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Courtney Matende Midlands Reporter
The Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation (CCMT) has moved to offer advice over various challenges affecting the handover of council run schools to churches.

Churches have played a central role in contributing to education in Zimbabwe – a duty missionaries undertook since colonial times and churches built and controlled significant numbers of primary and secondary schools as well as some tertiary and technical schools.

The CCMT is a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation working in the field of peace and conflict transformation.

The organisation identified a number of challenges affecting the churches’ efforts to take over administration of the schools which include inadequate consultation, policy inconsistencies, churches failing to meet expectations, historical connotations, and interference by churches administratively and lack of clarity on implications of the takeovers.

“The failure by council to consult the wider community before the handover of the school is a major flaw in the process.

‘‘Presently, the council only consults those who have children or wards at the school.

‘‘The initial process of the hand-over only involves the council, church and community.

“There is no involvement of the education office in the process of the handover of schools except in the auditing of assets only (while) another important stakeholder, the Civil Service Commission – the teachers’ employer – has been left out of the consultation process,” said CMT programme coordinator Mr Xavier Mudangwe.

He said they were working with rural district councils in the Midlands province which include Gokwe and Tongogara rural district councils.

Mr Mudangwe noted that contradictions in the various policy documents regarding the administration of schools as well recruitment and deployment of personnel contributed to the conflict.

Government, in a Memorandum of Understanding with churches, allows them to establish and run an educational institution, have 50 percent of their staff complement from their denomination, recommend for appointment of a school head and deputy who will assist in the furthering of the vision and mission of their beliefs and faith and to compel staff and pupils to participate in religious activities.

However, Mr Mudangwe, in the case of newly acquired schools staff had been deployed despite their religious beliefs.

“Asking them to conform to the expected standards of the church leads to various clashes between the teachers and the responsible authority,” he said.

According to the Public Service Commission, teachers are recruited on the basis of their qualifications and not their religious background.

Mr Mudangwe noted that although handovers are based on the MOU between Government and churches, none had sight of the document.

Some churches, according to the research findings, were failing to fulfil the promises they made to the communities when they took over the schools.

“Some churches had promised to pay fees for some disadvantaged children so parents stopped paying fees for the children,” he said.

It was also established that most schools prior to independence were run by churches according to the division of churches during the colonial era.

“Missionary education was largely associated with white missionaries prior to independence.

‘‘When Government took over schools at independence to implement the free education policy some community members saw it as part of the victory of the liberation struggle,” he said.