The class of 2008 will not receive an education. Since the school year began in January, Zimbabwe's 4.5 million pupils have had a total of 23 days uninterrupted in the classroom, teaching unions say - a sorry state for a country that once had the highest standard of education in Africa.

President Mugabe became an African hero of rare distinction when he carried out a big expansion of the education system in the early years of his rule. As with most of the country's infrastructure, that system is now in the process of total collapse.

In the mid-1990s there was a national O-level pass rate of 72 per cent. Last year it crashed to 11 per cent. Many schools recorded zero passes.

To avoid the humiliation of total failure in 2008 the Government has cancelled the academic year. “It would be criminal if the Government allows examinations to go ahead,” Raymond Majongwe, the secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe, said.

In January teachers went on a prolonged strike over their salaries. In April, Mr Mugabe's Zanu (PF) party accused them of supporting the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) during the March elections and blamed them for the President's first-round defeat.

Six teachers were murdered and thousands assaulted by Zanu (PF) militia in the violence that marred the second-round presidential election on June 27.

Schools were looted and turned into torture centres. Teachers disappeared. Many are still unable to return for fear of being disciplined.

Now the coup de grace to the education system is being delivered by hyperinflation. Teachers had their salaries doubled last week to the equivalent of £5.70 a month — barely enough for bus fares and bread for four days.

The handful of private and state schools where parents can pay large supplements to teachers' salaries are the only ones operating. In most schools where teachers do turn up pupil attendance is dwindling.

“We come to school and we entertain the kids until 10am, then we send them home,” Amos Musoni, from Sengwe primary school in the south of the country, said. “There were ten teachers last week, out of 32. They are there because they have no money to leave. We don't even have chalk, or red pens, never mind books.”

At one of Harare's government boys' high schools, benches are being sawn up to provide wood for O-level woodwork examinations - not that anyone knows when they will happen.

"O and A-level pupils go home next week to study for their finals,” the headmaster said. “But there is no timetable. Nor do we have their June mid-year results.”

Urban schools have been overwhelmed by water and power cuts. One primary school in Mabvuku township, Harare, has not had water for five years. A Harare girls' school has been seeking an axe to chop down trees for firewood to cook food.

Providing school food at a time of comprehensive agricultural failure is a struggle. Mr Majongwe said hundreds of rural schools had sent their boarders home because they could no longer feed them.

Mr Musoni, from Sengwe, is pathetically thin. “There is no food,” he said. “People are starving.” Students at Harare Polytechnic rioted last week after they were served sadza, the stiff maize porridge that is the national staple, without salt or cabbage.

The country's four leading universities have failed to open since the start of their first term in mid-August. At the University of Zimbabwe, the country's leading tertiary institute, a notice with last Friday's date on a faculty building tells students that lectures will begin “on a date to be advised”.

Levy Nyagura, the Vice-Chancellor, said that the university had “no water, no electricity and no funds”.

Ellen Murogodo, a would-be first-year social work student, keeps returning to the campus to register only to be told to try again a week later. To pay for her journey she sets up a stand outside the university's Great Hall where she sells popcorn and cigarettes.

“Mugabe was a teacher himself [in the 1950s],” Mr Majongwe said. “He knows the potential of teachers as agents for change. That is why he has deliberately destroyed education.”

New talks on a power-sharing government in Zimbabwe failed yesterday to end a stalemate over Cabinet posts, the opposition MDC said.

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