Zimbabwe: Financial Constraints Pushing Thousands Out of School

By Prince Kurupati

The number of pupils dropping out of public school has reached alarming levels. During the COVID era, a reported 840,000 pupils dropped out of school. Subsequent years following the end of the Covid era have seen at least 30,000 pupils dropping out of school every year. Worryingly, a huge proportion of these figures are primary school dropouts. All this information was released in the latest (2024) Zimbabwe Livelihoods Assessment Committee (ZimLAC) report.

To come up with plausible findings, ZimLAC which consists of a committee chaired by the Office of the President, government departments, UNICEF and other development agencies, engaged various data collection approaches to enhance ground-truthing of contextual issues. Thanks to this, the findings, most of which are shocking paints a gory picture of the challenges that Zimbabwean families are going through.

Covering the year 2024, ZimLAC said that at the time of its survey, 22.3% of school-going children were not in school, nationally. All the country’s provinces are affected by this worrying trend with Mashonaland Central being the hardest hit while Masvingo province is the least affected.

The ZimLAC report outlined the major reasons behind the trend. In all provinces, the main causative factor relates to financial challenges. Tuition fees are now out of reach for most people in the public schooling system. Other factors also highlighted include early pregnancies which affect even school children who are in primary school, illness, children providing help in their households and in the process missing out on school, children providing care to sick family members, those who live far from schools hence prefer to drop out and those who simply aren’t interested in pursuing academic education.

The ZimLAC report demonstrates a worrying trend which has been going on unabated for several years now. Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the number of secondary school dropouts rose from 32,700 in 2001 to 50,744 in 2022. This worrying trend is now evident on the ground as hordes of young children are now a common feature in the artisanal mining field.

Commenting on this issue, communications expert Ranga Mberi said authorities are taking their time to resolve this issue as they “see hordes of illiterate youths as an economic or security risk. They see it as an opportunity. Youths are good fodder, for digging gold pits for ‘sponsors’, or for politics.” He however cautioned that things may instantly flip and if they do, they may follow the path taken by Gen Z youths in Kenya in calling for regime change. On the front, Mberi quoted the later former Zimbabwean vice president Joshua Nkomo who said, “You do not teach young people to be contemptuous of human life, and expect them to respect yours.”

The government-funded Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) which is the largest form of education assistance in the country has failed to adequately cover the educational financial needs of most pupils as it’s not appropriately funded. In the recent past, the country's finance minister Mthuli Ncube was quoted saying that there are over 1.5 million pupils on the BEAM program but many aren’t getting the assistance they need as the government owes the equivalent of US$57 million to schools.

Many citizens who aired their opinions regarding the issue solely placed the blame on the Emmerson Mnangagwa-led administration. In the 2023 and 2018 elections, one of Mnangagwa’s key election promises was that of free education to everyone enrolled in public schools for both primary and secondary school. However, that promise hasn’t been fulfilled thus inconveniencing nearly a million children.

Many called upon churches, non-governmental organizations and the private sector to chip in by providing financial assistance to the vulnerable. Zimbabwe currently has a few actors who provide scholarships and other forms of assistance to school-going children. However, most of these only target the academically talented meaning all others who fail to get good grades owing to one reason or the other find themselves without much help.

The statistics from the ZimLAC report give weight to the sentiments echoed by the minister for primary and secondary education, Dr Torerai Moyo who earlier on said that some 50 000 pupils dropped out of school between 2021 and 2023.

As one of the solutions to this challenge, Dr Moyo said his ministry together with its partners including UNICEF, CAMPFED and ECOZI have begun working towards piloting an early warning system for mitigating school drop-out.

Addressing District Schools Inspectors (DSI) and other senior officials from the primary and secondary education ministry, Dr Moyo said, “We are here to mark the beginning of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary’s work towards piloting an early warning system for mitigating school dropout, an initiative being spearheaded by the Ministry working through its partners in the education sector. It is shocking to see that 50,000 students dropped out of school around 2021 and 2022… The future of Zimbabwe lies in our youths and action must be taken and it must be taken now not tomorrow. The Ministry on its own will not adequately address this challenge, that is why we are happy to be complemented by our partners in the name of UNICEF, CAMPFED ECOZI and others who may not be here.”