LUPANE, ZIMBABWE — In recent years, Zimbabwe has promoted Early Childhood Development, or ECD, making it compulsory for every child to attend these classes before being accepted into first grade.

This policy, however, has not been without its challenges, including a shortage of ECD educators and few public schools that offer such classes. This led to a proliferation of unregistered night schools offering pre-school classes.

This has been particularly difficult in rural areas, long left out of the country’s development agenda, where children often do not go to school due to lack of educational facilities and non-payment of fees. education by parents.

To fill this gap, a diocesan congregation of Catholic sisters established two preschools in Lupane, a poor rural district about 170 kilometers north of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.

Lupane is a small agricultural and livestock hamlet of approximately 200,000 inhabitants. At its center are modern conveniences such as banks, supermarkets, bars, and long-distance buses and truckers to the tourist town of Victoria Falls, 223 kilometers to the west.

The center of Lupane is a hive of activity which belies the low rural incomes found in some villages stretching over 20 kilometers into the hinterland.

The Servites of Mary the Queen, known by their Latin abbreviation AMR (Ancillae Mariae Reginae) are a congregation of indigenous nuns formed in 1956 by Mariannhill missionaries in Bulawayo.

The congregation has about 70 sisters whose apostolate straddles teaching, nursing, communication; general pastoral care; and working with the Archdiocese of Bulawayo and its rural missions spread across the southwest of the country.

Local government education officials hailed the early childhood education development programs run by the sisters as a first in the region with state-of-the-art facilities. There are two early childhood programs, one in the town center and the other at the primary school about 2 kilometers away in the village of Matshiya.

“All children should attend ECD classes. We want to produce grounded citizens and the best place to start is early childhood education,” said Sr. Praxedis Nyathi, who runs AMR Primary School, education from early childhood to seventh grade. She specialized in early childhood education after taking her perpetual vows as a nun in 1998.

According to Nyathi, the school opened in 2018 in the village of Matshiya with just over 100 children in early childhood development classes through seventh grade. That number has since risen to around 500, highlighting the ever-present need to provide education in rural areas of the country.

At AMR Primary School, where more classrooms are still under construction, Nyathi says it is difficult to persuade families in rural communities to enroll their children in ECD.

“Some parents try to take shortcuts and delay their children’s enrollment and try to get them straight into first grade. But we have made it clear that we will not accept any child who has not taken ECD classes” , Nyathi told GSR.

In rural areas of Zimbabwe, it is not uncommon for parents to choose to send their sons to school and keep their daughters at home, believing that the investment in their education will be lost once the daughter is married. .

Nyathi says the sisters are working to change this attitude.

“We have such cases, but since we opened the ECD classes, we have worked hard to convince the families to enroll the girl as well. We are making small progress but there is still a lot of work to be done,” said Nyathi.

This need to enroll more children in ECD is underscored by Sr. Midlred Chiriseri, an AMR sister who teaches at the nearby AMR Secondary School, which offers what are known as Form 1 to Grade 1 classes. form 4 for pupils aged 13 to 17. ECD and congregationally run primary schools feed into the secondary school.

In fact, there is a need to enroll more children at all school levels, Nyathi said. Parents need to be persuaded to bring their children to school, monitor their schoolwork and be involved in their children’s education. “It’s a real challenge here in rural areas where up to 80% of students don’t read, which means they can’t express themselves like other literate learners their age. So we have to start them early in the ECD to solve this problem,” Chiriseri told GSR.

“What we also need is more religion in Catholic schools if we are to fulfill our mission of instilling Catholic values ​​in learners,” Chiriseri said.

The irony is that while some parents remain reluctant to enroll their children, Nyathi says existing ECD classes are oversubscribed.

“We have a situation where ideally we should have 20 children in a class, but we actually have up to 42 children, which puts a strain on our teachers,” Nyathi said, as the school has no not enough teachers.

The country faces a shortage of teachers, including ECD educators. Nyathi said her congregation and other religious congregations send sisters for teacher training, but it is always the government that deploys them after they graduate, often sending them to public schools.

Zimbabwe is celebrated as one of the most literate countries in Africa, and the Ministry of Education says such gains since the country’s independence in 1980 would not have been possible without the contribution of the Church Catholic.

Education officials in the country say more than 3,000 primary and secondary schools are needed to meet Zimbabwe’s education commitments, with rural areas particularly in need.

Bulawayo Archbishop Alex Thomas praised the sisters, calling them to be “educators of life”.

Part of the journey ahead will be to ensure that learners who go through AMR schools are well equipped for adult life, Nyathi said. She would like to see not only academic excellence, but also aptitude in practical subjects that guarantee self-reliance in a country where there are few formal jobs.

“Catholic schools should be a place where children find Christ, and by starting them early in EDC, we try to produce self-respecting learners who will make meaningful contributions in their respective communities,” Nyathi said.