The cost of a free education

While most of us in the more developed world take universal, free and compulsory primary and secondary education for granted, this is far from being the case in Zambia. This week we heard that the Government has plans to abolish all fees in schools but is hindered by the amount of public money needed to purchase maize through the Food Reserve Agency. After this is achieved, it intends to concentrate spending on education and health to improve peoples’ lives. This will not be possible either, unless, as Kenneth Kaunda pointed out recently, the mining companies raise output and pay their due taxes without equivocation or attempts at avoidance or evasion. Doing this would be a good use of their investment to help grow the economy so that ordinary citizens and their families benefit.

The Government and previous ones were committed to providing free education from Grade 1 to Grade 12, as part of the 2015 Millennium Goals. Goal Number 2 is the provision of universal primary education. To this end the Government has announced the phasing out of the Basic (G1-9) & High School (G10-12) and a return to Primary (G1-7) and Secondary Schools (G8-12). We are still unsure of the timescale for this. Cynics say this makes Goal 2 much easier to achieve. The Government is concerned that learning achievement in the present system is low.

Our High School at Mwandi has been allocated 2 Grade 10 classes this year. Nationwide, 124 333 out of 276 840 pupils will be given Grade 10 places. This is almost 45%. 68 000 boys and 56 000 girls! Not yet gender parity there! 145 000 passed in 6 or more subjects. This is 52%, up from 49% last year. There were 30 000 no shows and 20 000 failed in all subjects.

Related to all this the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection has recently published a paper ‘How free is free education?’ www.jctr.org.zm

We have little Ellie staying with us during term time this year. We have known Ellie since she was born. She was born with a club foot and had to have her right knee amputated then. She goes regularly to the Italian Orthopedic Hospital in Lusaka to have her prosthesis adjusted. She started Primary 1 in January this year. Her family lives and farms between Mabumbu and Sankalonga but Ellie cannot walk the 10km to school, hence her boarding with us during term-time, so we do have some insight into the costs incurred by Zambian families with school children.

In 2002 user-fees were abolished in Primary Schools, this was a welcomed reversal of IMF/World Bank ‘cost-sharing’ conditions in the Structural Adjustment Plan which had to be accepted to gain debt relief. These fees actually did very little to improve or expand education in Zambia. Then the Mwanawasa Government promised free education to Grade 12 and that no child should be prevented from receiving education because of fees.

The paper makes a distinction between direct and indirect costs. Education will never be entirely free and indirect costs can restrict the availability of education to poorer children as much as direct costs. There are still direct fees charged at Primary School through the PTA Levy and also Project Fees can be levied. These can range from K10 000-K30 000 per year. The indirect costs are school uniforms, shoes, textbooks, stationery supplies, transportation, ‘tuition fees’ and food for breaks and lunch. This can easily come to over K400 000 for one child.

Between 2000 and 2004 primary school attendance rose from 71-85%. This still leaves at least 15% or 300 000 children aged 7-13 not attending school who should be there. It is suggested that it is a lack of money that keeps these children away. Also it is girls who suffer most in these circumstances. Bursaries need to be more accessible and available to help the more vulnerable to attend school. In the 21st Century we need to ask ourselves is it right that a child is sent home because they have no uniform or shoes or are unable to pay the fees? Is Zambia really that poor? If we are serious about this then there needs to be higher grants going to schools that serve poorer areas for recurrent costs and rehabilitation. Our Basic School received a meagre K3m last year for 1500 pupils

In many places public education is close to collapse with over-enrolment, straitened resources, decaying infrastructure and a demoralized work-force. The 1:70 teacher to pupil ratio has remained unchanged for 10 years. The shortage of textbooks is chronic. 1 book to 4 pupils is an exceptional ratio and in many subject the teacher has the sole textbook for that class in that subject. State school teachers earn from K1m per month ($200) to around K2.5m ($500) for a Headteacher. In Grades 8 & 9, not being “Primary”, pupils are often charged around K300 000. The cost at Mwandi is K90 000.

High Schools like Sesheke will cost K1.2m per year. Our High School charges K750 000.

Vulnerable families and the schools in Mwandi have benefited greatly from the Mwandi UCZ OVC Programme that sponsors around 500 pupils at the Basic School and 90 out of 220 at the High School. The programme feeds 200 pupils daily. There is another program that helps with direct costs for children from poorer families within and outwith Mwandi with an emphasis on educational assistance for the girl child. It has put 24 pupils through Sesheke High School between 2007-11 and has helped 9 pupils in Grades 10 & 11 at Mwandi High School and others Basic Schools. We are indebted to many individuals and congregations who through their generosity make it possible to educate needy children by helping to meeting the direct and indirect costs which their families otherwise would struggle to afford.

