Annual report on Northern Rhodesia / Colonial Office.

  • Colonial Office
Date:
[1951]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on Northern Rhodesia / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/126 page 40
    The main aim of the new Education Ordinance is to place far more responsibility upon local communities for the administration of the educational system than has hitherto been the case. Local education authorities representative of Government, the Mission Societies, Native Authorities, and recognised African bodies will be established in each administrative district and province and these will be given Considerable control both in the spheres of finance and general ad¬ ministration over the schools in their respective areas. By means of these plans it is hoped to bring home certain fundamental facts which, at present, many do not seem to appreciate. One is that education costs a lot of money; another is that since education is expensive and becoming more so every year, any expansion of the educational system in rural areas will have to fall in part directly on the African taxpayer in the form of rates and levies. Another interesting feature of the new Ordinance is that it provides for a Unified Teaching Service under which all teachers approved for entry into the service will be on the same conditions and terms of service irrespective of their employers. This removes a long-standing complaint on the part of the teachers . employed by Mission Societies whose conditions of employment have not hitherto been as favourable as those enjoyed by teachers in Govern¬ ment employment. In September a group of educationists, appointed by the Secretary of State to review educational policy for Africans, visited Northern Rhodesia. The leader of the group was Mr. A. L. Binns, c.b.e., m.c., Chief Education Officer for the Lancashire County Council. Their findings are awaited with great interest. Compulsory education for children in the Copperbelt and Ndola between the ages of twelve and sixteen years, which had been in force since 1943, was abolished in July, 1951. The ever-growing influx of Africans into this area has caused such pressure upon the available classroom accommodation that the regulations enforcing compulsion could only continue to be enforced if all children under the age of twelve years were removed from school. This would have been a most retrograde step educationally. Under the reorganised scheme for the Copperbelt, available accommodation is reserved for those of the age groups appropriate to each class and the classes themselves are limited to thirty-five children. The results of this policy are already evident in better attendance, better discipline, and better teaching. But satis¬ factory though these improvements are in themselves, the fact remains that there are estimated to be some 10,000 to 12,000 children on the Copperbelt without educational facilities of any kind. Besides providing the more formal type of education in this vast mining area the Department has continued to run Community Service Camps for senior boys drawn from Copperbelt schools. These camps are held for two months during the long holidays and their aim is to
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