The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education says Zimbabwe fully recognises the social and economic value of educating the girl child, with targeted interventions aimed at keeping vulnerable girls in school and addressing long-standing barriers such as poverty, long distances to school, early marriages and social neglect.
Responding to concerns raised during a public dialogue on the Delivery of Education Services organised by Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) in Bulawayo on Thursday, where panellist Jacqueline Ndlovu of the Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (WILD) said “girls bear the brunt of education inequality,” the ministry claimed concrete measures were already in place to close the gap.
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Director of Communications and Advocacy, Taungana Ndoro, said the ministry’s commitment to girls’ education was reflected not only in policy, but also in symbolism, programming and community-based interventions designed to protect girls at risk of dropping out of school.
“I am proud to say that the head office of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has changed its name from Ambassador House to Queen Lozikeyi House,” Ndoro said.
“So you don’t go looking for the ministry at Ambassador House anymore, you go to Queen Lozikeyi House.”
Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo was one of the most influential queens in pre-colonial Zimbabwe and the name change, Ndoro said, was deliberate.
“Queen Lozikeyi was one of the most powerful queens in this land. What does that mean? It means we are empowering the matriarch,” he said.
“We start from there. Our head office is named after a woman, a queen.”
Beyond symbolism, Ndoro said the ministry has rolled out practical strategies to address the high dropout rates among girls, particularly in rural areas where long walking distances, household responsibilities and economic hardship make schooling difficult.
One of these interventions is the Early Warning System, a programme designed to identify learners who are most at risk of dropping out of school.
“The early warning system is where we go in as a ministry to try and identify children who are most at risk of dropping out of school and those that are most at risk are girls,” Ndoro said.
Ndoro said many girls in rural Zimbabwe walk between 10 and 15 kilometres to school, each way, a burden that significantly undermines their academic performance and safety.
“If a child walks 15 kilometres to school, that’s 30 kilometres a day. By the end of the week, they’ve walked to Gweru and you expect that child to pass,” Ndoro said.
“We realised we have a crisis there.”
In response, the ministry has established low-cost, sustainable boarding facilities in rural districts, particularly in the southern regions of the country.
“We have constructed quite a number of low-cost boarding facilities dotted throughout most of our rural areas,” he said, citing Mangwe and Bulilima districts in Matabeleland South, as well as Buhera in Manicaland and Mhondoro in Mashonaland West.
Under the model, girls stay at the boarding facilities during the school term, bringing their own food and paying minimal boarding fees.
“They cook, they clean, they do everything by themselves. The school provides accommodation so that these girls are able to complete their education,” Ndoro explained.
Ndoro said the ministry’s interventions were also responding to the realities of child-headed households and absent parents, a situation worsened by migration and economic pressures.
“When we go in, we notice that most of the children in child-headed families, or where parents are absent, the girl child is at risk,” he said.
“After Grade Seven or Form One, they don’t proceed, they are married off.”
He said the boy child was also increasingly vulnerable, particularly following disruptions caused by Covid-19.
“During Covid-19, we had a lot of children out of school,” Ndoro said.
“Some ventured into artisanal mining and never returned. They then influenced other boys to leave school and join artisanal mining.”
The ministry has also raised concern about the ripple effects of illegal mining communities on girls’ education.
“The amakorokoza have not gone to school, and they waylay young girls coming from school,” Ndoro said.
“Before you know it, that girl drops out of school.”
He said early marriages were becoming common, with girls as young as 12, 13 or 14 entering unions with slightly older boys, and in some cases, much older men.
“It’s a huge crisis,” Ndoro said. “And it’s not just the government that has to be involved. It’s the whole community. All hands have to be on deck.”
Ndoro stressed that the ministry’s approach is grounded in Zimbabwean values embedded in the Heritage-Based Curriculum.
“We talk of Ubuntu where any child is yours. Don’t say, ‘that’s not my child’. It takes a village to raise a child. This is our tradition.”
He illustrated the importance of community accountability with an incident from a monitoring visit to St Anne’s School in Mashonaland East shortly after Covid-19 period.
As officials were leaving the school, they encountered a Form Three learner in full school uniform carrying a quart of beer near a nearby growth point.
“We tried to talk to him and he said, ‘You can’t do anything. School is over. I can do whatever I want,’” Ndoro recounted.
What followed, he said, demonstrated the power of community intervention.
“The elderly men who were sitting there drinking stood up, grabbed the boy and said, ‘Don’t you know these are officials from head office?’” Ndoro said.
“They threw away his beer, told him to tuck in his shirt and apologise.”
Ndoro said the officials told the learner that education was about protecting his future, not enforcing authority.
“It’s not to please us,” he said. “It’s to please you.”
Ndoro rejected claims that the government had retreated from its responsibilities, insisting the ministry responds swiftly to reports of abuse or neglect.
“The government is there,” he said. “All reports that get to us, we deal with them. In my department, we don’t take more than 24 hours to respond.”
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