MPs say Zimbabwe is not yet ready for electronic registration of Form 1 pupils

Secondly there are some schools which only take children with four to six units, schools like Goromonzi Secondary and other schools. They produce very good ‘O’ level results and it appears as if they are very good at teaching but it is because they get the cream, whereas those in Mabvuku get the worst of the pupils, which may mean that they were not bright pupils, they were just pushed to Form 1, proceeding to ‘O’ level. What is he going to do to the slow learners so that they can proceed into Form 1, well equipped? I thank you.

HON. ZVIDZAI: Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I have got a few anxieties around the Minister’s propagated ideas. The first one is the celebration of major pass rates around indigenous languages. The incongruence of that with the STERM policy is that the Minister has not sought to talk to us as to the remedial actions moving forward to ensure that there is a relationship between our celebration at that lower level and our intentions around STERM.

My second anxiety Madam Speaker is around the revolutionary approach to this new approach. Normally, if you want policy to succeed, you want to move evolutionarily than revolutionarily. The communities out there, the parents are very anxious as to whether it is very easy to crossover from a person to person discussion with a headmaster to a virtual approach to looking for places. As they visited, yes, it was a bit expensive but it was also an opportunity to create relationships with administrations at the schools. It was also an opportunity to have a look at the facilities there and be able to criticise or proffer developmental solutions for the process.

My third anxiety is around the 4 500 children that might have got pregnant accidently. The girls might have been taken advantage of by the rich, ‘sugar daddies’ and ‘sugar mummies’ and are they going to be consigned into permanent poverty as a result of having been taken advantage of particularly at that early stage. I would have expected the Minister to talk to us around how he is going to deal with these 4 500 unfortunate cases. I thank.

+HON. MLILO: Thank you Madam Speaker. I want to thank Hon. Minister for the statement. I am anxious about this statement in that the internet allows someone who is in Guruve to register in Gwanda, Matobo and so forth. What measures are going to be put in place so that people from other areas will not end up losing out because of this? If we are in Harare and we apply for schools in Gwanda, Gwanda is a rural community and the town is very small, few people have cell phones but they do not have access to the internet. What will happen is that people outside Gwanda will populate schools in Gwanda at the detriment of children in Gwanda. Tell me what you are going to do about that if our children fail to get places in their communities. Government has a policy that a person should benefit from the community he lives in just like in ZIM ASSET. I believe that is Government policy.

The other thing that also disturbs me is that the ministerial statement is applicable in both Government and private schools in Matebeleland North and South there are mission schools for example Anglican. When these churches create these schools, they want children to learn issues pertaining to religion. You find that in church schools there were members of a certain church. With this new system, you will end up having a Muslim at an Anglican school. So because of the system we will end up having pupils who do not subscribe to that religion. What is important on such schools is to learn about the history of the church and their behaviour. This is one thing that will give me sleepless nights because I am a member of the Anglican Church and we want our Anglican schools to enroll Anglican children. On Wednesdays, such schools have Anglican Mass and children attend Mass services without censoring.

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