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Page 84 Participants’ Papers Learning for Life, Work and the Future
employment, but also technical and entrepreneurial
skills for enterprise development. This programme
needs to prepare graduates for the scourge of unemployment,
which is a growing threat.
26 TSVERE, Maria (Zimbabwe):
The Implications of HIV/AIDS Education on TVET
1. Introduction
UNAIDS estimates that 95% of all HIV/AIDS infected
people now live in the developing world, which has
also experienced about 95% of AIDS-related deaths
(UNAIDS 1999:3). In Zimbabwe it is estimated that
one in every four sexually active people is infected
with AIDS. Statistics also show that the 25 to 39-yearolds,
the most productive and sexually active age group
to which belong students and teachers at technical and
vocational institutions, is the most infected. In sub-
Saharan Africa about 92% of infections are transmitted
by the horizontal mode of transmission (through
heterosexual contact). Research evidence from an
AIDS baseline survey conducted in Zimbabwe for
secondary schools revealed that 40% of girls have sex
before they reach Form Three (MoE/UNICEF, 1996:
v). The TVET system draws its students from the
secondary schools.
2. Factors Contributing to the Spread of HIV/AIDS
Greater understanding of factors leading to the spread
of HIV/AIDS is crucial in determining intervention
strategies to curb the spread of the virus. Apart from
the bio-medical factors, sexual behaviour, social and
economic factors seem to affect most of the students
and teachers in the TVET system. Unprotected sex,
lack of communication on knowledge of partners’
HIV/AIDS status, sexual practices, the extent of
alcohol consumption and concurrent partners are
common factors in the TVET system. The low level of
education, lack of knowledge and information about
HIV/AIDS and safe sex, all contribute to the poor
condom use by most students and teachers in the
system. Gender roles, female employment and acceptance
in the TVET system’s SMT section, status
and income inequality all affect the manner in which
HIV/AIDS is perceived in tertiary institutions where
TVET is located. TVET systems require that their
students have some industrial experience before they
graduate. This obliges them to be attached to industry
during their course, a situation that exposes them to
additional risks associated with HIV/AIDS transmission.
Being quintessentially a social epidemic, AIDS
impacts on social norms, development and government
efforts. Developing countries are characterized by lack
of employment, which is about 50% in Zimbabwe and
perhaps in most others. Income distribution has a
strong influence on the degree of control students in
TVET systems have over their sex lives. Most people,
including those in the TVET system, are also looking
for ways of improving their lives in terms of health,
education and recreation. Meanwhile the rich, powerful,
mobile and less-constrained few can afford the
lifestyles of their choice. TVET students fall prey to
some of them in an effort to raise their nutritional
levels. Those students who are really poor, orphaned,
or are parents, suffer from being unable to care for
their families because of the high cost of living.
Furthermore, the paternalistic Zimbabwean culture
forces some female students to look for men to marry
them. They are obliged to have children even before
they have completed their course.
All these factors make students and teachers in TVET
systems work hard and strive for better lives so that
they can take control of their sexual activity and be
saved from the effects of HIV/AIDS infection and
AIDS.
A person with the virus is affected emotionally as well
as physically. Teachers and students in the TVET
system also face the challenge of having to deal with
their HIV/AIDS status. This situation is most
prominent amongst teachers, who become ineffective
and withdrawn or even disappear when they become
too noticeably ill.
3. The Effect of HIV/AIDS on TVET
The World Bank (1992:69) projected that by 2010
Tanzania will have lost 14,460 teachers to AIDS.
Statistically, this figure accounts for two-thirds of the
annual output of the teacher training colleges in the
country. TVET systems demonstrate a similar trend
today. In Zimbabwe there seems to be no decline in
the number of HIV/AIDS infections, and institutions
are experiencing a steady increase in the number of ill
teachers and AIDS-related deaths throughout the
education system. An analysis of female student
records in Zimbabwean colleges (ED46) has shown
that an average of 20% of female students dropped out
of college due to pregnancy, indicating the degree of
unprotected sex in these institutions. The major
problem with the teaching profession is that it is
difficult to simply terminate an ill teacher’s services,
yet teaching is one of the most highly paid professions.
High salary costs mean that the Ministries of Education
have to bear the burden of supporting unproductive
lecturers and teachers, and compromise the quality of
education by hiring part-time or temporary substitutes.