Inequality, Teacher Priorities, and Possible Remedies
By Tsanangurai Chirau
Masvingo- Extra lessons — paid tuition offered outside normal school hours, often by a learner’s own teacher — have become one of the most visible features of Zimbabwe’s education system. What began decades ago as informal, voluntary remedial support for struggling students has grown into a large, semi-formal private tuition economy that now touches nearly every level of schooling, from primary school through to Ordinary and Advanced Level examination classes. While extra lessons can genuinely help individual learners grasp difficult material and improve their examination performance, the practice has also become a significant driver of inequality within the school system, and a source of tension around how teachers allocate their time and effort. This essay examines the effects of extra lessons on learners who can and cannot afford them, explores why teachers increasingly prioritise paid extra lessons over their regular classroom duties, and proposes measures that could help address this.
For families who can afford them, extra lessons often make a tangible difference to academic outcomes. Many students describe the additional, more individualised instruction as the difference between passing and failing a subject, particularly in examination years when the pressure to perform is highest. Extra lessons allow teachers to revisit content at a slower pace, address specific gaps in understanding, and give learners more practice with past examination papers than crowded regular classes typically allow.
However, this benefit is not evenly distributed. Because extra lessons are paid for privately, they function as a parallel, fee-based tier of education layered on top of the public system. Households with disposable income can purchase additional instruction time and attention for their children, while poorer households cannot. The result is that inequality is increasingly reproduced inside the classroom itself, not through outright exclusion from school, but through unequal access to the quality of teaching and attention a learner receives once enrolled.
The urban-rural and rich-poor divides in Zimbabwean education are sharply visible in the extra lessons phenomenon. During periods of major disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, learners in cities had far greater access to revision materials, functioning teachers, and extra lessons than their counterparts in rural areas, who often had access to none of these resources. This pattern has persisted beyond the pandemic. Holiday ‘crash programmes’ run by urban schools ahead of major examinations can cost well over a hundred US dollars for a two-week block of lessons — a fee that is manageable for some families but entirely out of reach for many others, particularly in rural and low-income urban communities.
The consequences show up starkly in national results. Zimbabwe’s national Ordinary Level pass rate in 2024 was just over thirty-three percent, meaning roughly two-thirds of candidates failed to pass at least five subjects. Some rural schools recorded a zero percent pass rate that year, a disparity acknowledged even by the Minister of Education, who noted that such outcomes are concentrated in rural schools facing serious resourcing gaps compared to their urban counterparts. For a learner unable to afford extra lessons, the experience can be one of watching wealthier peers gain what feels like an additional advantage toward success, while they are left to prepare alone, often without adequate textbooks or study guides.
The core driver of this problem is economic rather than a simple failure of professional commitment. Teacher salaries in Zimbabwe have deteriorated significantly in real terms amid the country’s prolonged economic difficulties, leaving many teachers unable to meet basic living costs on their government salary alone. Extra lessons, typically charged directly to parents at rates commonly ranging from around ten to thirty US dollars per month, have become an essential survival income for many teachers rather than an optional side activity.
This financial reality creates a structural conflict of interest. A teacher who depends on extra lessons for a meaningful share of their income has little incentive to deliver their full effort, pace, and depth of instruction during the regular, unpaid school day, since doing so would reduce the demand for the paid lessons offered afterward. Parents and learners have reported that some teachers charge fees on top of standard school fees for content that arguably should be covered during ordinary lessons. Compounding the problem, school heads are sometimes seen as complicit in allowing the practice to continue, which discourages parents from reporting it, particularly as many are also unaware of where or how such complaints could formally be lodged.
The government has periodically declared the charging of fees for extra lessons illegal, with past ministers describing it as a source of inequality within the public service more broadly. In practice, however, enforcement has been weak and inconsistent, and the practice continues largely in the open, tolerated as an unavoidable adaptation to teachers’ economic circumstances.
Addressing the extra lessons problem requires action on several fronts simultaneously, since the practice is sustained by economic pressure on teachers as much as by demand from parents.
Improve teacher remuneration: Since inadequate pay is the primary driver of the practice, raising teacher salaries to a living wage is the most direct way to reduce teachers’ dependence on private tuition income.
Clarify and enforce regulations: Existing declarations that paid extra lessons are illegal need consistent enforcement, including clear rules such as prohibiting teachers from charging their own enrolled students, backed by real disciplinary consequences for violations.
Fund school-based remedial programmes: Government- or donor-funded catch-up and revision classes run through schools, especially in rural areas, would extend support to learners who cannot pay for private tuition.
Increase education budget allocation: Zimbabwe’s education spending has remained below the twenty percent threshold recommended under the Dakar Framework for Action, limiting what public schools can offer without relying on informal, fee-based arrangements.
Create safe, accessible reporting channels: Many parents do not know how to report improper charging for extra lessons, and are wary of reporting to school heads who may be involved. Independent or ministry-level reporting mechanisms would help address this gap.
Target resourcing toward rural schools: Because the divide is geographic as well as economic, additional staffing, materials, and infrastructure support for rural schools would help close the gap that extra lessons currently widen.
Extra lessons in Zimbabwean schools sit at the intersection of a genuine educational need and a deeper economic crisis within the teaching profession. While they can meaningfully support learners who can afford them, they simultaneously entrench inequality for those who cannot, turning what should be a universal public good into a service increasingly rationed by household income. Rectifying this anomaly will require more than moral appeals to teachers or periodic government warnings; it demands a combination of fair teacher remuneration, stronger enforcement of existing regulations, targeted investment in under-resourced schools, and increased overall funding for public education. Without addressing the underlying economic pressures that make extra lessons necessary for many teachers’ survival, the practice is likely to persist, and with it, the widening gap between Zimbabwe’s advantaged and disadvantaged learners.
Chirau writes in her own capacity.
