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Michael Magoronga Midlands Correspondent

Government is concerned with the increase in cases of abuse of pupils by teachers in schools and is planning to introduce laws to punish the offenders, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Professor Paul Mavima has said.

Prof Mavima made the remarks during a stakeholders, information-sharing and consultative workshop at a Kwekwe hotel on Monday.

He said cases of child sexual abuse in schools had reached alarming levels and punitive measures needed to be taken.

Prof Mavima said Government was making plans to reward performing teachers.

“We should have clear laws that punish bad behaviour,” he said. “We should be able to maintain high standards of discipline within our profession.”

Prof Mavima warned school heads in the habit of embezzling school funds, saying capacity-building was a necessity in the education sector in a bid to eradicate such behaviours.

“Ours is a profession with a set of ethics that should be followed,” he said. “We should constantly remind each other that ours is a unique profession. A school head should never embezzle school funds. A school head must never look aside if there are issues of sexual abuse that has been raised. These are matters that should be taken seriously.”

Prof Mavima said some school heads and District Schools Inspectors (DSI) had developed a tendency of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse cases adding there was need for capacity development among the education sector authorities.

“We need to continuously hammer on the leadership of our education leaders at all levels all the way from the head office to the school,” he said. “There is need for teacher capacity programmes. We should do away with the talking without implementation. Let us come with a programme that train our leaders.”

The workshop was attended by provincial education directors from across the country as well as district schools inspectors as well as members from the Zimbabwe Republic Police, students as well as other stakeholders.

Among other objectives, the workshop was meant to discuss the findings by the joint monitoring committee findings, formulate ways of implementing teaching of guidance and counselling within schools as well as find ways of addressing the findings.