THE Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in Masvingo Province is targeting to
formalise at least 30 schools this year out of 262 satellite schools.
Masvingo Provincial Education Director, Shylatte Mhike, responding to questions that had
been raised by local authorities during the stakeholder meeting last week, said it was the duty
of the responsible authorities to push for the formalisation of their schools.
“We have a target of registering 30 schools, we have 262 satellite schools in the province and
you can say why target 30 only, it’s because of the processes of registration. When we
register schools, it is the responsible authority that should be on the forefront of registering
their schools.
Over time I don’t know why that task has been sort of pushed on to the ministry. So, we have
hiccups there because it should be responsible authorities and largely for our schools these
are councils, the RDCs.”
She said some of the challenges that might affect registration were that the Ministry of
Education worked in liaison with the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the spatial
department and sometimes the requirements for the ministry of education were met, while
those of the ministry of health areas were outstanding leading to the delay of formalisation.
“It should be our ministry, the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the spatial division that
we used to call physical planning that should work together in order to register schools and
usually we have challenges either from one department or the other and people tend to blame
our ministry for not registering schools.
We have other players coming in from the Ministry of Health, they may not agree to have a
school having that authority to establish and construct if there are no toilets.”
Meanwhile, she said her office was seized with a lot of schools and that it was working on
ensuring they got the authority to establish and construct as they did not have proper paper
work.
“Last year, we did quite a lot of work and I have the evidence with me. I have the schools,
satellite schools, that we have already tried to find authority to establish and construct but the
problem is when these schools were built no paper work was done. So we are beginning from
scratch,” she said.