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Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, Chronicle Reporter
IN 2014 the Empandeni community in Mangwe District turned a community hall into a school to help ease the burden of children who were walking about 30 kilometres to the nearest school.

This marked the start of Valukhalo Secondary School which has brought huge relief to the community. When a Chronicle news crew visited the school in 2014 about 214 learners were attending lessons in a community hall due to lack of proper classrooms. The hall had been partitioned into two classrooms with some space left to accommodate members of staff. A total of 129 Form One pupils were occupying one of the rooms with 85 Form Two pupils using the other room.

Villagers in the area were forced to start the school without proper structures because their children were travelling long distances to the nearest schools.

Children were dropping out of school after completing Grade Seven while the few committed ones had to travel about 30km to the nearest secondary school.

When Valukhalo Secondary School opened in January 2014, it was overwhelmed by pupils wanting to enrol despite the fact that it had poor infrastructure, no toilets and had no learning materials like textbooks.

Seven years after it was established, the school now has most of the required infrastructure.

It now has toilets, an administration block, classrooms and teachers cottages. The community hall is now being used to house female pupils that stay far from the school during examination time.

The community mobilised resources to build one classroom block while the other two were built with the assistance of different partners. A science laboratory is also under construction at the school.

Government working with various partners has been building schools to reduce distances travelled especially in rural areas.

Statistics from the Zimbabwe Education Analysis 2016- 2020 show that the country needs more than 4 500 new schools to provide quality education. The schools that are already established need an additional 45 000 classrooms.

A parent Mrs Sinikiwe Dube said her daughter completed her Ordinary Level at Valukhalo Secondary School last year. She said when he daughter enrolled at the school there was just one classroom block and the