, 2007a: 74
Moving forward in Zimbabwe Reducing poverty and promoting growth Table 6.3: Grade 7 examination percentage pass by subject, peak performance year compared to 2000. Subject 146). A possible explanation for the decline in pass rates may be the deterioration in infrastructure over time. This trend is also reflected when we consider the quality of reading comprehension in English reflected in the SACMEQ study. This shows that only 56.4 per cent of Grade 6 pupils attained the minimal level of mastery, whilst only 37.0 per cent reached the desirable level of mastery (Machingaidze et al, 1998: 70). While these findings indicate that much had been achieved in primary education, there was still a great deal of work to be done by the end of the 1990s. Sadly there was little difference between the results in 1995 and those of 1991, showing that already the rate of improvement was beginning to slow down. Read together with the Grade 7 public examination results given in Table 6.3, we could say this reflects some systemic issues in the education system. Although there were no significant rural/urban differences in primary school attendance reflected in the data (50.4 per cent boys as compared to 49.6 per cent girls in 2006), fewer girls attended secondary school, with 51.9 per cent boys and 48.1 per cent girls in 2006 (Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture, 2007a: 44). Although the gender gap has been gradually decreasing at secondary level, these data do suggest that the crisis may have affected girls’ attendance of secondary education more that it did that of boys. Secondary education Peak year result 2000 result 2000 result as % of peak year result English 83.3 (1997) 73.0 87.6 Mathematics 73.4 (1997) 62.3 84.9 Shona 90.6 (1997) 89.5 98.9 Ndebele 86.0 (2000) 86.0 100.0 General Paper 81.2 (1998) 78.0 96.1 Source: CSO, 2001b: 30. Unfortunately we could not obtain more recent Grade 7 results. The impressive improvements in secondary education infrastructure and enrolments raised expectations as to the quality of human capital formation and indeed Zimbabwe became recognised for its achievements in education. If we use quality of secondary education as measured by the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations, we can get an idea of the value addition within this system. Table 6.4 shows that whilst the number of candidates who passed five or more subjects at ‘O’ level increased from 535 in 1980, to 31,246 in 2006, the percentage who passed five subjects reached its peak in the 1990s at 23 per cent. By 2000 the percentage had shrunk to 14 per cent, with a mean of 13 per cent from 2000 to 2006. Those who failed all subjects comprised 40 per cent of the total, whilst those who passed between one and three subjects comprised another 40 per cent between 1981 and 1990 (Chung, 2008: 36). The fact that only 13-23 per cent of students pass five ‘O’ levels, implying a failure rate of between 77 and 87 per cent, is a serious indictment of the education system. Given that by 2000 only 2.8 per cent of secondary teachers were unqualified out of a total of 34,163, this high failure rate is somewhat surprising and may also point to systemic failures within the education system. It Year has been suggested that ‘O’ levels are basically a preparation for university work and unsuited to the 96 per cent of the age group that do not make it into university. It does suggest that secondary school students are not being educated and trained to take advantage of the opportunities and challenges they will face. The ‘A’ level results were much better (Table 6.5), showing a marked improvement, from 46 per cent passing two or more subjects in 1980 to 75 per cent in 2006. The number who obtained two passes had increased from 527 to 25,106. The results at this level are due to the high level of selection for ‘A’ levels (compare the number of candidates for ‘O’ levels in Table 6.4 to the number for ‘A’ levels in Table 6.5). Year Table 6.4: ‘O’ level results for 1980, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2006. Table 6.5: ‘A’ level results for 1980, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2006. Number of candidates Number with 2 Es or better % with 2 Es or better 1980 527 242 46 1990 14,722 9,984 58 1995 17,803 13,163 70 2000 19,541 18,044 75 2005 36,854 26,415 72 2006 33,516 25,106 75 Sources: CSO, 2001b: 43 for 1980-1995, and Zimbabwe School Examination Council, August, 2008, for 2000-2006. Tertiary education Number of candidates Number with 5 Cs or more % with 5 Cs 1980 8,351 535 6 1990 201,555 12,201 21 1995 197,512 12,238 23 2000 264,056 36,659 14 2005 251,755 31,246 12 2006 223,968 31,246 14 Sources: CSO, 2001b: 42 for 1980-1995, and Zimbabwe School Examination Council, August, 2008, for 2000-2006. At university level in 2006, male students comprised 62.6 per cent of the total. Although there has been a narrowing of the gender gap over the decades, there are serious gender gaps at tertiary education level, in terms of both staffing and student enrolments, and these gaps are linked to specific subject specialisations (Tichagwa, 2007). This is an area for more concerted and practical policy and strategy work, involving each institution in practical implementation programmes. Table 6.6 indicates an enormous increase in the enrolment of students at university level, caused partly by the increase in the number of universities from one in 1980, to four in 1994 and to 11 in 2006. A noticeable change was the emergence of five private universities by 2006. These five universities comprised 4,650 students out of a total of 53,560 students in 2006, 8.7 per cent of the total. There appears to be room for further expansion of private universities, although there is also a need to monitor the 75
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