Zimbabwe goes back to punishing pregnant learners
As this excerpt from an IRIN article last month illustrates, “falling pregnant used to mean the end of school for girls in Zimbabwe.”
In 2008 Sarudzai Gopoza, now 19, dropped out of school after falling pregnant. “He refused to marry me. My father said he could not look after me, so I had to look for a job. Luckily he let me leave the child under the custody of my mother,” she told IRIN.
A government regulation stipulating that pregnant girls automatically be expelled from school meant that Gopoza – who was about to write O-Level examinations, a school-leaving certificate that would have greatly enhanced her job-finding prospects – had to work as a domestic worker.
“My life is ruined – as a housemaid I am earning hardly enough to buy food and clothes for my child, and I don’t see myself being able to further my education and get a better job in the future. I will consider myself lucky to get a husband who will also accept my child and look after both of us,” she said.
So I was excited by and impressed with a new regulation by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art and Culture that would give pregnant female learners three months’ maternity leave, after which they could resume their studies. The new regulation also gave a male student responsible for pregnancy paternity leave for the same length of time.
But the latest report from IRIN sees the Ministry backing away from these provisions. There is a return to the previous, harsher attitude toward pregnant learners – and accordingly a far more punitive response to them.
According to IRIN:
“Learners in all schools may be suspended, excluded or expelled from school for various acts of misconduct of a serious nature,” Stephen Mahere, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, said in a circular.
“Pregnancy of a learner, and being responsible for it, are such an example of misdemeanour of a serious nature. The law provides for the exclusion of a learner who falls pregnant, and expulsion of a learner responsible for it,” the circular warned.
After consultations between the school and parents or guardians, a girl could be readmitted to school three months after a baby’s birth at the grade or form she had been in before she had the baby, Mahere said.
However, the boy responsible for the pregnancy would be considered for admission at another school, and only after a period of 12 months.
“It should be noted that re-admission of the boy learner is not automatic, as approval would have to be sought and granted from the ministry of education before re-admission in any other formal school,” the circular said.