FREE EDUCATION CRISIS LOOMS FOR SWAZILAND

MANZINI – The country is a ticking time bomb as thousands of school dropouts are expected next year as numerous completing pupils under the Free Primary Education (FPE) programme might not continue with their education.

This was observed and noted by the education sector, which has been left with the mammoth task of ensuring that the pupils who will not return to formal education, for various reasons, receive skills training instead.

Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Training Pat Muir made this observation when addressing educators within the vocational training sector.

This was during a strategic meeting with Swaziland Skills Centres held at The George Hotel, where Muir mentioned that the situation faced by schools was dire as the country had about 50 per cent less secondary schools than primary schools.
“Existing secondary schools will not be able to absorb all the school leavers expected to sit for their Swaziland Primary Certificate (SPC) examination at the end of this academic year.”

Muir said although the Japanese government had assisted the country by providing funding for the construction of 12 secondary schools, they were still not enough to cater for the high volume of primary school leavers expected next year.
“Constructing more schools to absorb the pupils is not even an option as it costs about E10 million to construct one school and this depletes the ministry’s budget in one swoop,” he said.

Muir revealed that as a mitigating measure the ministry was looking into constructing more Form I classrooms in various schools that were expected to receive applicants from feeder primary schools within their respective areas, with the hope to ease the situation.

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