Abstract
In recent times the entire public education sector in Zimbabwe underwent a significant deterioration in quality. In 2009 the state appointed National Education Advisory Board similarly noted with concern the increasingly worsening state of education in the primary and secondary schools in rural and urban areas. However, worryingly, official and scholarly attention focused on the mainstream conventional schools, ignoring a sub-category of uniquely circumstanced rural schools, located on newly resettled farming areas. To inquire about the state of education in these schools, the researchers employed a mixed methods design, sending out open-ended questionnaires to twenty school teachers and headmasters at four primary schools in the newly resettled farming areas in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. The questionnaire focused on the availability of print curriculum materials and the coping strategies used by teachers working in schools on newly resettled farms. The study established that schools on newly resettled farms face acute shortages of textbooks in all subjects for both pupils and teachers. Where the print curriculum materials are available, they are in most cases of very limited quantity and variety. The study also established that this shortage of print curriculum materials negatively impacts on the quality of curriculum delivery as teachers resort to teacher-centred and transmissive approaches as a way of coping with the shortage of learning resources. Following these findings, the study recommended that the educational authorities in Zimbabwe should adopt a positive discrimination model of resource distribution whereby schools in the newly resettled farming areas are given preferential consideration when it comes to resource allocation.
Highlights
Since 2001, Zimbabwe has been undertaking a fast track land reform program which was started by the Svosve people when they forcibly took possession of a white owned farm north east of the country (Sachikonye, 2003).This marked the beginning of a continuing and a largely government sanctioned process whereby white owned commercial farms are taken over by blacks
Most of the schools in Zimbabwe face acute shortage of infrastructure, furniture and curriculum materials. Such findings mainly relate to the situation obtaining in conventional schools, they are unlikely to apply to the new farm resettlement schools which seem to be uniquely circumstanced
The following major questions guided this study: What is the extent of availability of print curriculum materials in new farm resettlement schools? Are the curriculum materials available in sufficient variety to cater for the needs of a variegated student population? What coping strategies do teachers use in the face of constrained learning resources?
Summary
Since 2001, Zimbabwe has been undertaking a fast track land reform program which was started by the Svosve people when they forcibly took possession of a white owned farm north east of the country (Sachikonye, 2003). The foregoing suggests that children of school going age who had been attending established schools elsewhere accompany their parents and guardians to settle on the new farms These children have to continue with their education in an environment where there is hardly any educational infrastructure, including schools. Most of the schools in Zimbabwe face acute shortage of infrastructure, furniture and curriculum materials Such findings mainly relate to the situation obtaining in conventional schools, they are unlikely to apply to the new farm resettlement schools which seem to be uniquely circumstanced. The scenario obtaining in the primary and secondary sector in Zimbabwe, as noted above, seems to represent typical educational concerns in developing countries (Morgan, 2007) In most of these countries, including those in Africa, provision of adequate resource materials remains a basic limiting factor to curriculum delivery. The following major questions guided this study: What is the extent of availability of print curriculum materials in new farm resettlement schools? Are the curriculum materials available in sufficient variety to cater for the needs of a variegated student population? What coping strategies do teachers use in the face of constrained learning resources?
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