Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
THE Government has warned parents and guardians who have taken it upon themselves to ensure they belong to multiple School Development Committees (SDCs) and even in schools where their children were not learning, to stop the rot, urging parents to belong to one school committee at a time.
Addressing school heads in Bulawayo on Thursday, the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Hon Torerayi Moyo, said his ministry was aware of parents who were becoming career SDC members in different schools, just to manipulate the committees for their benefit. He said he had already penned a Statutory Instrument to that effect.
“You cannot be a member of the SDC at two or three schools, I have written a Statutory Instrument (SI) and it is coming. The President has agreed, we are going to harmonise SDC’s and SDA’s, we have done that. What is left is for the Attorney General to look at it but I am sure the SI should come out anytime soon. We want real parents, not people masquerading as parents to be members of the SDCs, no,” he said.
He said only bona fide parents with children at a particular school must be allowed to make decisions. He was speaking following reports of people who join multiple SDCs despite their children not belonging to those schools and manipulating school systems. The minister said parents who do not have children at some schools but are members of the SDCs were influencing school fees increases at the expense of the “real parents” who may not be in the committees. He encouraged schools to be thorough when nominating members to the committees.
Turning to the issue of extra lessons that were clandestinely happening in various schools, the minister said teachers would face the wrath of the ministry.
“It is so disturbing to find a teacher collecting money from a few students, five or 10 students, and concentrating on those 10 whose parents would have paid for extra lessons. The rule is, that no extra lessons must be conducted, and headmasters, it is your duty to write a charge sheet for a teacher who is doing that. Right now we are processing papers for a teacher in Manicaland who had sent messages to parents saying they were only going to teach learners who had paid US$10 per child for extra lessons,” he added.
The minister said lack of internal supervision in schools had an adverse effect on learners as no teaching takes place during working hours and extra lessons were therefore done after hours to benefit those who would have paid. He said the Government was not going to witch-hunt for teachers who conduct extra lessons in their homes or other places, but said in the school setup, it was illegal to do so.–@NyembeziMu
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