Most schools in Zimbabwe stayed closed yesterday on the first day of term, presaging a second year in a row of almost no education for the country's children.

Buses taking children to school were perhaps quarter-full, and those children that did attend, found few or no teachers, as the country’s teaching force continues with an unofficial strike. The exceptions were well-heeled private schools, and a few government schools attended by the children of the ruling elite.

“I didn’t send my daughter to boarding school today because I know the teachers are not going to come,” said Rosa Denga, a Harare housewife. “I would be paying for bus fare and uniforms and everything, and then would be told to come and collect her because there is no school. Now she is going be sitting at home for God knows how long.”

Zimbabwe was renowned for having Africa’s finest education system, producing literate, competent school and university graduates who are now sought after in other African countries they have fled to in the wake of the country’s economic collapse. In 2000, 92 percent of children were attending primary school but the figure is estimated to have dropped below 25 percent.

Teachers’ reluctance to come to school was reinforced last week when they received their monthly pay – an average of Zimbabwe dollars 31 trillion (yesterday about US$1). “The workers have neither the financial resources to travel to work nor to sustain themselves,” said Tendai Chikowore, president of the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association.

The beginning of the term was deferred three weeks ago until yesterday, despite warnings from education unions and parent bodies that the system was in chaos and it would make no sense to begin. Results from last year’s final examinations – the few that were taken – have still not been released after markers went on strike. The education ministry is ignoring appeals from unions and parents that teachers be paid in foreign currency, so most schools have no schedules of fees.

Wealthy private schools – many of them with children from the elite of President Mugabe’s ZANU(PF) party – were ready to start on the original opening day, but were ordered them to stay closed. Headmasters and staff that defied the ministry were threatened with arrest.

Last year Zimbabwean schoolchildren had 27 full days of schooling, the rest lost to strikes, teachers being sent on duty as election officials in two separate elections, and then a wave of political violence in which more than 20 teachers were murdered on suspicion of backing the pro-democracy Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

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