BY VANESSA GONYE THE year 2020 has been described as the worst year for the education sector in Zimbabwe in six decades. Learning time was heavily curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the strike by teachers who demanded a living wage of US$520 or equivalent in local currency. Teachers refused to go back to work until government agreed to their salary demands. They have been on industrial action since September 2020. At the same time, government opened schools despite counsel that it must not do so because of the coronavirus. Some schools were affected by the pandemic, resulting in schoolchildren writing examinations in isolation. Education sector analysts commented on the 2020 academic year. David Coltart, the former Primary and Secondary Education minister 2020 has been the worst year for the education year in probably 60 years. It has been worse than 2008 when schools were closed and there were only about 27 days of teaching that whole year. The harsh reality is that a vast majority of students have been out of school. Most schools have not had online learning. If government does not develop specific programmes to fill those gaps those children will remain disadvantaged for the rest of their lives. The teachers‘ strike, I am afraid, is likely to continue. It has gone beyond a strike. Teachers cannot report for work given the wages they are being paid. They, quite frankly, can make more money by being vendors or waiters in South Africa or elsewhere. This is an absolute tragedy for our education system. When the Finance minister talks about having a budgetary surplus, he is being disingenuous because that surplus has only been achieved through the decimation of the education sector. Teachers cannot come out on the equivalent of US$40 or US$50 per month. These are professional people and most of them are bread winners. We are not just talking about a strike, we are talking about the destruction of the teaching profession as we note in Zimbabwe. Government seems to be blind to the gravity of the situation. As bad as 2020 has been, if this is not addressed in 2021, our children will go to school and find that there are minimal teachers there. In reality teachers have been placed in a predicament, they can hardly afford even to get to school and that needs to be addressed. This is a profound problem that needs a change in our budgetary policies, a mind shift totally in government. Turning to COVID-19, while I supported the closure of schools in the beginning, I think government has used a very blunt instrument to show no finesse in dealing with this. The reality is that most children are not adversely affected by COVID-19, and a majority of our teachers are not in the high risk groups. The majority of teachers could have come back and could have gone back to school. The crisis in education, while it has been exacerbated by COVID-19, has become deep rooted. Even if the pandemic was to go away, the principal problems are teacher conditions. I am not just talking about the salaries, I am talking about the way they