The government says it has decentralised teacher recruitment and the responsibility of these recruiting centres is to hire teachers who speak the local languages to teach learners in their indigenous languages.
This development follows the government’s announcement last year that it was considering decentralising the recruitment of teachers with a special focus on marginalised rural areas.
Over the years, academics, activists and members of the public have frequently expressed concern over the employment of non-local teachers in Matabeleland primary schools, claiming this was contributing to the schools’ low pass rates.
As a result, activists accused the government’s centralised system of assigning or deploying teachers to locations in which they had little interest.
In response to questions from legislators on Wednesday in Parliament, the Leader of Government Business, Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Ziyambi Ziyambi, announced that teacher recruitment had been decentralised.
“Indeed Mr. Speaker recruitment has been decentralised. It is now up to those areas where they are recruiting, to have regard to the sensitivities that there is a need to recruit teachers who will ensure that learners are taught in the language that they know better while they are being taught other languages like English and so forth,” Ziyambi said.
This announcement came after Binga South Member of Parliament, Fanuel Cumanzala asked about the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s efforts to make sure that the recruitment process recognises local teachers or applicants who speak those indigenous languages.
“ It is one thing to learn a language at a college and it is another thing to teach it effectively to children who speak that mother language,” Cumanzala said.
The Binga South MP also inquired if Zimbabwe had any facility to assist in the production of teaching materials, particularly in languages such as Kalanga, Nambya and Shangani.
“Section 6 of our Constitution stipulates the languages that are recognised as official. These include, Kalanga, Nambya and Shangani. What is the Ministry of Education and Government doing in order to ensure that these languages are developed and advanced as the constitutional requirements?” Cumanzala asked.
In response, Ziyambi claimed the government already implemented systems to facilitate material produced in local languages.
“Midlands State University has a Language Centre that is dedicated to ensuring that we translate most of the learning material into local languages. We have used that Language Centre to translate the Constitution into several languages and I believe that we are building that capability and all the universities are also free to join in,” Ziyambi said.
“We want to thank the Midlands State University that has taken the lead in that regard.”
According to Ziyambi, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education was, ‘for a start,’ making sure preschool learners learn in their mother tongue anywhere in the country and will continue to do so.
“You must also realise that this is a provision in the Constitution that requires funding. It is a provision or a right that progressively we must realise. Progressively, that is happening at all our teachers’ training schools,” Ziyambi said.
“This is to make sure that our teachers are trained in most of the languages so that when they are deployed to a particular area, no teacher will not be able to teach in that particular language so that we have all our languages being examinable languages.”
Ziyambi went on to say that the government wanted all students to learn in their native language as much as possible, to make sure the majority of the population is fluent in the majority of languages.
