MIDWEEK REPORTER
ZVIMBA-A senior official in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has pleaded with parents and guardians not to pay bribes to teachers for private lessons for their children as this is exacerbating corruption in the sector.
Communications and advocacy director in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Taungana Ndoro pleaded with parents to stop paying for private and extra lessons for learners as that is fueling corruption in the education sector which is crucial for the country and future generation.
Ndoro said the issue is not about remuneration that teachers are resorting to extra and private lessons, but greedy and corruption.
Ndoro was responding to a question posed by journalists on why the Ministry was pretending as if there are no extra and private lessons for pupils at schools in the country because the Government always say they are illegal and those caught will be prosecuted yet it is known throughout the country that the practice is prevalent.
He said this at the media engagement workshop with various newsroom content managers on the curriculum review at the Zimbabwe Institute of Public Administration and Management at Darwendale in Zvimba, Mashonaland West Province last Tuesday.
“We are in fix and the only solution available now is for the parents to stop paying for extra and private lessons because even if teachers are paid what they are demanding, this will not stop because it is as good as feeding the devil.
“The practice will not go away, it will only go away if we as parents stop paying teachers for what they are employed to do.
“Take for example the prevalence of private schools, even if we get information that at such and such a place there is an unregistered school, if you are visit the place to find out, you will never find anyone to prosecute and chances the place will be locked and abandoned.
“Come next day the place never looks like a private school, but everyone in the area knows it is conducting lessons and enrolling hundreds of people, but there is no evidence.
“My plea is for the parents to cooperate and stop paying for extra lessons,” said the former journalist.
When contacted for a comment, Progressive Teachers Union firebrand president, Dr Takavafira Zhou said the problem is that the Ministry is not in touch with the reality on the ground and as a result it is burying its head in the sand, instead of facing the problem and solve it.
“The biggest problem with our Ministry is that they have lost touch with what is happening on the ground, may be because of politics.
“Most of the people who are conducting private lessons are not even trained tutors, but are just taking advantage of the gape where there is need for 50 000 more teachers in order for the primary and secondary sector to be adequately capacitated in terms of teacher to student ratio.
“Those in authority lack education taxonomy like teachers on the ground. For example they say no school should charge in US dollars for school fees, yet no boarding school in this country charges school fees in RTGS.
“In actual fact it is the parents who are giving pressure to teachers to conduct private lessons as learners lost out a lot during COVID-19 stringent measures therefore what it means is that the Ministry has to be realistic and pay teachers well, recruit the unemployed 50 000 plus trained teachers and the situation will normalize,” said Dr Zhou.
A senior manager with one of the biggest privately owned regional newspapers in the southern region who was at the workshop told The Midweek Watch that his child actually reports to his teacher’s home for private lessons before coming home and most of the time what they would have learnt at her place is what is examined in class.
