The Great Disconnect – Education

ONE step forward: The Namibian President, Hifikepunye Pohamba, officially launched a brilliant concept of schools of excellence this week. They call them ‘vision schools’. Omake! A loud round of applause, indeed!

In a country that has been dumbing-down [excuse the Americanism but it captures vividly the concept of lowering standards] just about everything public or State-owned, the opening of the Rukonga Vision School, 200km east of Rundu in the Mukwe constituency, is a strong reminder of great deeds our leaders can do and a positive use of taxpayers funds to improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable Namibians.

Pohamba said Rukonga – which opened early this year with 240 students in Grades 8 and 11 – and five other ‘vision schools’ that the government plans to set up over the years would be “torch-bearers of excellence”. ‘Vision schools’ is based on the government’s Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme [Etsip] aimed at quality access to education as well as equity. They would enrol disabled and able-bodied students from “previously disadvantaged backgrounds, especially rural areas”. Pohamba said the “aim is to attract learners who demonstrate hard work and a high degree of academic aptitude”.

Rukonga, which was constructed at a cost of N$109 million, has ramps for wheelchair users, several laboratories, a modern library as well as other state-of-the art facilities. Who could fault our government for that?

But then two steps backwards: (which should read more than two steps backwards). At just about the same time that the government was showing that it can use taxpayer funds wisely, it then shows further signs of undoing its plans.

The elaborate review and policy plan Etsip was put into motion for Vision 2030, Namibia’s ambition to have reached industrialised status [i.e. the First World to be crudely politically incorrect] 20 years from now.

Instead, our leaders seem to be suffering from tunnel vision. The government, expressing itself loudly and eloquently through Minister of Education David Namwandi, has hastily put a stop to plans by the Pionierspark Primary School, Parkies, to think about privatisation or a hybrid status whereby it can be allowed to charge fees. Namwandi threatened to dismiss the school board if they continued with the plan, arguing that the government has declared free primary education in all State schools. With that, school development funds through which fees and other payments were collected were closed.

Pity Nangula Uaandja, board member of Parkies where her children also attend, and other parents of this formerly Afrikaner middle-class suburb. Uaandja says the school had a yearly budget of about N$2 million before free universal education was imposed this year. Parents paid N$1,000 per child a year for equally needed activities and maintenance because government funding was never adequate.

Privatising it will require about N$350 every month. Some parents cannot afford it, but many seemed fine with the idea. With free education, Parkies gets less than N$470 000 this year, the sum of N$418 government subsidy per child for the 1 120 enrolled. N$418 is the improvement from the precious subsidy of N$118. So government demands Parkies to stay put and make do with what it’s got.

Yet, the government leaders seems to have focussed only on possible negatives to the school’s ideas – that parents who are better off are trying to keep out the poorer ones, that it is apartheid all over again – something simple to regulate.

But what the government decrees does not tally with the realities on the ground. The previously advantaged [not necessarily those that were reserved for whites] or middle class ones are bound to become mediocre unless they can maintain, let alone improve, what standards they had set. Rich parents will merely ship off their children to well-resourced [some also State subsidised] private schools. Without cross-pollination of the middle class the quality will drop across the board.

Look no further than schools such as Concordia in Windhoek, Döbra/St Joseph’s High, Martin Luther High and Oshigambo for evidence of how infrastructure and teaching quality collapse when a faceless government hand takes charge. Some of those schools had teachers who were poorly paid compared to government salaries, but they delivered some of the top education around Southern Africa. They had the drive. Schools were better run. Parents took more responsibility [including paying and the few who could not got bursaries].

Etsip calls for the involvement of the private sector and parental responsibility to improve education. So, why tunnel vision when in practice the government can’t deliver?

Our leaders must address the disconnect between their theories/ideals and what is practical; or else we will remain in the vicious cycle of the lowest common denominator as the yard stick.

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