The Sunday Mail
Harmony Agere – Extra Reporter
Government is in urgent need of 356 primary and secondary schools countrywide to de-congest existing ones and service satellite areas, Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Professor Paul Mavhima has said.
The Education Ministry earlier this year said it would build more than 2 000 schools in coming years to serve new rural and urban settlements.
Due to congestion and shortage of infrastructure in rural areas, Prof Mavhima last week told a media workshop that 356 schools were needed urgently to ease the jam.
He also said Government was working with the Infrastructural Development Bank of Zimbabwe to create a Schools Infrastructure Development Fund.
Prof Mavhima said: “I must acknowledge that the country is facing a deficit of school infrastructure and we need 356 schools at the moment to de-congest the current ones and service remote areas.
“Currently there is need to construct schools countrywide, and among these are satellite schools. The ministry has carried out a school mapping exercise for the entire country which has revealed the nation’s schools infrastructure deficit.
“It is the intention of the ministry to address the entire challenge of infrastructure deficit in a comprehensive manner.”
Prof Mavhima said the 2013 National Schools Infrastructure Conference gave the ministry the impetus to establish partnerships to escalate responsibility for schools infrastructure construction.
“The ministry is working with the Infrastructural Development Bank of Zimbabwe to create a Schools Infrastructural Development Fund,” he said then.
According to ministry officials there are about 8 500 primary and secondary schools in Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe’s post-Independence Government prioritised education from 1980, resulting in a huge nationwide schools-building initiative that sought to undo the harm wrought by the prior racist system that did not invest much in schooling indigenous peoples.
The focus on education also saw huge investments made in teacher training.
The result has been that Zimbabwe has the African continent’s highest literacy rate as well as one of the best-educated workforces.