There is an old truism, if you think education is expensive try ignorance and that there are some people who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Without good affordable and widely available education there will be no development, no drop in HIV/AIDS rates, no flourishing local commerce and industry, no drop in the unemployment rate and Zambia will risk becoming a stagnating and underdeveloped economic back-water.

We hope the political will is there to address this.

Sharing the Burden

25 May is a continent-wide public holiday, Africa Freedom Day. It was chosen by the African Union then (the OAU) as a celebration of the African people’s determination to free themselves from colonialism and foreign exploitation.

Yesterday afternoon we set out for Sesheke. That is the District HQ which is about 70km upstream on the border with Namibia. As usual we were killing two birds with one stone but more about stones later

Our first concern was the father of the little baby girl, Liseli, whose mother had died in childbirth. He had phoned us to let us know she needed more milk formula. We agreed to meet him at the Social Welfare Office for the hand-over. We arrived to the family waiting for us. Liseli, is now no longer sickly, but a healthy, active little two month old baby. After giving the milk Liseli’s asked if we could drop his son at Simungoma as he was being sent to the wife’s family farm to bring back food that they needed. God’s provision in all this was evident as we had been sent a gift for him which had arrived this week.

We also caught up with the District Social Welfare Officer. He would arrange the payment for some bags of maize purchased for Kandiana next week. The heavily-pregnant woman being held in prison had been released by the Magistrate and was back at home in Masese. This is near the Health Centre that we are working with an Irish Jesuit organisation to rehabilitate. We were able to report that Mubita’s mother too, is responding well to the monthly visits and treatment at the Psychiatric Wing at Livingstone Hospital. Ida reported too on the most recent baby to be put on formula as the mother has become psychotic and was refusing to feed the baby.

After some organisational teething troubles on the ground, work on the UCZ Sikuzu Community School has finally commenced. The Steering Committee is now in place and assuming its role to ensure effective and efficient use of resources, human and material in the construction process. Our suppliers had difficulties with a bearing on their truck and were reluctant to deliver to such a ‘remote place’! After much negotiation and assurances that they would not get stuck in sand, they came to Mwandi earlier in the month to pick up the 200 pockets of cement they were to deliver to Sikuzu earlier but could not because of the truck difficulties. There were steel bars and conforce to move as well that we were storing for them.

The first tranche of funding came through the IPC in March and all the cement and materials were bought then and have now been delivered to Sikuzu. There will need to be another three deliveries to bring all the cement that has been ordered. The 704 pockets are enough for the slab and superstructure to ringbeam level. The other 286 bags will be ordered later for the floor screed and plastering.

As you can see from the photo, brick-moulding is progressing apace and work has now begun on foundation footing. 60 tonnes of stones are required for the concrete for the foundations, the slab and ringbeam and our nearest quarry is on the farside of of Sesheke. Hence our trip yesterday. The stones by themselves cost K8 142 000 ($1800 or GBP1200) but the six trips to deliver them will cost much the same K8 051 400!

This morning we have just had a rather distressing visit from a teaching colleague. His nephew, one of our Grade 8 boys, went fishing on the river the day before yesterday in the afternoon to check the nets set earlier. The mukolo (dug-out canoe) he was in, was smashed by a hippo and he fell into the water. All that has been recovered is his jacket. The Uncle was asking if the Mission boat could be used to look for the body....

Awaiting

Greetings from a dry dusty and roasting Mwandi as we await the rains at the end of the month, we hope. Duncan and Ina, our daughter Kirsten’s in-laws have been collecting pre-school equipment being disposed of in Edinburgh and taking it through to Kildrum to be stored until a container is organized. Our thanks go to Kildrum for putting their dunnie at our disposal. We are so pleased to have been given those wonderful toys and look forward to their being used here.

We are well but kept busy with duties at the school and hospital. The latest good news is that US$40 000 has been pledged by a US Foundation to build a classroom block at Sikuzu. This will save children a 10 mile round trip to school.

