Feature Stories

Zimbabwe: Giving Vulnerable Children a Second Chance
at School

Forced to drop out of school because their families could not cover school expenses, Maria Mudavanhu and Anusa Down participate in a Children First-supported Out-of-School program to bolster their academic skills so that they can return to school.

In Harare, Zimbabwe, a group of students sits attentively in a small room with unplastered walls. A teacher asks a question and a flurry of hands goes up. To the casual observer, this looks like a normal class of grade seven students, focused and well-cared for in neatly pressed white and grey uniforms. However, less than a year ago, more than half of these children dropped out of school.

“I used to live in Headlands. My father passed away in 2007 and I came to stay with my mother,” explains 14-year old Maria Mudavanhu. “I did grade five to grade seven, but she no longer had any money when I was looking to go to a Form One (secondary) school.”

In 2008, nearly 70% of Maria’s peers were forced to drop out of school because of financial insecurity, preventing them from transitioning into secondary school. To address this challenge, an alternative access to education model, known as the Out-of-School pilot program, was implemented by Eternal Life Ministries, a local faith-based organization in Harare supported by Bantwana’s Children First Project and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. In partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Out-of-School program works with students like Maria to first establish their education level. Then the program helps students strengthen their skills through remedial study packs in six core subjects: Mathematics, science, geography, English, and the Ndebele and Shona languages. After completing the program, students can either move to the next level or enter formal school.

Word about this free program for out-of-school children spread quickly within the community. Maria heard about it from her neighbor, prompting her to join. Some of the students who took advantage of the Out-of-School program had been out of formal school for more than two years. When asked if other students in the program could read or write, Maria says, “Some were not able to and while others could, they were not really knowledgeable about anything.”

Pfunga Macharagwanda, the program facilitator, says the remedial study packs developed by Children First effectively assess the students’ educational level and motivate them to advance their learning. “The children did not know their appropriate education level as most of them had been out-of-school for a long period,” she says. “After six weeks passed, we decided to assess their knowledge levels and we gave them Form One textbooks. When using the textbooks, a lot of them faced challenges but they eventually managed to cope. Some of them are motivated by realizing that they need to make progress in their education.”

Fourteen-year-old Anusa Down, a participant in the program, says the study packs are “helpful because when we started them we only had primary-level knowledge. Now we know many more things, such as the history of Zimbabwe. So we would like Children First to keep developing the workbooks.”

After nearly two years, 198 students are enrolled in the Out-of-School program and are working toward taking the grade seven exam. During this process, Children First continues to develop resources and strategies to enable the children to transition into formal secondary school, giving them a second chance at education.

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