WORLD Vision Zimbabwe has called on authorities to reflect and act on the plight of school-going pregnant girls.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Pregnant Girls and Adolescent Mothers media training programme, project co-ordinator for the Adolescent Mothers Education Initiative, implemented by World Vision in partnership with Education Coalition of Zimbabwe, Memory Sibanda urged government to enact a tangible policy to reintegration adolescent mothers into schools.
“When these girls go out of school, there are no follow-ups in terms of the teachers making a follow-up to support these girls to come back to school. So the policy should also say when a child drops out of school due to teenage pregnancy, what can they do? When the child wants to go back to school, how do they reintegrate that girl back into the school system? There are no clear guidelines,” she said.
“You know that when this girl falls pregnant, drops out of school, she needs support. So there should be some counselling, that should be clearly spelled in the education system. There should be some existing policies and even in terms of learning catch-up, that should be clearly spelled out on how best they can be supported during their leave days.”
In Zimbabwe, 5 000 teenage girls fell pregnant between January and February 2021, while in 2019, 34% of girls dropped out of school due to teenage pregnancy.
Speaking at the same event, a Primary and Secondary Education ministry official, Personal Ncube, said the increasing number of school going girls falling pregnant is worrisome.
“We are working on a project in Nkayi district, where it was found that soon after the COVID-19 era, a large number of girls had fallen pregnant and in the process dropped out of school,” Ncube said.
“The concern was how best we could help those children, because the ministry has a policy that no child should be left behind. They were supposed to complete their education without hindrance, despite the fact that they had fallen pregnant.
“So with World Vision coming to partner the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, it was much easier to work directly with schools.”
Government is currently involved in the pilot project at eight schools in Nkayi which had recorded the highest number of girls who had fallen pregnant with the hope that the girls return and complete their schooling.
“We do have a circular P35, which directs that school children who happen to fall pregnant should be allowed back to school without question. Hence once a child has been identified as having fallen pregnant, they are allowed to continue. They are not thrown out of school,” Ncube added.
