News / National
PTUZ President, Dr Takavafira Zhou's 2016 World Teachers' Day, 5 November 2016 Speech
06 Nov 2016 at 11:23hrs | Views
THEME: VALUING TEACHERS, IMPROVING THEIR STATUS
1. Background of World Teachers' Day
World Teachers Day was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1994 to celebrate the educators of the world.
The global holiday is held on October 5 each year in recognition of the special intergovernmental conference convened by UNESCO in Paris that adopted the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers on that date in 1966.
The recommendation declared education a fundamental human right, acknowledged the essential role of teachers to society, set international standards and defined teachers' responsibilities.
This year World Teachers' Day marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers.
This year's edition of World Teachers' Day commemoration is the 22st since the day was set aside in 1994.
It is also the first world Teachers' Day (WTD) to be celebrated within the new Global Education 2030 Agenda adopted by the world community in 2015.
That Zimbabwean Teachers are commemorating it a month after 5 October is an indicator that the government of Zimbabwe does not respect teachers.
Has anyone ever heard of a postponed Christmas, let alone Independence Day in Zimbabwe? Surely, it only happens with World Teachers' Day.
2 Quotes celebrating the impact of Teachers on young minds and the nation:
• "I touch the future. I teach." — educator Christa McAuliffe
• "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts." — author C. S. Lewis
• "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." — physicist Albert Einstein
• "The thing I loved the most — and still love the most about teaching — is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits." — Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski
• "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." — historian Henry Adams
• "A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." — politician and education reformer Horace Mann
• "Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach." — philosopher Aristotle
• "I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me." — actress Ann Bancroft
• "The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth'." — journalist Dan Rather
• "I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession." — former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden
• "Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges" —author Joyce Meyer
• "We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being." — educational philosopher Maria Montessori
• Teachers are arbiters of a nation's destiny
Admittedly, a teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others.
Teachers guard jealously against the trenches of ignorance and folly. Teachers are indeed vital cogs of societal development, and the level of development in any society is determined by how the state treats its teachers, and mothers in a maternity ward.
3. Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status
Indeed, this year's theme, "Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status", embodies the fundamental principles of the fifty-year-old Recommendation while shining a light on the need to support teachers as reflected in the agenda's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
A specific education goal, SDG4, pledges to "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality [Public] education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
Teachers are not only pivotal to the right to education, they are key to achieving the targets set out in SDG4.
The roadmap for the new agenda, the Education 2030 Framework for Action, highlights the fact that teachers are fundamental for equitable and quality education and, as such, must be "adequately trained, recruited and remunerated, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems".
However, in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary not only to substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers but to motivate them by valuing their work.
Indeed to value and improve the status of teachers is not to value and improve the status of individuals but young generation, communities and the nation at large.
Globally, by 2030, 3.2 million more teachers will be required to achieve universal primary education and 5.1 million more in order to achieve universal lower secondary education.
Using Geometric method (and Cohort component method), Zimbabwe school aged population (from 3-18 years) will increase from the current 5.4 million to 6 million in 2022 and 7 million by 2030, thereby requiring more than 235 000 teachers.
Sadly, the government is busy culling teachers instead of recruiting, training and retaining more teachers, and setting bench marks of achieving public quality education for all and a skills revolution by 2030.
4 The Plight of Teachers in Zimbabwe
In the good old days (during the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods), teachers were highly regarded in the society as they exerted great influence and authority on pupils, community and the nation at large.
They were character molders, role models, community leaders and consultants, pace setters, and paragons of modernity. They were reasonably remunerated and enjoyed a middle-class status.
Many teachers were given free accommodation; preferential allocation to stands in order to build their own houses, and scholarships for further studies.
In those days, a student would rather prefer to be beaten by his/her mother after committing an offence at home, than being reported to a class teacher, as the punishment and the shame at the assembly ground could be better imagined than experienced.
Now things have changed for the worse. As we belatedly join our counterparts all over the world to celebrate the World Teachers' Day, we lament the precarious state of Zimbabwean teachers in the comity of teachers globally.
As we mark the 2016 World Teachers' Day with the theme -'Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status' we are mourning the demise of the teaching profession, with monotonous regularity, from grace to grass.
Is it not amazing that teachers are marking the 2016 World Teachers' Day on empty stomachs, unable to pay school fees of their children, and unable to wear decent clothes and live in homes with minimal comfort?
