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Chinhoyi Bureau
THE government could abolish the post of education officer at provincial and district level if the supervision of schools and teachers does not improve, a cabinet minister has warned.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Lazarus Dokora said provincial education structures should justify their existence through performance.

The structures include the provincial education director, his deputies and other senior officers.

“Provincial education directors shouldn’t spend their time in the office but in schools to understand what’s happening. Is there a need for someone to spend the whole week in the office? The real work is in the schools,” he said.

Dokora was addressing provincial education directors and district officers from all over the country at a strategic planning workshop in Kariba last week.

He said there was need for more officers at district level, saying the province should be there to coordinate activities.

Dokora said there should be no cases of impropriety and mismanagement at schools if supervisors were doing their job.

He cited a case at Goromonzi High School where O-Level students without 10 As were being turned away.

“It’s ridiculous that you get students with 4 points at Grade 7, but you want to turn them away if they don’t attain high points. Whose fault is it that you’ve failed to make them pass? You want the best that you spoil so that you ask again for the best? Common sense should tell you that even if your students get 4As and 2 Bs, they’re your students,” he said.

At another school, he said, students were simply told they were not sitting for exams last year but this year. He said such matters went unreported, a clear indication of lack of supervision or alternatively, complicity.

He said the government was working to resuscitate the inspectorate of schools.

The minister said because of the decay in the education structures, teachers were being wrongly deployed with some trained to teach at secondary schools being deployed to teach in primary schools.