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

HON. DR. DOKORA: Madam Speaker, we have eliminated that by using ICT tools and this is since three years ago. The evolution into the future is to say, because now you know that children begin registration into the examination system in Grade 6. As they register into Grade 6 for the cohort for next year, they must be able to indicate as early as that registration to say whether they wish to proceed to boarding or not. We hope when the Grade 7 results come out, they will also indicate that you have found a Form 1 place at such and such a school but the real crunch is that we have limited spaces for boarding but the day school places are available. The elasticity of the system is what I said we are looking at the teacher deployment in order to enable us to carry everybody into Form 1.

Hon. Chibaya raised a question about his area where he thinks there are schools that may have already said they have taken students and so on for Form 1; this is a matter for the administrative system. What is important here is to provide the policy framework in which the administrative issues can then be sorted out but all school heads respond to the same Ministry.

Two weeks ago, I met with all the responsible authority representatives including the church representatives in which we looked at the various options. Should we allow two months of people searching for places? Does that expand our envelope and they felt quite clearly that we are putting school heads at risk because they will be approached today. They will also be approached tomorrow and so on. So we said, let us try and harmonise these efforts and try and use the tools of today to help us achieve a win-win situation but we can continue to tweak the system as we go into 2017. I am grateful for that early indication of what maybe in the system.

Hon. Mandipaka was worried about the rural areas being not in the digital age. As I said, when I talk e-registration, that is being in the digital age. I did not come here to announce that we have said that all schools should go e-registration because we felt that this was really part of our routine work in the education sector. Even the humblest school in the village has a laptop, of course they may not necessarily tell you – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections] – Oh, yes! …

THE HON. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order Hon. Members on my right. Can we have order please? Hon. Minister, order! Hon. Members on my right, I do not think you are treating the Hon. Minister with honour, I am appealing to you. You may proceed Hon. Minister.

HON. DR. DOKORA: I am thankful to the Speaker. Some of those that are making the interjections appear to have their own private schools in fact that are high on the ICT side of things, but I do not know why they are challenging this. All the 329 000 students I spoke about are on the database through an e-registration system. You cannot argue against that because that is a fact.

Hon. Khanye, you say can we have public hearings. I am open to that. I could never say to the National Assembly do not do public hearings because we can all benefit in the process. In the New Year, that can be engaged but more importantly, is to have public hearings that will probably yield the levy for building new schools. This whole thing is about the shortage of space for boarding. In our nation we now know people want boarding places. So, we must build more rather than quibble over what is not elastic. So, I would welcome that.

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