Anglican Church Presses Ahead With Privatisation Of Schools
The Anglican Church Diocese of Manicaland province is going ahead with its plans to privatise its mission schools to enable the church to attract the best teachers and improve the quality of education at the institutions.
Schools targeted for privatisation include St David’s Bonda High School, St Anne’s Goto, St Augustine and St Faith, among other high schools.
A senior church member, Simon Sachitwe, told NewsDay on Thursday that the church will guarantee places for local schoolchildren. He said:
The church leadership led by Bishop Eric Ruwona is determined to privatise its mission schools.
We are doing it so that we can empower our local children by giving them scholarships, among other benefits.
… If you look at St Augustine’s in Penhalonga, most of the children are from outside Mutare and locals are no longer benefiting.
We want to give local schoolchildren a quota of available places. If we privatise, we can attract some of the best teachers in the country because we will pay them handsomely.
Sachitwe revealed that the church had already done all the necessary applications to privatise the schools.
In September this year, the ruling ZANU PF party warned the Anglican Diocese of Manicaland against its plans to privatise its best performing mission schools in the province.
READ MORE: ZANU PF Warns Anglican Church Against Privatising Schools
The ZANU PF Makoni District Coordinating Committee (DCC) believes that if the schools are privatised, the majority of the community families will no longer afford to enrol their children there.