Below are indicators that the profession has lost its lustre
a. Poor Teaching conditions as teachers are treated with disdain nationally. In most resettlement areas there are no proper classrooms for effective teaching and learning to ensue, with many teachers conducting their classes under a tree or some hovels.
Whereas the Zimbabwean teachers are still using blackboards and chalk for teaching in the 21st century, their counterparts in other countries are using whiteboards and markers.
Many countries of the world have even gone beyond the use of whiteboard to interactive classroom system, coupled with teaching aids.
b. Insecurity in Schools as people with nothing to do with the education system can get in school premises to harass and assault teachers.
c. Poor Remuneration: While teachers in many countries of the world are well remunerated, teachers in Zimbabwe are poorly paid. Many teachers are living in such poverty that most have to sell goods or try to get other work to supplement their wages.
d. Unfair Labour Practice: In spite Ptuz Labour Court Victory over Leave Days, in practice teachers are treated in a discriminatory, degrading and servitude manner as they are denied the right to enjoy their leave days with some high ranking officials in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare describing teaching as "seasonal just like tobacco and sugar industries."
e. Overloaded classrooms: public schools are compelled to work in overloaded classrooms of 80 to 100 pupils
f. Appalling Working conditions: Teachers are working under poor conditions of service especially in public schools without electricity, and comfortable office chairs and tables.
g. Atrocious Living conditions: More than 69% of teachers are lodgers and do not own houses of their own. Accommodation in most public schools is pathetic. It is not unusual in some rural schools for 12 teachers to share a two- roomed house with an outside pit toilet.
h. Limited Political Will to Invest in Education, given Zimbabwe's failure to respect Dakar framework and UNESCO developmental budget.
i. Curriculum Changes: Limited engagement of teachers in informing new curriculum changes and design. Teachers are not involved in syllabi development, let alone in writing textbooks and other materials for the new curriculum, yet they occupy a central role in the implementation of the new curriculum.
j. Defective Public Service Audits and Inspectorate 'terrorists': Indeed we have witnessed numerous defective audits (which in practice turned to be harassment of teachers, witch-hunting and victimization) by Public Service Commission and the invasion of teachers' professional space by Public Service inspectors.
Not only are their measures desperate, aimless, careless and acidic, but they are also brutal, suicidal, emanating from inefficient, ineffective, hopeless and educational bankrupt people.
k. Artificial overstaffing: emanating from the audit that was done by personnel not well conversant with various aspects that determine teacher pupil ratios at various levels and in various subjects in schools.
l. Unlawful Transfers: Clear violations of sections 13 and 26 of Statutory Instrument 1 of 2000 and its amendments of 2001.
m. Defective Teacher Professional Standards: As much as Professional Standards are enviable, they must be a product of engagement and logical disputation. The Teacher Professional Standards introduced by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary in 2016 were not a product of engagement with teachers and teacher-unions and are therefore a one armed bandit that must be resisted by any means necessary as they fail to meet the minimum professional standards.
n. Defective Ministry of Education Inspectorate regime: In resurrecting the brutal colonial inspectorate regime and enticed by brutal Public Service inspectorate reign of terror in schools, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary has surprised all and sundry by elevating all education officials to inspectorate level, with inspectors expected to monitor teachers, identify areas they need support and execute the one armed banditry Teacher Professional Standards.
Yet, even if these inspectors would be given aircrafts to monitor teachers, this will not improve quality education.
o. Insulated Bureaucracy and false assumption that intelligence resides at Head Office. There is also heavy dependency on self proclaimed education experts at HQ.
p. Increased harassment of and charges preferred against teachers. There has been a tendency towards harassment by education officials in schools and protection of heads of schools by the Ministry even where they are trigger happy and prefer charges against innocent teachers.
q. Extortion and Pilfering of teachers: A rogue element has emerged in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in which people claiming to be at head office are conniving with DEOs and school heads to pilfer money ranging from $150 to $500 from teachers facing disciplinary action for trivial offences.
How the people get access to teachers' confidential files remains a mystery that various Provincial Directors must explain.
Put succinctly, the education system is under siege in Zimbabwe. We have over the years witnessed cold and calculated educational vandalism, undervaluing of teachers and erosion of their status.
The question begging for an answer is: Where did Zimbabwe begin to get it wrong and how did teachers suddenly lose their prestige? The majority of teachers feel that their plight is a deliberate ploy by government to silence them as intellectuals as the wisdom of a poor teacher is never listened to.
