Government calls for partnerships with stakeholders to improve access to education

Government has called for continued partnership with stakeholders especially communities to improve access to education for children.

Ministry of General Education Regional Education Officer Allan Lingambe said government alone cannot manage to provide education to the expectations of everyone.

Dr. Lingambe was speaking in a speech read for him by Guidance and Administration Senior Education Officer, Pimpa Mtolo, during the Anoya Zulu Parents, Teachers’ Association (PTA) annual general meeting held in Chipata yesterday.
He observed that government has prioritised scaling up provision of education in order to meet the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

He emphasized that there was need to help educate, mould and mentor children in a way that would benefit them.

‘’ It is therefore by educating the child that poverty, sickness and other social problems can be eradicated. This way, we light up the future of our children, communities and the nation at large,’’ Dr. Lingambe said.

The Provincial Education Officer said cost sharing in education can help improve and provide extra infrastructure and human materials and financial resources needed to enhance provision of education.

He added that it was the duty of parents to meet other costs by paying user fees to enable the school run various programmes like sports, educational clubs, construction and rehabilitation of infrastructure, among others.

Meanwhile, there was a heated debate between the parents, the PTA Executive and the school administration when the school proposed to increase user fees by 100 per cent.

Some parents felt a 100 percent increment was too high especially that most of them had not yet paid for their children this year.

The school justified the proposal arguing that it needs to construct a hall, a staff room and a basketball court which were not available at the learning institution.

The meeting later agreed to add a K 100 to the user fees which were previously pegged at K 250-00 per term.

The School’s financial report also revealed that K 346, 490.00 had not been collected for the financial year 2015 from the school’s 1, 476 pupils.