Mabokho School Development Committee Training

This week marks the start of the School Development Committe Reinforcement Project, which is a result of a partnership with UNICEF, SNV Zimbabwe and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture. The US 1.3 million programme is funded by the multi-donor Education Transition Fund. In the month of May, Ministry of Education staff throughout the country will be equipped with skills, methodologies and tools to build the capacity of School Development Committees. All the primary schools countrywide, a total of 5300 schools will be covered by this intervention.

On the road to recovery of the Zimbabwean education system, SNV stands ready to strengthen the capacity of Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture and its partners. Within the next 4 months SNV in partnership with the Ministry of Education will train all primary schools towards realization of quality education, country wide.

The thinking on this intervention started in 2009 when SNV Zimbabwe in partnership with Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture trained 256 School Development Committees in an effort to improve relations between the school administrations and communities. Experience showed that strained relations were a crucial factor in the low performance of schools in Zimbabwe where 0% of the pupils passed their grade seven exams. The positive results of these trainings led to up-scaling it to all the 5300 primary schools in the country.

Through the multi-donor trust fund, various countries have pledged together over 50million US dollars to improve the book:pupil ratio in primary schools to at least two pupils to one text book. For purposes of sustainability (through preservation of these critical learning assets) and continuously ensuring adequacy in the teaching and learning materials, SNV has been entrusted to spearhead this capacity development programme for the School Development Committees, the custodians of the schools.