It is the conviction of many teachers that government deliberately underpays and undervalues them because it erroneously views them as unpatriotic. Yet, an ill clothed and starving teacher who continues to do so much with so little is a model of revolutionary courage, heroism, resilience, vigilance, unparalleled patriotism and commitment.
Such dedication to duty is epitomised by 92% literacy rate in the country. 76% of teachers feel they are not consulted on the reforms in the education sector. If consulted, 24% feel their views are not taken into consideration.
It is with this context that this year's theme calls for valuing of teachers and their status restoration as a prelude to sustainable development in communities and the nation at large.
4. Way forward
How best, therefore, can teachers be valued and their status restored in Zimbabwe so as to play a vital cog in societal and national sustainable development? Indeed there are various ways to achieve this, such as:
a. PDL-related salaries for Teachers since they are the lowest paid in the SADC region.
b. Provision of land by government for building teachers' houses: the current promise by government for the provision of stands should be fast-tracked so that teachers have shelter of their own which they can even use after retirement.
c. Professional Council of Teachers: There is need to fast-track the establishment of PCT in order to promote professionalism and self regulation of the teaching. It is such a Council that can spearhead Teacher Professional Standards, and therefore value and restore the status of teachers that currently has been eroded over the past years.
d. Investing in public education in order to fulfil our collective obligation to help all learners succeed. In line with Dakar framework and UNESCO developmental budget the education budget must be above 22% of the national budget.
e. Involvement of Teacher Unions in appointment and promotion of personnel in the education sector (particularly schools) as is the case in South Africa.
f. Improvement of corporate governance, viz, efficiency, transparency and equity in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education as opposed to insulated bureaucracy.
g. Rectifying and rebuilding the respect of values that always guided education in the 1980s and early 1990s.
h. Engaging teachers in meaningful dialogue before introducing any reforms in the education system and respecting their professional views.
i. Ensuring and supporting teachers' engagement in research and publication of books that must be used in schools particularly for the new curriculum.
j. Creating public schools that are safe, welcoming places for teaching and learning.
k. Ensuring that teachers and school staff are well prepared, are supported, have manageable class sizes and have time to collaborate so that they can meet the individual needs of every learner.
l. Ensuring that learners have an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning, not testing perse, and includes art, music and the sciences.
m. Indigenous Knowledge systems as the basis for local-level decision making in agriculture, health care, food preparation, education, natural resource management, and a host of other activities in communities must be promoted in schools.
n. Import duty exemption for one car per teacher to enhance status and punctuality.
o. Teacher Training: There is need to revamp the teacher training curricula in colleges in order to produce quality teachers. In-service training must also be supported so that teachers keep abreast with cutting edge issues in the education system and remain competent.
p. Computerised Data on Teachers would increase efficiency in deployment and replacement of teachers as well as ensuring the best use of teachers in subjects of specialisation.
q. Language policy: A clear cut language policy and the establishment of a language board could assist on this thorny road and empower teachers to travel the rough road with clarity.
Conclusion
By and large, the struggle to give teaching a more humane face in Zimbabwe and enhance quality education continues unabated.
On this (World Teachers' Day), we want to remind the government that it remains the biggest threat to the development of the education system in the country.
Government's educational aridity, acidity and rigidity must change forthwith. There is urgent need to focus on status restoration and motivation of teachers in order to achieve quality education in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe surely needs a generation of quality teachers who aim to develop learners instead of teaching them, who help their pupils to become independent (learning to learn), who provide students with analytical rigor, motivation and interest for life-long learning and urge them to become autonomous learners.
This is essential in the education of the future in order to turn our current dysfunctional high literacy rate to a functional literacy rate blended with practical life experiences. Such a scenario cannot happen where 99% of teachers have mentally resigned although they physically remain at their stations.
When teacher retention outlook combines with the proven importance of teacher quality and efficacy, it is clear that systematic reform initiatives must encompass programs, strategies, 21st century learning tools and government commitment to create supportive, productive environments for educators. The responsibility of government of Zimbabwe in restoring the status and dignity of teachers is therefore huge.
Only valued and dignified professional teachers can successfully implement a paradigm shift from teaching for examination to 'teaching' and learning for life.
Quality teachers in Zimbabwe can guarantee the blending of learning with practical life and guarantee quality public education punctuated by skills for life which are a powerful propellant for the development of Zimbabwe.
