Role Of Stakeholders For The Zimbabwean School

The contribution of stakeholders is considered to be vital in the provision of inclusive education in Zimbabwean Secondary schools.

This generally takes in the responsibilities of various interested group of providers, clients, organizations, communities, expert advisors, government departments and politicians who can help schools in form of decision-making, financial support and other material resources to ensure rapid improvement in sport and academic achievement. This essay discusses the role played by communities, organization and government departments in the provision of inclusive education in Zimbabwean Secondary schools. The term stakeholder will be defined below since it is a subject matter.

Manitoba Family Services and Housing, (2008) define the stakeholders as those people who have a stake in the issue at hand. Stakeholders also include partners who collaborate to reach a mutually accepted goal (Marsh 2009). This includes providers, clients, organizations, communities, expert advisors, government departments and politicians. The primary stakeholders in a school are the teachers, school head, and the pupils and secondary stakeholders are the community (SDC), the government, trade unions, and so forth.

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Therefore, the term stakeholder in short means a party that has an interest in the school.

To commence with, since good and quality education should produce acceptable members of society, communities play vital roles in supporting progress in curriculum planning and implementation. Churchill (2003), says that there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into their babies. Community participation is the recognition that teaching and learning is not done in a vacuum, independent of the historical, political and cultural circumstances of the students (Miller 1995).

This shows that the community contributes in channeling traditional wisdom from generation to generation. Hence the community is a reservoir of important traditional knowledge and wisdom.

Also the community is important on the event of decision making since it knows the needs of its young ones to suit both the local and international standard in accordance to technological advancement. Taking into account the power dynamics between the schools and the communities, these greatly assist in terms of collective decisions, and of becoming responsive to local needs (Rose 2003). All the more local and soluble problems in the classroom, such as classroom discipline, assistance with homework and some cultural or ethnic topics which some members of the community might have knowledge about, require the intervention of the local communities. For example, parents come to school on consultation days to enter into a dialogue with the teachers on their children’s performance and since Zimbabwe is an agro-economy based country parents and local boards ensure accessible and compulsory agricultural skills in school children at early age supporting teachers. Thus the contribution of community in decision-making is important in the sustainable school development.

To add, the international organizations also give an essential contribution to foster talents and academic achievement as they provide teaching and learning resources, construction of buildings and maintenance. Organizations such as UNICEF and SWA help schools with textbooks and building materials each year to ensure that every child in Zimbabwe has access to compulsory education. Even other companies like Coca-Cola promote pupils’ sportsmanship talents by sponsoring football trophies in Secondary schools every year. This kind of partnership and interaction is seen as an answer and solution to some deeply-rooted problems of education (Laurence 2010). This shows that the teacher, aware of the important role that the public and private organizations can play, can design family-wise and pupil-wise plan of action, taking into account this social setting. Therefore, note that many educational innovations of recent years are based on the strong foundation of local and international support and participation, and consequently both a process and a product approach.

Furthermore, other stakeholders also give financial support to the provision of inclusive education by donating school fees and other financial support to disadvantaged pupils who are in needy. There is need for assistance from concerned interest groups and stakeholders as support pillars of teacher effort for curriculum implementation to be realized in full (Mufanechiya & Mufanechiya 2011). There are public charity organizations such as BEAM, FOST and ANGLICAN that offer greater chances of every citizen accessing high quality of education despite the fact that he/she comes from the poor or disadvantaged social class. Hence the product from the school, positively influences, especially the fact that the pupils learn to interact with the real world in an interesting manner alongside their academic learning (Magstadt 2009). Thus charity organizations develop the nation goal of inclusive education through giving financial support to those who are in need.

Again, government departments and officials also support compulsory education by sponsoring resources and materials that are necessary for curriculum planning and implementation in order to build patriotism and nationalism in them. Teachers cannot organize and understand curriculum issues among themselves effectively without regularly collaborating with the political world around them (Smith 2000-2009). Those government departments know the needs of the nation and the proper channel for development of secondary school pupils’ talents and carriers to compete with the international community. For example, they donate computers to schools so that every child will become computer so to improve computer literacy in this computer world. Therefore, the role played by governmental departments is pivotal since they ensure that every child has access to high quality of education to meet the demand of the international competition.

However, some stakeholders’ offerings come as blessings in disguise since they only pledge to help when they want to gain mutual support during a certain period of time. Some of them ought to offer help irregularly as they come only after a long time. Also some of stakeholders such as politicians and community members threaten some teachers in times of political instability that disturbs the teaching and learning process. Again, the Herald (2013:04:25), indicates that some religious groups and cultural groups limit the access of their children to inclusive education. Therefore some actions of different groups of stakeholders indirectly interrupt the rate of the provision of inclusive education in Zimbabwe.

In a nutshell, it is everyone’s responsibility to put their hands together so as to improve the provision of inclusive education in Zimbabwean Secondary Schools. Different government sectors such as Voluntary Organizations, politicians, the community in general, among the list are key stakeholders who usually give a hand in the provision of inclusive education.