The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has said it is going to make use of the zoning policy when absorbing learners returning from South Africa in June this year.
The zoning policy stipulates that learners should access education between five and 10 kilometres away from their homes.
Zimbabwe is expecting possibly thousands of learners and other returnees from South Africa following the expiration of the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) on 30 June 2023.
The Director of Advocacy and Communication in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Taungana Ndoro told State media that zoning will be intensified to ensure that returning learners will be absorbed by schools closer to their homes. He said:
Children from the community should be given first preference in order to attend the school closest to them at a maximum of 5km on foot or commuting.
It is not ideal that a child living in Nketa for example, attends school in the Kumalo suburb, why must a child cross-town as if there are no schools in Nketa?
Zoning will be intensified and enhanced to ensure that our enrolments are for those within the community.
When it becomes 20km it becomes absurd and tedious for the learner and everybody else, unless it is a boarding school.
Again, some of these learners may enroll at boarding facilities, we have a whole dormitory not having been occupied at Milton Junior, for example, go to Gifford and Milton Boys High School, and there are boarding places not occupied.
Perhaps they may not take it up because of the finances but infrastructure is available.
The Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) is a special dispensation program implemented by the South African government in January 2018 to allow Zimbabwean nationals who were living and working in South Africa to regularise their stay in the country.
The ZEP allowed eligible Zimbabweans to apply for a permit that enabled them to live, work and study in South Africa for a period of four years, from January 2018 until December 2021.
South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs last year announced that the ZEP system would be terminated in June 2023, by which time ZEP holders would have to apply for “regular” SA visas.
Several Lesotho nationals living and working under the so-called Lesotho Exemption Permit have likewise been told that their services are no longer required.
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