Schools across Swaziland are in chaos at the start of
the new academic year.
Children have been turned away because there are no
spaces for them in classes at High School. This is because the kingdom has in
recent years introduced free primary school education. Now children have
graduated there are not enough places in secondary schools. Parents were
reported by local media to be walking from school to school in unsuccessful
attempts to get their children placed.
Minister of Education Phineas Magagula told the Swazi Observer that new classes had been built across the kingdom
to accommodate the expected influx of schoolchildren. Magagula was unable to
tell media exactly how many new schools had been opened and how many had been
upgraded from secondary to high school.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education has not paid fees
to about half the 650 primary schools in Swaziland. The
Times of Swaziland reported
money was being withheld because pupils did not have personal identification
numbers (PINs). The Ministry said to avoid audit queries, it had to
pay fees against a PIN, not a name of a pupil.
Parents have been outraged that some primary schools
are charging top-up fees when the Swazi Constitution and Government policy says
primary education should be free.
Swaziland, is ruled by King Mswati III as sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch. Political parties are banned from taking part
in elections and the King appoints the Prime Minister and top ministers. Seven
in ten of the estimated 1.4 million population live in abject poverty with
incomes less than US$2 per day. The kingdom’s economy has been mismanaged for
decades.
Swaziland cannot afford to pay for its free primary
education policy. Government pays E580 per child, but this is heavily
subsidised by the European Union (EU). Up to December 2016, the
EU had spent a total amount of E110 million (about US$8 million). In 2015, it
reportedly sponsored 34,012 learners in 591 schools. The EU plans to continue
paying for the school fees until the end of 2018. The EU started funding all
first grade pupils in the whole country in 2011.
The problem does not end at primary level. An investigation by the Swazi Observer (27 January 2018)
revealed that some high schools charged nearly E9,000 per child per year in top-up
fees. It also found (1 February 2018) that some schools were not allowing
children, including OVCs (orphaned and vulnerable children) to attend classes
until deposits on fees were paid.
The Ministry of Education then announced that no school in Swaziland had
been given permission to charge top-up fees because none had made the necessary
formal request to do so. Permission can take up to a year.
In February 2017, nearly E2.7 billion (US$216 million) was allocated in
the national budget for the kingdom’s security forces that comprise the Umbutfo
Swaziland Defence Force (USDF), Royal Swaziland Police Service (RSPS) and His
Majesty’s Correctional Services (HMCS). This was 12.4 percent of
Swaziland’s total budget.
An organisation called Teach According to Qualification (TEATQ) reported
that the main reason the Teaching Service Commission was not hiring teachers on
a permanent basis was because it could save more than E30 million annually. It
estimated there were more than 1,000 teachers on contracts. The Legal Notice
147 of 2009, states that contract teachers should be made permanent after
working for two years.
Children
across Swaziland are going hungry because the government
has failed to pay suppliers for food to be distributed free in the so-called
zondle programme. This has been going on for more than a year despite continual
promises from government that the crisis has been resolved.
Phephisa Khoza, the editor of the Swazi
News, wrote a scathing attack on the government which ‘has absolved itself
of its responsibility to provide free and quality education to its citizens’.
Khoza
wrote (27 January 2018), ‘In the past there has been talk about limited
resources, but this is not the real issue when it comes to public education. We
have heard of teachers being hired but not paid, of crumbling infrastructure
and how some school administrations are operating as dictators, demanding
top-up fees much against government policy.
‘However, they cannot be blamed for their actions as they are forced
into such decisions by government’s failure to provide the essential resources
to enable schools to perform at the maximum level.’
Ackel Zwane, the veteran columnist of the Swazi Observer, wrote (26 January 2018),
‘Since the
introduction of Free Primary Education, government did not mobilise resources
to make the programme sustainable, especially with the anticipation of ever
rising numbers at intake.
‘In the same vein, government did not provide for effective teacher
training for the task but instead went to embark on highly ambitious
initiatives such as Religious Education compulsory instead of the sciences that
are responsible for the overall development, including making correct
calculations to avert crises in the education system.
‘The children are now overcrowded with insufficient teaching aids and
furniture in almost all the public schools.’
‘In some cases, parents offer to assist with the provision of desks just
for the child to squeeze into that tight corner that will be home for the whole
school calendar year without the teacher ever having access to him or her, all
because of overcrowding in the small classrooms.’
See also
CHILDREN
TOLD ‘PREPARE FOR STARVATION’
END
OF FREE SWAZI PRIMARY SCHOOLING
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/end-of-free-swazi-primary-schooling.html
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