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Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
A parent of one of the Gokomere High School pupils prejudiced by the actions of the school head has approached Government demanding compensation and re-admission of victims at the school.

Gokomere headmaster Mr Stanley Mtsambiwa allegedly diverted examination fees paid by academically-challenged pupils to bright ones, in a bid to fix the pass rate at the Catholic-run school in Masvingo. The parents demanded remarking of the examination answer scripts, re-admission and compensation of all the affected pupils, that the hearing be expedited, that Mr Mtsambiwa be dismissed and blacklisted, and that his wife be transferred from the school.

In a letter to Primary and Secondary Education permanent secretary Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango, dated February 19, 2016, the parent, Mr Munyaradzi Tichaona, requested the ministry’s officials to handle the issue as a matter of urgency.

“I am writing this letter to your good office with total dissatisfaction in the manner and the issue of Gokomere School head Mr Stanley Mtsambiwa’s case has been handled since I brought it to the attention of the Secretariat on the 12th of September 2016, where the headmaster was only suspended on the 1st of December 2016 and the hearing on the 16th of February 2017 chaired by the provincial education director Mr Zedious Chitiga,” he said.

“The biggest point of interest is in the manner the suspended headmaster is still interfering with the running of the school as evidenced on the hearing day. He was in possession of my child’s results, leaving the panel with no answers when I asked the question where he had got the results, meaning to say that the examination material had been tampered with during the period under review. There had been a lot of pilferage before we unearthed this first degree scandal in the education sector.”

Mr Tichaona said what was worrisome was that the headmaster’s actions seemed to violate the provisions set out in the country’s Constitution Chapter 19 (2) on children’s rights; Chapter 27 on the rights to education; and Chapter 57 on the rights to privacy.