On this day belatedly marking World Teachers' Day in Zimbabwe, we remind the government of the urgent need to restore the status and dignity of teachers as a basis for sustainable development of Zimbabwe.
1. Background of World Teachers' Day
World Teachers Day was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1994 to celebrate the educators of the world.
The global holiday is held on October 5 each year in recognition of the special intergovernmental conference convened by UNESCO in Paris that adopted the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers on that date in 1966.
The recommendation declared education a fundamental human right, acknowledged the essential role of teachers to society, set international standards and defined teachers' responsibilities.
This year World Teachers' Day marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers.
This year's edition of World Teachers' Day commemoration is the 22st since the day was set aside in 1994.
It is also the first world Teachers' Day (WTD) to be celebrated within the new Global Education 2030 Agenda adopted by the world community in 2015.
That Zimbabwean Teachers are commemorating it a month after 5 October is an indicator that the government of Zimbabwe does not respect teachers.
Has anyone ever heard of a postponed Christmas, let alone Independence Day in Zimbabwe? Surely, it only happens with World Teachers' Day.
2 Quotes celebrating the impact of Teachers on young minds and the nation:
• "I touch the future. I teach." — educator Christa McAuliffe
• "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts." — author C. S. Lewis
• "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." — physicist Albert Einstein
• "The thing I loved the most — and still love the most about teaching — is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits." — Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski
• "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." — historian Henry Adams
• "A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." — politician and education reformer Horace Mann
• "Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach." — philosopher Aristotle
• "I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me." — actress Ann Bancroft
• "The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth'." — journalist Dan Rather
• "I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession." — former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden
• "Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges" —author Joyce Meyer
• "We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being." — educational philosopher Maria Montessori
• Teachers are arbiters of a nation's destiny
Admittedly, a teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others.
Teachers guard jealously against the trenches of ignorance and folly. Teachers are indeed vital cogs of societal development, and the level of development in any society is determined by how the state treats its teachers, and mothers in a maternity ward.
3. Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status
Indeed, this year's theme, "Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status", embodies the fundamental principles of the fifty-year-old Recommendation while shining a light on the need to support teachers as reflected in the agenda's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
A specific education goal, SDG4, pledges to "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality [Public] education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
Teachers are not only pivotal to the right to education, they are key to achieving the targets set out in SDG4.
The roadmap for the new agenda, the Education 2030 Framework for Action, highlights the fact that teachers are fundamental for equitable and quality education and, as such, must be "adequately trained, recruited and remunerated, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems".
However, in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary not only to substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers but to motivate them by valuing their work.
Indeed to value and improve the status of teachers is not to value and improve the status of individuals but young generation, communities and the nation at large.
Globally, by 2030, 3.2 million more teachers will be required to achieve universal primary education and 5.1 million more in order to achieve universal lower secondary education.
Using Geometric method (and Cohort component method), Zimbabwe school aged population (from 3-18 years) will increase from the current 5.4 million to 6 million in 2022 and 7 million by 2030, thereby requiring more than 235 000 teachers.
Sadly, the government is busy culling teachers instead of recruiting, training and retaining more teachers, and setting bench marks of achieving public quality education for all and a skills revolution by 2030.
4 The Plight of Teachers in Zimbabwe
In the good old days (during the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods), teachers were highly regarded in the society as they exerted great influence and authority on pupils, community and the nation at large.
They were character molders, role models, community leaders and consultants, pace setters, and paragons of modernity. They were reasonably remunerated and enjoyed a middle-class status.
Many teachers were given free accommodation; preferential allocation to stands in order to build their own houses, and scholarships for further studies.
In those days, a student would rather prefer to be beaten by his/her mother after committing an offence at home, than being reported to a class teacher, as the punishment and the shame at the assembly ground could be better imagined than experienced.
Now things have changed for the worse. As we belatedly join our counterparts all over the world to celebrate the World Teachers' Day, we lament the precarious state of Zimbabwean teachers in the comity of teachers globally.
As we mark the 2016 World Teachers' Day with the theme -'Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status' we are mourning the demise of the teaching profession, with monotonous regularity, from grace to grass.
Is it not amazing that teachers are marking the 2016 World Teachers' Day on empty stomachs, unable to pay school fees of their children, and unable to wear decent clothes and live in homes with minimal comfort?
Below are indicators that the profession has lost its lustre
a. Poor Teaching conditions as teachers are treated with disdain nationally. In most resettlement areas there are no proper classrooms for effective teaching and learning to ensue, with many teachers conducting their classes under a tree or some hovels.
