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A 15-year-old Form One pupil was found dead at Fatima High School in Lupane district of Matabeleland North. The girl had been strangled and was also suspected to have been raped by her assailant.

The person who did this heinous act is still at large, thus posing a risk to other pupils. We hope police will catch him soon before he strikes again.

The alleged murder occurred at a “bush” boarding facility at Fatima and has exposed the risks of bush or informal boarding facilities.

Bush boarding is a situation where pupils from mostly poor families build shacks close to the schools where they live to avoid walking long distances every day.

A number of children from areas where there are no schools are forced to squat at these facilities during the school term.

The problem of bush boarders is not unique to Fatima High School. Scores of informal boarding schools exist across the country, especially in remote areas including Binga and Gokwe.

The sprouting of informal boarding facilities reflects the hunger for education in the country.

However, it seems it is a hunger fraught with dangers.

When parents send their children to the informal boarding schools, they do not expect them to return home in coffins or harmed in any way.

The death of the Form One girl is therefore a wakeup call to all schools which operate bush boarding and the government, through the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, in particular.

Bush boarding facilities have never, even in the best of situations, been conducive for pupils. Most have no adults supervising the pupils resulting in learners, especially the girl child, being exposed to various forms of abuse.

The country’s increasing population and the movement of people under the land reform programme is putting pressure on the education system.

Schools are not being built at the rate the population is growing, while in some resettlement areas, no learning facilities exist.

This leaves parents, most of whom are too poor to afford proper boarding schools, and their children with few options. Either the children don’t go to school and grow up with limited opportunities for the future, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty, or they attend these dangerous bush boarding facilities.

We believe that instead of leaving pupils to their own devices, schools which accept to take informal boarders or allow pupils to live in shacks near schools should take an active part in supervising them after school with an adult member of staff or the School Development Committee put in charge of these pupils.

The government also needs to expedite the construction of schools in disadvantaged areas. According to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, 2,500 new schools are needed in the country.

While the government, because of competing needs might not have money readily available to build all these schools, priority must be given to areas where no education facilities exist at the moment or where pupils are being forced to walk long distances.