Advocacy group, NAQEZ, decries overcrowded classrooms, fears education standards falling

National Action for Quality Education in Zambia (NAQEZ) executive director, Aaron Chansa, says overcrowding in most classes has compromised the quality of education since the reintroduction of free education.

Chansa also said in a statement on Monday that the country will need in excess of K3 billion to procure more than 1.8 million desks needed in public schools.

“It is now very common to find more than 100 learners in one class. This is a very serious threat to the quality of academic and vocational skills being developed in learners at government schools,” he said.

Chansa said after more than a year of free education, very little had been done to supply desks to schools.

“This has forced many learners to continue sitting on the floor while learning. The desk crisis in the country has created a cruel environment for learning against aspiration and expectation,” Chansa said.

Given the reality of critical shortage of classroom spaces and the challenge of no direct funding to schools for infrastructure development, he feared it would take many years to decongest classes in the country.

“Currently nothing much is happening in increasing classroom infrastructure of public schools. Depending on the school grants and the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to improve school infrastructure, in our view, will not help the situation at all,” Chansa said.

He revealed that it would take more than K3 billion to buy the more than 1.8 million desks needed in “our public schools.

Chansa insisted that the government would need accessible sources of money other than CDF to make sure that no child continues sitting on the floor by end of this year, which timeframe President Hakainde Hichilema had set.

‘’The declaration of free education has so far motivated more than 500,000 children, mostly from poor families, to join the mainstream schooling system leading to overcrowding of classrooms,” he said.

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