The Sunday News
ACCORDING to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), education offers children a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future.
But about 264 million children and adolescents around the world do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school. They are thwarted by poverty, discrimination, armed conflict, emergencies and the effects of climate change.
Unicef believes that every child has the right to an education regardless of who they are, where they live or how much money their family has. The world organisation adds that for the girl who grows up poor in a remote rural area, staying in school and learning can protect her from child marriage, intimate-partner violence and continued poverty.
For the boy who lives in an urban slum, schooling instead of child labour can provide him with the skills needed for a better-paying and more fulfilling job as an adult. For children in emergencies, education offers safety, a sense of normalcy and the knowledge needed to build a more peaceful future.
In addition, the Constitution of Zimbabwe also speaks directly to the need for all children to be taken care of and “have access to appropriate education and training”. The move by the Government to ensure that all children are afforded an opportunity to get an education should be applauded by all progressive minds. Apart from fulfilling the provisions of the constitution, the move also dovetails with the aspirations of United Nations.
Last week, President Mnangagwa commended the Education Amendment Bill that was gazetted recently, saying it will re-introduce the concept of free education that was adopted at independence, once it is passed into law.
“We have a Bill that is coming. We want to go back to the old system when we got independence where we said primary education should be free. No child in Zimbabwe should not go to school. This new law will penalise any parent who says a child should go and herd cattle instead of going to school. Every child of school going age should go to school.
Again, there should be no difference between a child at a primary school here in the rural areas and a child at a primary school in town or a child at a secondary school in rural areas and that one in town. We are going to do everything we can to ensure that all schools are electrified. Where we cannot have electricity from Zesa, we should have solar power so that science subjects are taught at those schools.”
President Mnangagwa said Government will continue with the programme of giving computers to schools. He said children from Zimbabwe should be competitive wherever they go.
“As Government, we shall be giving computers to the schools. You are aware that former president (Robert) Mugabe was giving computers to electrified schools and this has helped several children in rural areas to learn computers. It’s a good programme that we are going to continue with. If a child is coming from Mwenezi and going to Harare, he or she should be the same with the child in Highfield. We want our children to be competitive wherever they go.
“It’s human capital for the progress and modernisation of our economy, it’s human capital for the industrialisation of our country. We are saying the thrust before us, the focus of this Government, and the focus for this party (Zanu-PF) is development, development, and development. It is production, production and production. It is skills, skills for our people. This is the only way we can develop our country. No one will develop Zimbabwe except ourselves.”
We believe an educated child is an empowered child, and that child will grow up to be an asset to the nation one way or the other. In the same breath, a nation that does not empower its children and youths is stealing their future, and that is what President Mnangagwa is guarding against by making sure that children have access to education so that they can have a bright future.
