The Emergency of Satellite Schools and Access to Education in Zimbabwe: Leveraging the Human Rights Agenda

While the Land Reform Programme (LRP) in 2000 and beyond was camouflaged as a distributive justice schema aimed to better the socio-economic status of the Indigenous people in Zimbabwe, it precipitated educational injustices for students arising from the creation of an education landscape marked by inequitable access to education. The study, undertaken after 20 years since the inception of the LRP, sought to check the progress made thus far by the Government of Zimbabwe to enhance access to education by children of the new farmers. Informed and guided by the international normative frameworks of the right to education, of which Education For All (EFA) and the Zimbabwean Education Act (1987) are part, the case study cast in the qualitative approach, presents constructed narratives of three primary school learners and their three teachers at one purposively selected satellite school. The study finds that as much as the advent of the LRP worked to bring equal access and redress in land appropriation between the settlers and natives, a new form of injustice has resurfaced as reflected by challenges of equitable access to education.

The Role of Land Reform Beneficiaries and the Reasons for Them Developing and Supporting a Satellite School in Masvingo, Zimbabwe: A Social Capital Marriage of Nhimbe and Allied Reasons

The land reform process in Zimbabwe gave birth to a new type of school known as a satellite school, which emerged due to community requests (in areas populated by land reform beneficiaries) and an inability by government to adequately fund new schools that communities required. Various studies on the emergence of satellite schools have mainly focused on the challenges faced by satellite schools. This article explores nhimbe (“work party”) and allied reasons specifically amongst the land reform beneficiaries who provide a supporting role to a satellite school in their community. This paper offers a different perspective on satellite schools from the vantage point of the land reform beneficiaries who are choosing to fill an educational gap and simultaneously nurture the development of an educational asset which they built—the satellite school. Theoretically, social capital frameworks by James Coleman (1988) and Robert Putnam (2000) are utilised to understand the relationships forged and maintained between groups of people for a greater good, in this case the land reform beneficiaries’ construction and ongoing support of one selected satellite school. Although the study’s research design adopted a multiple case study approach, we use the case of a group of land reform beneficiaries in one district for this paper. The data were elicited through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions held at one satellite school in the Masvingo district of Zimbabwe. The purposively selected participants comprised six land reform beneficiaries, two village heads and one satellite school head, making a total sample of nine participants. The study revealed that the land reform beneficiaries played a central role in the development and support of the satellite school in their community because of a marriage of interrelated reasons. These included the close proximity of their homesteads to each other which generated nhimbe, which further developed their relationships, their social networks, a sense of homage coupled with an indebtedness to the Mugabe government, shared community goals and social norms and the existing resource base (that they could access in their community). The study revealed that all these reasons for the land reform beneficiaries developing and supporting the satellite school feed off each other—they are not independent of each other. We conclude that the land reform beneficiaries have a sense of ownership of the satellite school in their community in Masvingo and they resultantly strive to use the available resources they are able to muster to develop the school so that it can be a valued asset to their community.

A school in distress: The manifestations of poverty at a selected satellite school in the Masvingo district, Zimbabwe

Although there is a plethora of studies on poverty in schools, poverty in satellite schools in Zimbabwe remains a neglected phenomenon. Satellite schools are newly established temporary schools which are attached to a registered school. This paper derives from a study that focused on the social capital influences of communal farmers and land reform beneficiaries on satellite schools in the Masvingo district, Zimbabwe after the year 2000. The study drew on the capability approach by Sen (2000) and the poverty pyramid by Baulch (2011). The study was qualitative and it was positioned in the interpretive paradigm. The paper reports on one case study of communal farmers in the Masvingo district. Four semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion with a purposive sample of ten participants were carried out in the Sambo community. Qualitative content analysis was utilized to analyse the findings and draw conclusions. The manifestations of poverty at Sambo satellite school were infrastructure challenges; physical resources allocation; a natural resource challenge; and learners’ participation in extra-curricular activities with other schools. Due to a multiplicity of manifestations of poverty, Sambo satellite school was clearly in distress. It is recommended that the Zimbabwean government provide additional funding to support satellite schools that are located in poor, environmentally challenging contexts.

Child-Centred Learning in Praxis

Placing the larger concepts of MGML, the notions of child-centred learning and key ideas of J. Krishnamurti on education at the centre of analysis, this chapter documents the translation of these concepts in everyday classroom life in a rural context of the satellite schools of Rishi Valley. It explores the ‘School in a box’ tool used in these schools and its instrumentality in engendering classroom processes that re-center the child’s autonomy in the learning process by rearranging the use of time, space, objects, and teacher-student relationships in the classroom. It also explores the learning and living continuum between the school and community life, and corporeal experience of learning in the MGML classroom. It also discusses the challenges in the classroom including the management of multiple learning contexts in the MGML classroom and the dual role of the teacher as facilitator and continuous assessor.

Philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti in the Educational Practice of the Multigrade–Multilevel Methodology

Very close to his death, Krishnamurti made sure that ‘The Rishi Valley School’ starts with small schools in the surrounding remote villages. The so-called Satellite Schools exist now for more than 30 years and have inspired thousands of schools worldwide by their MultiGradeMultiLevel-Methodology. More than the methodology it seems to be the attitude of the teachers that bring children as well as themselves ‘in the driver’s seat’ and realize therefore schools that run without fear—an aim Krishnamurti always focussed on. The contribution briefly introduces the educational ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy and shows how they can be identified in the MultiGradeMultiLevel-Methodology and its ideas of teacher education.