Whereas the Zimbabwean teachers are still using blackboards and chalk for teaching in the 21st century, their counterparts in other countries are using whiteboards and markers.
Many countries of the world have even gone beyond the use of whiteboard to interactive classroom system, coupled with teaching aids.
b. Insecurity in Schools as people with nothing to do with the education system can get in school premises to harass and assault teachers.
c. Poor Remuneration: While teachers in many countries of the world are well remunerated, teachers in Zimbabwe are poorly paid. Many teachers are living in such poverty that most have to sell goods or try to get other work to supplement their wages.
d. Unfair Labour Practice: In spite Ptuz Labour Court Victory over Leave Days, in practice teachers are treated in a discriminatory, degrading and servitude manner as they are denied the right to enjoy their leave days with some high ranking officials in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare describing teaching as "seasonal just like tobacco and sugar industries."
e. Overloaded classrooms: public schools are compelled to work in overloaded classrooms of 80 to 100 pupils
f. Appalling Working conditions: Teachers are working under poor conditions of service especially in public schools without electricity, and comfortable office chairs and tables.
g. Atrocious Living conditions: More than 69% of teachers are lodgers and do not own houses of their own. Accommodation in most public schools is pathetic. It is not unusual in some rural schools for 12 teachers to share a two- roomed house with an outside pit toilet.
h. Limited Political Will to Invest in Education, given Zimbabwe's failure to respect Dakar framework and UNESCO developmental budget.
i. Curriculum Changes: Limited engagement of teachers in informing new curriculum changes and design. Teachers are not involved in syllabi development, let alone in writing textbooks and other materials for the new curriculum, yet they occupy a central role in the implementation of the new curriculum.
j. Defective Public Service Audits and Inspectorate 'terrorists': Indeed we have witnessed numerous defective audits (which in practice turned to be harassment of teachers, witch-hunting and victimization) by Public Service Commission and the invasion of teachers' professional space by Public Service inspectors.
Not only are their measures desperate, aimless, careless and acidic, but they are also brutal, suicidal, emanating from inefficient, ineffective, hopeless and educational bankrupt people.
k. Artificial overstaffing: emanating from the audit that was done by personnel not well conversant with various aspects that determine teacher pupil ratios at various levels and in various subjects in schools.
l. Unlawful Transfers: Clear violations of sections 13 and 26 of Statutory Instrument 1 of 2000 and its amendments of 2001.
m. Defective Teacher Professional Standards: As much as Professional Standards are enviable, they must be a product of engagement and logical disputation. The Teacher Professional Standards introduced by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary in 2016 were not a product of engagement with teachers and teacher-unions and are therefore a one armed bandit that must be resisted by any means necessary as they fail to meet the minimum professional standards.
n. Defective Ministry of Education Inspectorate regime: In resurrecting the brutal colonial inspectorate regime and enticed by brutal Public Service inspectorate reign of terror in schools, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary has surprised all and sundry by elevating all education officials to inspectorate level, with inspectors expected to monitor teachers, identify areas they need support and execute the one armed banditry Teacher Professional Standards.
Yet, even if these inspectors would be given aircrafts to monitor teachers, this will not improve quality education.
o. Insulated Bureaucracy and false assumption that intelligence resides at Head Office. There is also heavy dependency on self proclaimed education experts at HQ.
p. Increased harassment of and charges preferred against teachers. There has been a tendency towards harassment by education officials in schools and protection of heads of schools by the Ministry even where they are trigger happy and prefer charges against innocent teachers.
q. Extortion and Pilfering of teachers: A rogue element has emerged in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in which people claiming to be at head office are conniving with DEOs and school heads to pilfer money ranging from $150 to $500 from teachers facing disciplinary action for trivial offences.
How the people get access to teachers' confidential files remains a mystery that various Provincial Directors must explain.
Put succinctly, the education system is under siege in Zimbabwe. We have over the years witnessed cold and calculated educational vandalism, undervaluing of teachers and erosion of their status.
The question begging for an answer is: Where did Zimbabwe begin to get it wrong and how did teachers suddenly lose their prestige? The majority of teachers feel that their plight is a deliberate ploy by government to silence them as intellectuals as the wisdom of a poor teacher is never listened to.
