By Albert Mpofu
In an application filed at Masvingo High Court on April 28, Susan Chikwanda of Jerera in Masvingo province wants the court to declare the government’s decision to subsidize examination fees for 2023 Grade Seven, Ordinary Level, and Advanced Level examination candidates in public schools, local authority schools, and mission schools to the exclusion of candidates in private schools and colleges, including private candidates in public schools, invalid and in breach of the constitutional protection of equality and the right to education enshrined in the Constitution.
In a circular dated January 26, 2023, ZIMSEC issued Finance Circular Number 3 of 2023, wherein the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education stated that the fees to be paid for Grade Seven examinations for 2023 are US$65 for all subjects. The circular further stated that the government would contribute US$36 of the examination fee for candidates in public schools, while parents and guardians would pay US$29. The circular also stated that all candidates from private schools and colleges will meet the full cost of US$65 as examination fees for the year. In another circular dated January 31, 2023, ZIMSEC, through Finance Circular Number 1 of 2023, announced that the government would be subsidizing the 2023 Ordinary Level and Advanced Level examination fees for candidates in public schools, local authority schools, and mission schools.
The Circular further stated that all candidates in private schools and colleges, including private candidates in public schools, will pay the full cost of examination fees. The Circular stated that candidates in public schools would pay 45 percent of the examination fees per subject, and the government would pay 55 percent of the examination fees per subject. In her application, Chikwanda, who is represented by Paida Saurombe of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), charged that the effect of the decision to subsidize examination fees for public schools and exclude private schools means that her 13-year-old child, who is enrolled in Grade Seven, will benefit from the subsidy, while her 16-year-old minor, who is enrolled in Form Four, will not benefit.
She argued that her two children both come from the same home and are financed from the same less privileged and economically weak pocket. Besides the fact that one of them is learning at a government-run school and the other at a private college, there is nothing else that differentiates their economic and social status, and they both eat from the same plate and are clothed for school from the same source.
The Masvingo-based woman said she is concerned that the government has made a decision to benefit one of her minor children by subsidizing the exam fee but have the older minor child pay the full examination fee, and yet the money that the government is using to subside the examination fees for candidates in public schools, including mission schools, is coming from the same fund that all citizens pay taxes into. She argued that when tax is collected, there is no question asked regarding which school one’s child attends, but when benefits are extended, the government has taken a decision to differentiate students based on the schools that they attend.
Chikwanda said the government has not provided the rationale behind this differentiation and concluded that the differentiation amounts to unfair discrimination based on perceived class and also on economic or social status; hence, it is discrimination based on class because ZIMSEC has classified candidates into two categories that are based on the type of school that a candidate attends and will write examinations at.
She charged that this is not fair discrimination and cannot be justifiable in a free and democratic society that has the rule of law and constitutionalism as its tenets of justice, and that such unfair discrimination inadvertently results in candidates like her older minor child, who is enrolled in a private college, having their right to education infringed. Chikwanda’s older minor child, who has been studying eight subjects, is required to pay total examination fees of US$192, and yet if she was going to benefit from the subsidy, she would have been paying US$88. Because of the sad economic situation obtaining in Zimbabwe, which has become an albatross on her children’s right to education, she said she had been left to choose that one of them write only five Ordinary Level subjects, which are the mandatory minimum subjects required for an Ordinary Level pass.
Chikwanda argued that Section 56(3) of the Constitution provides that every person has the right not to be treated in an unfairly discriminatory manner on such grounds as class, economic, or social status, and that Section 75(1)(a) of the Constitution provides that every citizen and permanent resident of Zimbabwe has the right to a basic state-funded education, while Section 4(5)(1) of the Education Act provides that every child shall be entitled to a compulsory basic state-funded education.
Her children, Chikwanda argued, have the right not to be treated unfairly and the right to a state-funded education, and yet ZIMSEC’s decision takes away these rights from them. She said that by subsidizing examination fees, she believed that ZIMSEC was taking an active position in advancing the right to a state-funded education, but at the same time, the government had made a decision toarbitrarily deny other citizens that right, and the denial of the right to students who are not enrolled in public schools is not reasonable, nor is it grounded in any objective and rational basis. The matter is yet to be set down for hearing and determination.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights
