TREE as THEIR classroom: ECD plight in Marange Communal Area.

Monday 29 OCTOBER WAS MY BIRTHDAY. Traditionally its a day I spend with friends and family often treating our selves to expensive, breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

This time around I travelled to Marange, my home village. My aim was to spend my birthday with school children, in particular, nursery students. I remember in my younger days attending Kindergarten at Chigonda Primary School, a school about 5 Min from our homestead. The school was run by 5 local women, whom I think were not qualified or trained teachers. The days were filled with song singing, sleeping, eating, writing on the soil and playing. They were happy days. I think our mothers just wanted to get rid of us so that they focus on more important things.

I was fortunate enough to move to Dangamvura township where I attended a proper urban nursery school. This time around, there was a lot to be learnt, including reading, memorising the alphabet, counting from 1 up to 20, learning to write my name, lots and lots of food, wax crayons, coloring books, a well equipped playground.

For the first time I realised that any rural child will never be at par with their city counterparts. 30 years later, nothing has improved, rather the gap keeps widening, despite GVT coming up with new policies.

On Monday 29 October, I visited Mafunde and Buwerimwe Early Childhood Development institutions, popularly known as ECD, and this prompted me to write this:

Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Zimbabwe is offered to children from the age of 3 to 5 years. Since 2004, Zimbabwe has had national ECD policy which requires primary schools to offer a minimum of two ECD classes for children from 3 to 5 years old.

The basis for the formulation of the 2004 policy was a recommendation of the Commission of Inquiry into Education undertaken in 1999. The Commission found that many children in rural and poor communities did not have access to Early Childhood services. The aim of the policy was to make official the ECD programme under the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. The Ministry wanted to increase equity and access to ECD provisions and enhance quality education.

Good as the policy looks on paper, the policy has its own challenges for rural children, who were a priority on its inception. Marange community is one of the rural communities facing challenges in its ECD institution. Marange communal area is found in Manicaland Province, about 70 km from the provincial capital Mutare. It’s a remote area and has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Families rely on subsistence farming, mining, and livestock production.

• Physical distance: Traditionally, students in rural areas walk long distances to nearby schools. A rural student walks a minimum of 4km to school. The return trip is usually harder on students less then 5 years. They often get to school too tired to concentrate and don’t learn much. Enough times these students end up missing schools for most part of the year.

• Poverty: Living standards in Marange have significantly deteriorated since the 1990s, as most households failed to re-build after the 1991-1992 drought. Climate change impacts have further worsened the situation with most families living in abject poverty and on less than US$1 a day. This makes it difficult for parents to pay the $15 per term fees required from each student. Because of this, the ECDs fail to buy teaching aids or food to feed most of their students who come to school hungry.

• Lack of infrastructure: Most students learn in makeshift structures, outdoors and or under trees. Schools are too poor to construct safe and proper classrooms for their youngsters. This becomes a challenge when its winter, too hot or when it rains. Often children are forced to bear the harsh weather conditions. In instances where there is only one classroom for all the ECDS, when it rains all students must come indoors, everyone is put in one classroom and learning stops. If it rains for a week, learning stops for a week.

On the 29th of October (my Birthday) I visited Buwerimwe ECD where learners conduct classes under 5 Bauhinia trees and Mafunde Primary School where over 110 learners where housed in one tiny classroom. They have since removed tables, benches and chairs and put them at the back of the classroom to create more space for the learners. Being crammed in such a tiny room is a health hazard to both the teachers and learners, airborne and skin diseases quickly spread in such environments.

• A lack of teaching aids/equipment: It is essential for a teacher to have the necessary requirements for him/her to produce the expected results. ECD classes in Marange lack books, chats, crayons, pencils etc. They even lack proper playgrounds for the children.

• Lack of qualified teachers: In addition to unavailability of decent learning structures and equipment, schools are failing to attract qualified teachers as rural areas do not have incentives to motivate them. They fail to provide basic services like housing, electricity and water. As a result, most ECDs are run by unqualified rural women who volunteer to do the job.

•High Teacher: student ratio: 1:25 and 1:30 is considered reasonable in most school setups. However, this is not always the case especially with Marange schools. I visited Mafunde Primary school on Monday 29 October where over 110 learners from age 3 to 6 were all in one classroom under the supervision of one qualified teacher. As Zimbabwe is going through an economic meltdown, Ministry has since stopped recruiting new teachers citing financial constraints. The move is good for the GVT pocket but its bad for the teachers who must handle large classrooms, and for the learners who must be crammed in one classroom and rarely receive attention from teachers. In any large class, learner participation and performance are reduced due to the following: unnecessary movement, crying, noise, fighting, scramble for limited resources and lack of one on one with the teacher.