Theme 4: Policy issues

All the schools in Zimbabwe are guided by and fall under the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) and report through hierarchical structures from:

School District Province Head office. These structures should be followed because the government, through the Ministry, is responsible for the teachers’ remuneration (salaries). However, some schools have responsible authorities like churches and councils who complement the government’s efforts by means of other responsibilities, like infrastructural development. The fact that the Zimbabwean education system is centrally managed means that everything that the teachers do are a product of the Ministry, through instruments such as Policy Circulars, Statutory Instruments, and Education Acts, among a plethora of statements issued by the Ministry. The school heads and the teachers do not have the authority to question the use or otherwise of the instruments. They have to implement them as authoritative directives or as prescriptions. Given this scenario, the school heads and teachers, in the absence of policy guidelines regarding community involvement in curriculum implementation, feel duty-bound not to take the engagement of communities seriously. From the focus-group discussions, as well as the questionnaire responses, two issues emerged regarding policy matters with regard to community involvement in curriculum implementation. The two are: The availability of circulars and policy guidelines, and that the formulation of educational policy should adopt a bottom-up approach. The following figure presents the sub-themes that emerged from Theme 4.

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Figure 4.4: Sub-themes emerging from theme 4.

4.2.4.1 Circulars and policy guidelines

The findings revealed that there are no circulars or policy guidelines to help the school heads and the teachers to engage the community members in curriculum implementation.

The only policies that the school heads referred to were two-fold, namely those related to the establishment of School Development Committees (SDC), and the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA). According to these Policy Circulars, each school is compelled to have a SDC where the elected parents, the school head and the deputy sit together to chart the developmental path of the school. The PFMA also compels the schools to have a finance committee which transparently oversees the utilisation of school resources. The composition of and signatories to the school account are the head, the deputy head, the SDC chairperson and its deputy. Their terms of reference are clearly stated in the Policy Circulars.

On community engagement in curriculum implementation, the Ministry (through the Policy Circulars) remains silent. One teacher observed:

To use community members in curriculum implementation is our own choice as teachers otherwise its being mischievous as there is no policy provision for their engagement. [FGD 3]

THEME 4: POLICY ISSUES

Circulars and policy guidelines

The bottom-up policy

formulation

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Furthermore, the school heads were non-committal and could not say whether there existed a policy to support community involvement in curriculum implementation or not. Three of the school heads (SH1, SH2 SH4) just mentioned the establishment of SDCs without clearly stating whether the SDC will work with teachers during curriculum implementation. One school head saw some faint provision in some of the instruments, and hence made the following observation:

While there is no one single policy statement to talk about community engagement in curriculum implementation, as schools we can take a clue from the Education Act and its amendments, Statutory Instruments (SI) as Public Finance Act, Treasury Instructions (TI), Circular P6 of 1994,, P70 of 1987, P19 of 2000, P14 of 2009 on Public Finance Management Act as government’s gesture to ensure that communities are engaged in whatever happens at school, especially where some of these policies emphasise on multi-cultural education.. [SH3]

The above statements indicate that there are no clearly defined policy guidelines to mandate the school heads and the teachers to engage community members in curriculum implementation. The schools only take a guess, or have a clue when they think community engagement may be implied in the Ministry’s pronouncements about multi-cultural education, where the thrust has been that all cultures should be appreciated in the classroom. By implication, it can only happen if the members of the communities are invited and involved.

However, the call by both the teachers and the school heads was that for this engagement to come to fruition and to be legitimate there is a need for government to legislate clearly defined policy and policy guidelines for the involvement of communities in curriculum implementation. Without these circulars and policy guidelines it became difficult for the teachers to go out of their way to engage the community members, and if problems arose they did not have a policy to protect them.

4.2.4.2 The bottom-up policy formulation

As already alluded to, educational policies in Zimbabwe take the top-down approach. The policies are centrally designed and are only taken to schools for implementation. It seems that there is very little consultation, especially with the teachers who are supposed to be the

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implementers. Below are the sentiments by the school heads, and what they said needs to be done:

Policy formulation is excessively in the hands of government and a lot of policy makers have left practice long ago and are not in touch with what is currently happening on the ground. They live in the past. They should consult us who are on the ground. [SH1]

For sound policy formulation there is need for these reality definers to come down to the grassroots constantly and get our input as heads and teachers, we will come up with policies that address some of these problems. [SH2]

Some problems are solvable merely by consulting us the heads and teachers who are on the shop floor of implementing policies. [SH3]

The Government need to consult us school heads as well as teachers during the formulation of policies because we are the implementers. [SH4]

My interpretation of the above sentiments is that the teachers and the school heads are never consulted when it comes to policy formulation. What they are only expected to do is to implement what would have been formulated by the policy-makers who are not quite knowledgeable about what is happening in the schools. Some of the policies usually do not address the needs of the schools. So what the school heads and teachers are lamenting for is for them to be consulted and to have an input in policy formulation. This helps when it comes to the implementation of such policies as no problems will be encountered.

Two school heads went further to indicate that in order to motivate the community members to be involved in curriculum implementation the following should be done:

 Communities should be consulted in early stages of the formulation of policies. [SH2]

 Communities should be consulted before certain policies are implemented. [SH4]

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What these school heads are suggesting is that the community members should also be part of the policy formulation by simply consulting them on what they think should be included in such policies. Community members’ views and suggestions should also be catered for in these policies.

The teachers also lamented the lack of consultation from the educational policy-makers. The following sentiments from some teachers summarises the teachers’ perceptions about lack of consultation and respect for teachers:

To them (policy makers) we (teachers) do not exist. We only exist when they want policies implemented and when they lay charges against us when things go wrong. [FGD4]

These policy makers see us as people who cannot contribute to policy formulation, an indication that they do not value us but we are the actual implementers. [FGD1]

We are so used to getting orders through these circulars and policies which sadly are never explained to us. Each teacher interprets and implements them according to how he understands them. [FGD 2 & FGD 3]

Through the questionnaire responses and focus-group discussions, the school heads and teachers respectively showed their desire to meaningfully contribute to policy-formulation. This would result in suggestions from the grassroots which can add value to curriculum implementation. The top-down policy formulation currently prevailing has left the school heads and teachers disillusioned in ever changing the status quo to bring and breathe new ideas into curriculum implementation.