Illegal schools must register or face closure

Zim Now Writer

As the war against illegal operators continues, government has called on unregistered institutions to formalise their operations or face closure while encouraging parents not to take their children to those schools.

Unregistered private schools have sprouted mostly in urban and peri-urban areas in the past couple of years with government stressing that their operations are not regulated by any authority, implying that the children are at the mercy of the illegal operators.

All schools in the country, whether government, government-aided or private schools, are registered in terms of the Education Act with operations regulated through the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, which sets the national curriculums, enforces minimum standards and generally ensures that children have sufficient education of sufficient quality and commensurate with their age.

“Government has noted with great concern the continued sprouting of illegal schools in our areas of residence,” said director of Communications and Advocacy in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Taungana Ndoro.

“Somebody with say a four-roomed house can just wake up and start operating a school and start pupil enrolment. Nobody knows the qualifications of educators running these so-called schools; nobody has checked the suitability of ablution facilities there, nothing. But a school is already running.

“We are calling on all those engaging in this to stop immediately and take pupils to formally registered schools.

“The best people to help in this regard are the parents and guardians, they should simply withdraw their kids,” he said.

Ndoro, though admitting that the sprouting of these schools is a direct manifestation of the shortage of schools, said that the government has come up with a number of measures to ensure every child is absorbed in the formal system.

Some of the measures, Ndoro said, include hot-seating and increasing the teacher-pupil ratio, which themselves have their own disadvantages.