Zimbabwe

IN THE Middle Ages, a significant Bantu civilisation arose in the Zimbabwe region. The powerful Shona state was trading locally extracted gold and ivory with the Arab traders of the African east coast. Great Zimbabwe, built throughout the 11th to the 15th centuries, is the Shona legacy, and at its height this empire extended for several hundreds of kilometres around their stone-built headquarters. By the 17th century, however, the empire had declined. It was brought to near collapse by the destruction of the east coast trade and a series of military attacks by early Portuguese settlers in Mozambique...Read more.

Zimbabwe’s education system is organized in a 7-4-2 pattern of primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary education. Secondary school consists of Form One to Form Six, with Form Five students studying eight subjects, at the end of which they take the Cambridge School Certificate (CSC). From Form Five to six, they study three subjects, at the end of which they sit the Cambridge Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations or take the CGE ‘A’ Level Certificate (National Council for Higher Education Harare, 2001). Once they have attained their CGE ‘O’ or ‘A’ levels, students can train towards a diploma in teaching, agriculture, nursing, and several technical courses. On achieving good ‘A’ level passes, they can enrol at a university for an undergraduate degree (National Council for Higher Education Harare, 2001). The main institutions offering higher education are universities, and technical and teacher training colleges (Mtetwa, Tambo, & Chavunduka, 2006).

There are nine publicly funded higher education institutions in Zimbabwe.
 

Type of Higher Education Institutions	Number of Institutions
Publicly funded universities	9
Publicly funded polytechnics & specialized colleges	8
Publicly funded accredited universities or colleges	4
Publicly funded colleges	10
Privately funded, accredited teachers colleges	3
TOTAL	34

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Source: Zimbabwe MoE questionnaire response

In 2004 the MOESC and the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education adopted the National Action Plan: Education for All-towards 2015 (NAP), which incorporated Zimbabwe’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals for education. The NAP aims to increase enrolment and improve the quality of all levels of education (SARUA 2008 – MRCI Report).

The Zimbabwean Government has instituted a number of policy reforms in the higher education sector since 2001, reflecting a shift in emphasis from increasing access to education to improving the quality of education and training, due to the competitive demands brought about by globalization. The policy framework is contained in the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education’s corporate plan for 2002-2004 (Government of Zimbabwe Ministries of Education, Culture, Higher and Tertiary Education, 2004). In 2002, a new student financing policy was put in place to broaden opportunities for tertiary education (Bloom, Canning, & Chan, 2006).
 

Higher Education Legislation	Brief Description
Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education Act	The purpose of the Act is to register and accredit institutions of higher education and to regulate quality assurance in them. Although the latest Act was promulgated in late 2006, it will only come into effect with the appointment of a Council for Higher Education board, all of whose members are chosen by the Minister

List of Statutory Bodies in the Higher Education Sector

Statutory Bodies	Brief description
Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education Act	Responsible for Quality Assurance of Higher Education
National Manpower Advisory Council (NAMACO)	Acts as a go-between Industry and Higher and Tertiary Education, and supervises Industrial Committees which identify determine and monitor the training needs.
Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF)	Levy collection for ZIMDEF supplements voted funds in the procurement of training materials and consumables.
College Lecturers Association of Zimbabwe (COLAZ)	Represents lecturers in collective bargaining.
National Economic Consultative Forum	Recommends economic priority programmes including human capital development.
Zimbabwe Occupational Standards Services (ZOSS)	Carries out job profiling, and develops occupational standards upon which Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) curricula are based and which form the basis upon which examinations test items and trade tests are developed.

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Source: Zimbabwe MoE questionnaire response

Public Expenditure on Education as a % of Gross National Income (GNI)	No data
% Education budget allocated to higher education	No data
Loan/Grant scheme in place	No data

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Source: SARUA (2008) – Pillay report

Key Indicators	Zimbabwe
R&D Intensity [The ratio of Gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)]	Not available
ISI Output (Number of papers published in the 7500+ journals of the ISI Web of Science)	1990-1995: 1458 1996-2001: 1548 2002-2007: 1460

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Source: SARUA (2008) – CREST Report