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Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora last week announced a ban on entrance tests

Stanely Mushava Review Writer
When schools squeeze parents to beef up their safes, children are the ultimate losers.

The commercialisation of education, trending in Zimbabwe through obligatory fund-raising mechanisms by secondary schools, prices a basic right beyond the means of poor children.

Not even schools but inequality, poverty and ignorance, the principal demobilisers of development, stand to thrive from the commodification of education.

The latest instance of the commercialisation of education in Zimbabwe is the continuance of entrance tests by secondary schools as a condition for enrolling Form 1 students.

Schools have continued conducting the tests in defiance of a 2014 ban on the practice by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora last week issued a statement to the effect that the ban on entrance tests was still in place.

Minister Dokora directed schools to enroll prospective students based on Zimsec Grade 7 results, and maintained a provision for schools who want to persist with entrance tests to do so at no cost to parents.

“The ministry noted that some schools were enrolling learners into Form 1 through application of their own entrance tests and assessment. Representations have been received to the effect that parents were being subjected to unnecessary financial burden through the payment of the non-refundable entrance test fees or travelling from school to school,” Dr Dokora said.

The minister condemned the continuance of the practice as discriminatory and in violation the provisions of the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Number 20 of 2013 Section 563) and the Education Act Sections (4) 1) and 4) (2) (b).

The Constitution provides for free and compulsory access to basic education for all children, execution of practical measures to guarantee education for a non-discriminatory setting for education, and elimination of practices which jeopardise the well-being, education and development of children.

The Primary and Secondary Education Ministry’s newly produced circular providing guidelines on enrolment into Form 1 directs that the exercise be conducted on a specific date each year across the country.

“The enrolment shall be on a working day, seven days after the Grade 7 results are officially announced by the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) or as determined by the Secretary every year. The 2016 Form 1 enrolment shall be Friday, 4 December 2015,” Minister Dokora said.

“Parents and pupils are advised to identify and approach a school of their choice for Form 1 enrolment on the enrolment date.

Heads of Secondary Schools should advise their District Education Officers within two days of the enrolment date of any shortfalls in Form 1 enrolment to facilitate advice to parents and pupils accordingly,” he said.

The directive, if followed through, should protect parents who are otherwise being punished for their commitment to secure education for their children.

In some cases, a school seats more than 1000 prospective students for paid entrance tests with less than 200 places up for grabs.

The “enterprising” schools laugh all the way to the bank with non-refundable fees, ranging from $20 to $200 per student.

That includes money from 800 unsuccessful candidates and 200 successful ones still required to pay their school fees when the next academic year commences.

But that is not the extent of the headache for parents. Because the success of their children at any one school is not guaranteed, parents are compelled to hedge their bets by seating their children at several schools.

In each case, they part with a non-refundable fee, whether their children pass or fail.

The number of children schools seat for the tests and the fees required have been significantly marked up with the escalation of the commercialisation drive since dollarisation in 2009.

In an earlier interview, Dr Dokora told The Herald that maintaining paid entrance tests as a selection process was educationally unsound and tantamount to a manipulation of the mandate schools have to provide education to all children.

“At the end of that process, I am a very, very angry parent who feels defrauded and eventually my child can go to the local school but I am the poorer for it,” the minister said.

“So for me two things must remain visible: One, let’s build; two, let’s not abuse the facility that we may have in the few institutions. There should be other ways of selecting those students.

We have the Grade 7 examinations, nobody has challenged the Grade 7 examinations and we should use them,” he said.

Apart from administrative bungling and technological stagnation as seen in recurrent exam leaks, Zimsec is a reputed board and its record cannot be impugned as necessitating alternative examinations.

Entrance tests have been the tradition in most schools but the recent abuse prompted the Government directive to protect parents.

While it has become commonplace to blame just about every intervention by Government, it must be noted that benign policies like this protect citizens from market-oriented service providers.

Overtly consumerist stratagems can only thrive in the public service at the expense of national interest.

In the case of education, cashing in on this basic right portends ill for the nation, not just to operate within the spirit of the Constitution but also to guarantee its future.

Poor children are bound to be financially muscled out of their legitimate endeavour to get a decent education.

There are cases of elite schools enrolling years beforehand, obviously at a handsome cost, such that places are booked years ahead. There is need to keep priorities sufficiently calibrated so that schools should not be seen to inconvenience citizens in the service of money.

Criticism of the minister’s disruptive directive is unwarranted in so far as it is conservative to the extent of maintaining discriminatory systems.

The same goes for a situation whereby some teachers are supposed to withhold crucial segments of the syllabi so that they can defer them to holiday lessons.

The practice means parents are supposed to pay fees across a block without reprieve to gather resources during vacation.

There is a need to maintain policies which place the children at the heart of schools’ work ethic. For as long as money talks, the system will be progressively degraded.

Moreover, a money-minded educational setting is bound to poison the students, as it eliminates the agency of education in promoting ethically rounded students.

Educating the mind without educating the heart is, after all, a futile exercise as Aristotle said.

The deification of money in the education system will cultivate situational ethics among the children – not a good route for a developing country which needs ideologically rounded graduates to steer it to economic nirvana.

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