It is the conviction of many teachers that government deliberately underpays and undervalues them because it erroneously views them as unpatriotic. Yet, an ill clothed and starving teacher who continues to do so much with so little is a model of revolutionary courage, heroism, resilience, vigilance, unparalleled patriotism and commitment.
Such dedication to duty is epitomised by 92% literacy rate in the country. 76% of teachers feel they are not consulted on the reforms in the education sector. If consulted, 24% feel their views are not taken into consideration.
It is with this context that this year's theme calls for valuing of teachers and their status restoration as a prelude to sustainable development in communities and the nation at large.
4. Way forward
How best, therefore, can teachers be valued and their status restored in Zimbabwe so as to play a vital cog in societal and national sustainable development? Indeed there are various ways to achieve this, such as:
a. PDL-related salaries for Teachers since they are the lowest paid in the SADC region.
b. Provision of land by government for building teachers' houses: the current promise by government for the provision of stands should be fast-tracked so that teachers have shelter of their own which they can even use after retirement.
c. Professional Council of Teachers: There is need to fast-track the establishment of PCT in order to promote professionalism and self regulation of the teaching. It is such a Council that can spearhead Teacher Professional Standards, and therefore value and restore the status of teachers that currently has been eroded over the past years.
d. Investing in public education in order to fulfil our collective obligation to help all learners succeed. In line with Dakar framework and UNESCO developmental budget the education budget must be above 22% of the national budget.
e. Involvement of Teacher Unions in appointment and promotion of personnel in the education sector (particularly schools) as is the case in South Africa.
f. Improvement of corporate governance, viz, efficiency, transparency and equity in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education as opposed to insulated bureaucracy.
g. Rectifying and rebuilding the respect of values that always guided education in the 1980s and early 1990s.
h. Engaging teachers in meaningful dialogue before introducing any reforms in the education system and respecting their professional views.
i. Ensuring and supporting teachers' engagement in research and publication of books that must be used in schools particularly for the new curriculum.
j. Creating public schools that are safe, welcoming places for teaching and learning.
k. Ensuring that teachers and school staff are well prepared, are supported, have manageable class sizes and have time to collaborate so that they can meet the individual needs of every learner.
l. Ensuring that learners have an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning, not testing perse, and includes art, music and the sciences.
m. Indigenous Knowledge systems as the basis for local-level decision making in agriculture, health care, food preparation, education, natural resource management, and a host of other activities in communities must be promoted in schools.
n. Import duty exemption for one car per teacher to enhance status and punctuality.
o. Teacher Training: There is need to revamp the teacher training curricula in colleges in order to produce quality teachers. In-service training must also be supported so that teachers keep abreast with cutting edge issues in the education system and remain competent.
p. Computerised Data on Teachers would increase efficiency in deployment and replacement of teachers as well as ensuring the best use of teachers in subjects of specialisation.
q. Language policy: A clear cut language policy and the establishment of a language board could assist on this thorny road and empower teachers to travel the rough road with clarity.
Conclusion
By and large, the struggle to give teaching a more humane face in Zimbabwe and enhance quality education continues unabated.
On this (World Teachers' Day), we want to remind the government that it remains the biggest threat to the development of the education system in the country.
Government's educational aridity, acidity and rigidity must change forthwith. There is urgent need to focus on status restoration and motivation of teachers in order to achieve quality education in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe surely needs a generation of quality teachers who aim to develop learners instead of teaching them, who help their pupils to become independent (learning to learn), who provide students with analytical rigor, motivation and interest for life-long learning and urge them to become autonomous learners.
This is essential in the education of the future in order to turn our current dysfunctional high literacy rate to a functional literacy rate blended with practical life experiences. Such a scenario cannot happen where 99% of teachers have mentally resigned although they physically remain at their stations.
When teacher retention outlook combines with the proven importance of teacher quality and efficacy, it is clear that systematic reform initiatives must encompass programs, strategies, 21st century learning tools and government commitment to create supportive, productive environments for educators. The responsibility of government of Zimbabwe in restoring the status and dignity of teachers is therefore huge.
Only valued and dignified professional teachers can successfully implement a paradigm shift from teaching for examination to 'teaching' and learning for life.
Quality teachers in Zimbabwe can guarantee the blending of learning with practical life and guarantee quality public education punctuated by skills for life which are a powerful propellant for the development of Zimbabwe.
On this day belatedly marking World Teachers' Day in Zimbabwe, we remind the government of the urgent need to restore the status and dignity of teachers as a basis for sustainable development of Zimbabwe.
Source - PTUZ