We are about to leave on Saturday for Mongu to the Western Presbytery Meeting where the new Bishop will be elected. Before the Covenanter in you chokes on your coffee, a Bishop here is in effect more of a Moderator than the priestly prelate of Presbyterian prejudice! The United Church of Zambia is actually an amazing and working mixture of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, some Baptists and French Protestants; so there are several forms of baptism, child and adult believer, sprinkling and immersion depending on your 'tradition' and three forms of communion: the Scottish- passed around, the Methodist- on your knees at the front or the French - a series of horse-shoes around the Communion Table. Services too can be very liturgical, others are more like ours from the Common Order. Some services are more traditional and rather staid while others are quite charismatic. It is wonderful how all these manage to be accepted and welcomed by all. There is a lesson here for the Scottish Church(es).

The new Minister for Mwandi will also be elected there. Presbytery is followed by a 4- day Church Camp Retreat on an island in the Zambezi. So we have packed our camping equipment with our tents and sleeping-bags.

We will be using the inaptly named M10. Some of you, Scots of a certain age, will remember in 1970s and 80s, the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road being referred to as the ‘goat-track’; well the M10 takes that place here in Western Province. Mongu is only 400km away but the tar runs out at Sesheke and it is sand dust and dirt to the pontoon ferry at Sitoti. After crossing the Zambezi, a dreadful drive ensues across the floodplain to Senanga., another pitted and pot-holed causeway with washed out culverts. At Senanga we enjoy tar again for the last hour to Mongu. There are only tarred roads in Western Province. We’ll leave at 0700h and get to Mongu at around 1600h

Unfinished building work

Finally, Nick has asked us if we would make urgent enquiries to try and find an individual or a small team of builders who could come now or in the near future to work on the roof of the Church of Scotland house. He is desperately needing assistance to get the roof put on before the advent of the rains and before he goes on leave at the end of November.

If any of you know of anyone who might be able to help, please let us know and get them to contact us as soon as possible. This really is a pressing need.

On home ground again

We are at present limping our way to Livingstone on a very worn front tyre due to continued suspension problems and after having the problem supposedly rectified in Lusaka. We are to pick up Jennie Chinembiri and George Lind (of the Church of Scotland's World Mission Council) from the airport while doing various items of business for school, manse and hospital.

The Reverend Silishebo has demitted office after 8 years at Mwandi and has been called to the Chaplaincy at the University of Zambia in Lusaka; the Reverend Derek Lubasi who is presently at Coillard Memorial in Livingstone will be inducted shortly as our new minister. There is a flurry of activity cleaning, painting and renovating the manse to welcome the new ‘family’ (Lubasi means family in Silozi.)

We have just spent the past week-end doing another flitting! We have moved into Hippo House – bit of a misnomer as far as size is concerned but we are fortunate to enjoy running water and electricity (most of the time) utilities denied to a large majority of the Zambian population.

Some progress has been made with the house that the Church of Scotland funded with a grant, and that Nick designed and is building. The wooden flooring is being laid at the moment. We hope we can move in before Christmas.

We are beginning to pick up the threads of where we left off. On the first Sunday evening we got back was a very moving service for the sending out of the 10 young people back to their congregations. They had been attending a 4 month Mission Course at the Church run by Percy, the Youth Pastor. They had slept in tents, cooked for themselves and freely contributed their talents and labour to various ministries to be found at the Mission. They had also has their faith challenged and deepened, intellectually and academically too they had a substantial amount of reading and writing to tackle, not just of a theological nature either but also other work needing life skills.

We have had a good and useful couple of days with Jennie and George who were able to get a taste of what we do at the Hospital and School as well as the wider Church work we undertake here. We saw them off on Saturday to Kitwe and Lusaka.

We are now back to ‘auld claes and porridge’. Ida is back to work at the AIDS Relief Programme, she has done the first scrubbing for a Caesar and has been returned her keys and asked to tackle the Central Stores which was neglected in her absence. She is a Also working with the Consistory, helping to establish a home-based care programme.

As for me I have been allocated Grade 8C for Maths and Science and 10A for History. I am at present drafting a proposal to submit to a Church Aid for teacher housing at the High School. We are still putting the finishing touches to the second classroom block and student latrines which were not finished despite efforts on my part to ensure that things should continue in my absence.

Another exciting development hoving into view is the possibility of a Community School at Sikuzu. Sikuzu is a rural community about 8km downstream from Mwandi. The children are prevented from attending school at Mwandi until they can walk the return journey each day. They are usually 8 or 9 years before this happens. So a Grade 1-4 School will be a great boon for them. At present there is a UCZ Pre-school run from the Church.