Ei-iE

Awareness raising activities in all regions of the country, continued dialogue between educators and policymakers, enhanced teacher professional training and certification. These are some of the achievements of the Zimbabwe Teacher’s Association (ZIMTA) since the national launch of the Education International (EI) Go Public! Fund Education campaign.

Joining the campaign for quality education

Zimbabwe's educators launched the Go Public! campaign to enhance the quality of education and secure better funding for public schools. ZIMTA has focused on public outreach, with efforts to engage the broader community.

ZIMTA Public Relations Officer Daisy Zambuko explained: “We had digital online campaigns where we were posting messages, popularizing the 59 United Nations recommendations that talk about quality education and the importance of promoting quality education, funding our public education, and improving the status of teachers all over the world.”

“We are currently planning workshops where we are going to train some of our leaders on how to negotiate for better funding, how to strategize and which are the key skills that they will need as they meet policymakers, for instance the language that should be used as we carry on with our campaign to go public and fund education,” she adds.

She acknowledges that “we are happy with that, because people are starting to talk about the messages.”

Engaging policymakers

One of the significant impacts of the campaign has been the sustained dialogue between educators and policymakers.

As ZIMTA Chief Executive Officer Dr Sifiso Ndlovu, notes: “We created sustained dialogue between ourselves and parliamentary portfolio committees for Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion, Primary and Secondary Education, and Higher Education, Science and Technology Development, so that they now will always consult us, phone us to say: Can we have your views on this matter?”

Publicity and outreach

The union has also engaged school headmasters. The campaign was presented at a meeting gathering over 1,600 school headmasters in Victoria Falls. “We shared with them part of our campaign materials, and we ran out, as there were so many of them,” Dr Ndlovu says.

In the Annual General Meeting, he also reports, they explained what they meant by Go Public! Fund Education, and how the campaign is linked to constitutional issues in Zimbabwe, particularly section 75 of the constitution regarding the right to education, and section 68 of the Acts of Parliament about the recognition of staff associations.

Training and capacity building

The campaign has also focused on training and capacity building for educators. Dr Ndlovu shared: “We have gone into partnership with the Zimbabwe Open University. We are trying to come up with a trade union training program which will be certificated by the Open University.” The program, he says, should be “relevant to ZIMTA leadership,” and the union is developing course modules - like trade unions and economics. This initiative aims to develop “robust leaders” who understand trade unionism and can effectively advocate for better education policies.

Challenges and future plans

Despite the campaign's successes, more progress remains to be made. The Ministry of Primary Education has yet to allocate funds for establishing a Teaching Profession Council, although a draft bill is in progress. The union is working on bringing more attention to this issue.

ZIMTA National Executive decided to support campaign activities going forward. ZIMTA remains determined to make a difference and pushes for better funding of Zimbabwe's education system and recognition of its members’ fundamental role in the quality of education and the sustainable future of the country.