Zambia’s free education system gets classrooms jammed

Zambia's free education system gets classrooms jammed
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Zambia’s free education system gets classrooms jammed

A 16-year-old student named Richard Banda explains, “You need to come early to school because there is a shortage of desks.” “I arrived late two days ago and had to sit on the floor because it was so cold.”

His unease perfectly captures the issue of overcrowding and a lack of resources that have arisen from providing free elementary and secondary schooling in this area.

The school is housed in a courtyard with ten horseshoe-shaped classrooms surrounding a playground where acacia trees and other flora emerge from the sand.

Boys and girls sweeping the classrooms create a cloud of dust that blocks out the early morning sun.

One of the pupils runs to the middle of the playground and hoists the Zambian flag atop a tall pole just before the bell sounds.

For two million additional children, these morning customs have established a new normal as a result of the government’s decision to make education free for all students starting in 2021. These children attend state-run schools at no cost.

However, analysts claim that a lack of infrastructure investment is now endangering the quality of education, particularly for pupils from low-income families.

The 18-year-old Mariana Chirwa, wearing the Chanyanya girls’ uniform—a light-blue shirt with a tartan ribbon on top—says, “I stopped going to school in 2016.”

“I’m not sure how my parents would have been able to get me back to school if it weren’t for free education.” They just stay at home and don’t work.

The difficulties faced by schools like Chanyanya are spelled out on a poster depicting class sizes that is hung on the wall of the headteacher’s office. 75 boys and 85 girls are crammed into a classroom that can only hold 30 students comfortably. “When I started in 2019 I had about 40 students, but now it’s around 100 plus, and that is just in one class,” says 33-year-old teacher Cleopatra Zulu.

“Due to free education, we welcome new students every single day. It’s hard to talk to someone one-on-one, and marking is tough too. Even the amount of subjects we are assigning them has been lowered.

This is demonstrated by Richard Banda’s experience as a student.

“There is a slight difference in the way we learn now compared to when we were paying,” he says to the BBC.

“The teacher used to repeat a lesson if a student didn’t comprehend it when we were little, but now that we are larger, the teacher doesn’t do that. The distinction is that.

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